[News] Pit River Tribe proclaims victory in the fight to protect Medicine Lake Highlands

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://intercontinentalcry.org/pit-river-tribe-proclaims-victory-in-the-fight-to-protect-medicine-lake-highlands/ 



  Pit River Tribe proclaims victory in the fight to protect Medicine
  Lake Highlands

Pit River Tribe - September 26, 2019
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The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared a victorious win for the 
Pit River Tribe and Indigenous Nations in a decades fought dispute over 
geothermal leasing on federal land within California’s sacred Medicine 
Lake Highlands.

On Thursday, the court issued a summary judgment by the panel ruling in 
favor of Indigenous Nations and environmental groups in their action 
against federal agencies responsible for administering twenty-six 
geothermal leases located in California’s Medicine Lake Highlands, which 
threatened to desecrate and industrialize the pristine and rugged sacred 
landscape. This is especially egregious due to the lack of scientific 
evidence of the effectiveness of this method of geothermal steam 
extraction to produce energy.

The historic win for California tribes is part of a long struggle for 
basic recognition and protection of tribal territories. The Medicine 
Lake Highlands are held sacred by the Pit River Nation as well as many 
other Tribal Nations which include the Wintu, Karuk, Shasta, Klamath, 
Yana, and Modoc peoples.

At a time when the Trump administration is accelerating attacks against 
Indigenous sovereignty and ecosystems, the Pit River Nation and its 
allies have scored a historic victory in its long court battle to 
protect the Medicine Lake Highlands from industrial geothermal power. 
“Our sacred lands are all that remain keeping us connected to our place 
on Mother Earth, to our spirituality, our heritage and our lands; what’s 
left of them,” said Bill George, Atsugewi band elder of the Pit River 
Nation. “If they take it all away, what will remain except a vague 
memory of a past so forgotten?”

The Pit River Nation alleged that the Bureau of Land Management’s 
decision to continue the terms of the leases for up to forty years 
violated the Geothermal Steam Act (“GSA”). The Ninth Circuit panel of 
judges affirmed a previous decision from the district court in a legal 
battle that has focused on violations of the Geothermal Steam Act, the 
National Environmental Policy Act, National Historic Preservation Act, 
and the Indian fiduciary trust doctrine. Plaintiffs in the case included 
the Pit River Nation, Native Coalition for Medicine Lake Highlands 
Defense, Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, Save Medicine Lake 
Coalition, Medicine Lake Citizens for Quality Environment.

For thousands of years before European arrival to the Americas, the 
Indigenous people of Northern California have made pilgrimages to the 
Highlands for healing, religious ceremony, and tribal gatherings.

The late Willard Rhodes, Itsatawi Tribal Council Member, Cultural 
Representative and Elder said of Medicine Lake, “When creating the 
world, when it was moist, the maker of life stopped here to rest and 
drink and wash and imparted himself in the water. That’s why we respect 
this place deep in our hearts.”

25 years ago, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) issued 26 geothermal 
leases, with only cursory environmental review and no tribal 
consultation in the Highlands. This has posed a grave threat of 
desecration and total destruction to a precious place of deep religious 
significance, in the name of five proposed geothermal power projects 
that would increase geothermal extraction to a total of 500 megawatts.

“We are gratified by the Court’s affirmation of the plain text, logical 
reading of the statute. The decision means that if the Bureau of Land 
Management wants to revive or reissue the leases, it will have to engage 
in meaningful government-to-government consultation with the Tribe and 
conduct adequate environmental review,” Deborah A. Sivas, Stanford 
Environmental Law School, who represents the Plaintiffs long-standing 
challenge to Calpine Corporation. “Of course, our fervent hope is that 
the agency and the lessee will see the wisdom of walking away from 
development in this sacred landscape”

The fight for the protection of Medicine Lake has mobilized tribal and 
intertribal communities and historic coalitions, and it is a significant 
victory among the many Indigenous movements to protect pristine sacred 
places and systems of life, said Andrea Carmen, Executive Director of 
the International Indian Treaty Council.

“The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) has stood by Pit River 
Nation in the many years of effort to achieve this important victory. 
Despite the US Human Rights obligations to protect sacred sites and 
freedom of religion for Indigenous Peoples the decisions of the US 
courts have not always upheld these obligations,” Carmen said. 
“The International Indian Treaty Council has presented the case of 
Medicine Lake as an important struggle to various treaty bodies, such as 
UN Committee on Racial Discrimination and Human Rights Committee. These 
bodies have consistently upheld US obligations to comply with these UN 
Conventions as well as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of 
Indigenous Peoples. So this is an important victory for not only Pit 
River but all Indigenous Peoples all over the world.”

Cecilia Silvas, Ilmawi Band Elder, explains “Medicine Lake is our 
church. It is there we heal our bodies and our spirits.” For California 
Native people that are descendants of the survivors of many waves of 
genocidal violence that aimed to eradicate their nations from the lands 
they have inhabited for millennia, the ecological protection of Medicine 
Lake is one and the same as the protection of Native people, knowledge, 
and spirit. Native science, spirituality and worldview has long 
understood that the health of the lake would protect the health of the 
people. In the words of Floyd Buckskin, Headman of the Ajumawi Band “The 
lake, the mountains around it, the springs, hunting grounds, and 
gathering areas are an interconnected whole – whose parts that are tied 
together through the Creator’s power or the spirit that inhabits them.” 
If approved, industrial-scale geothermal development would desecrate the 
Medicine Lake Highlands, threaten the underlying aquifer and result in 
the injection of toxins into the atmosphere and waters that people, 
animals, and all beings need to survive.

Pit River Tribal Chairwoman Agnes Gonzalez proclaimed: “The Bureau of 
Land Management’s mission is to sustain the health, diversity, and 
productivity of public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and 
future generations. If the Bureau of Land Management followed their 
mission, they would not continue to use United States government 
resources to support corporate interests over that of the public they 
claim to serve. And by doing so, putting our public health and safety at 
risk and destroying these lands so future generations will not be able 
to enjoy them. No new leases in the Medicine Lake Highlands!” Geothermal 
development will leave devastating impacts on deeply-held religious 
views and practices, traditional cultural values, pristine environmental 
resources, and rare opportunities for safe and responsible recreation 
and peaceful enjoyment of this most sacred of places in our lifetimes 
and for future generations to which we owe its protection. Following the 
announcement, Native American Heritage Commissioner for the State of 
California Merri Lopez Keifer affirmed, “Today has shown us that justice 
has prevailed.”

-- 
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