San Francisco Peaks
From many places in northern Arizona, the horizon is dramatically marked by three 12,000-foot volcanic peaks that rise out of the Colorado Plateau south of the Grand Canyon and north of Flagstaff. The San Francisco Peaks are sacred to 13 tribes.
For the Navajo, the Peaks are the sacred mountain of the west, Doko’oo’sliid, “Shining On Top,” a key boundary marker and a place where medicine men collect herbs for healing ceremonies.
To the Hopi, the Peaks are Nuvatukaovi, “The Place of Snow on the Very Top,” home for half of the year to the ancestral kachina spirits who live among the clouds around the summit.
When properly honored through song and ceremony, the kachinas bring gentle rains to thirsty corn plants. The peaks are one of the “sacred places where the Earth brushes up against the unseen world,” in the words of Yavapai-Apache Chairman Vincent Randall.
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The Snowbowl Effect (a clear and moving documentary) explores the controversy surrounding the recently proposed ski resort expansion and snowmaking with wastewater on the San Francisco Peaks as Native American tribal officials and spiritual leaders, Forest Service officials, and concerned citizens discuss the issues: sacred lands protection, public health concerns associated with groundbreaking studies on wastewater, economic misconceptions, threats to the environment, global warming and a small community caught in the conflict.
THE SNOWBOWL EFFECT
when recreation and culture collide
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Dine' (Navajo) Nation President Joe Shirley Jr.'s remarks underscored the mountain's great cultural significance and emphasized the severe adverse impacts the Snowbowl plan would have on Native peoples throughout the region.
" We want to share with you what it means when we say, 'the Peaks are us...it is Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Acoma.'" Shirley said. "When you build on it, when you talk about putting wastewater on it, you are desecrating our life. You are chipping away at our way of life and committing genocide."
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" the bulldozers came that day wanting,
they came to the place where the evening light stayed,
where memory, ceremony, imagination, the sacred,
and the snow forever remained,
they came that day and I pleaded with their greed…
please do not take my home away,
my heart lives here - I am a youth of the peaks,
this is where my ancestors and I pray.
awake and arise again!
shake off the dust from the nightmare,
and declare that you are not willing to compromise,
declare that you are a Youth of the Peaks!
-an anonymous youth of the peaks..
Learn more at YOUTH OF THE PEAKS
WWW.SAVETHEPEAKS.ORG/YOUTH
"Once the tranquility and serenity of the Mountain is disturbed, the harmony that allows life to exist is disrupted, The weather will misbehave, the ground will shift and tremble, the land will no longer be hospitable to life. The natural pattern of life will become erratic and the behaviors of animals and people will become unpredictable."
Daniel Peaches
from The Dine Medicine Mens Association
"We as Indigenous people will not tolerate further disrespect and desecration of our sacred peaks. We will live up to our responsibilities to protect our Mother – the earth.""
Roland Manakaja
Havasupai natural resource and cultural director
with thanks to Klee Benally
ACTION ALERT!
The Sierra Club is joining with the Navajo Nation, the Yavapai-Apache Nation, the White Mountain Apache Tribe, the Flagstaff Activist Network and the Center for Biological Diversity in legal action to stop the U.S. Forest Service from allowing the Arizona Snowbowl to expand its operations and extend its season using artificial snowmaking.
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