Sacred Places

Photo of Oak Flat by Sacred Land Film Project

In the mountains of Arizona, there is a place called Oak Flats, a sacred site used for ceremony by the Apache people. The Apache Stronghold describes it as “a place to pray, collect water and medicinal plants, gather acorns, honor the people who are buried there, and perform sacred religious ceremonies. Oak Flat is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property“[i] But this sacred place is located over a great triangle of copper, one of the biggest copper reserves in the country. And though it was protected from mining since 1955 by an executive order by President Eisenhower, in last minute addition to the 2015 national defense authorization act, a rider was added to swap this sacred space for some other land owned by the mining company. The save Apache Stronghold has been fighting a legal battle to save this land, and the Supreme court is scheduled to decide if it will take up the case on December 6.

I heard Wendsler Noise talk about this place when he came to speak at SUNY Geneseo. He told us that this is one of those places that tradition tells us must be protected to help the world start again when pollution and destruction have wounded our natural places. In November (2019) Noise went to visit the U S Forest Service officials, and, to quote Noise “ I … told them that I am vacating San Carlos reservation and I’m going back to Oak Flat (Chi’chil Bildagoteel), a sacred place that our people were forcefully removed from under the United States. I denounced all their negligence and the pending land transfer to the mining company, Resolution Copper.”

Then, says Noise “I left the reservation, I walked back the way they had brought in my family, forcefully, on foot, and I moved back to my ancestral homeland of Oak Flat. That’s where I reside today.”

When he spoke to us at Geneseo, he told the story of a woman who visited, a white woman, protestant. The place touched her, she said she could feel the power of the place, she felt connected with Spirit there. In this David and Golith court battle with the powerful mining company, they were collecting amicus briefs, and this woman’s story was included. But when Noise went through the final filing, her story wasn’t there. He asked his lawyer, but the lawyer said that, from a legal standpoint, land can’t be sacred to white people, because we are people of the book.

Having a sacred book you can carry seems like a survival adaptation of people who have left their sacred places. Perhaps your family is like mine- my family left another land and came to this. A grandfather fled antisemitism in Austria, a great grandfather came to farm. Others… we don’t even know what countries many branches of my family come from. I have never stepped foot on the continent of my ancestors birth.

This is normal for many people who live in this country. In our culture every place becomes a bedroom community for your job, or a resource to be turned into products and profit.

But we in this congregation have talked a lot about coming to know the places we live, to challenge the place doesn’t matter, and I know I feel a change in my own heart and mind gradually dawning.

I think how my heart would break if they cut down the honey locust trees across the street where the squirrel nests are.

I remember how we stood at Greenspring in a circle around the burial mound for our friend and member Jeff Singer, as we threw our rose petals on his grave, how the soil is our ancestors. That old phrase “dust to dust” – reminds us that the dirt beneath our feet is a sacred legacy of generations of beings, ready to become new life. Oak flats is such a place, where the ancestors reside.

Have you ever been to a place that felt sacred? I know when the Cortland congregation was talking about selling that building, we sat there in the social hall talking about all the memories, about the generations of people, of history that passed through there. We talked of the feeling of being there. It feels like a sacred space. And this space we hold so dear has only been loved by us for a couple hundred years old, not the thousands of years of Oak Flats.

More and more I believe that place matters. Places are not interchangeable, different places have different feelings, different stories to tell, different wisdom.

View from my favorite spot on Lake Ontario

Perhaps you have a special place where just being there changes something in you, nourishes your heart or spirit like no other place?  I think about a spot on Lake Ontario where my partner and I return year after year, how something lifts and lightens as we round the bend and catch sight of the lake. I think about a retreat center where my heart and spirit have been transformed beyond what I thought possible. The director says with a chuckle that it is the place itself that does the work, and I believe him.

The key to the case now before the supreme court is religious freedom. Whether or not you believe that a place can be sacred, it is a deeply held belief of indigenous peoples that place can be sacred, that certain places hold wisdom, connect us to our ancestors, help us be closer to Spirit. This is not just a theoretical belief, but a “direct experience of divine mystery and wonder” That different places have different wisdom to offer- one cannot simply pick a place and declare it sacred, the way we might find a new site to build a church.

When we understand that land is sacred, one is inclined to follow practices that do less damage, that are more harmonious with the community of beings who live in your place. I’m sure you heard in the news about the big Biodiversity report:

“Three-quarters of the land-based environment and about 66% of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions. On average these trends have been less severe or avoided in areas held or managed by Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.”[ii]

Siham Drissi who works at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says:

“When land is owned, managed or occupied in a traditional way, the word “traditional” refers to a knowledge that stems from centuries-old observation and interaction with nature. This knowledge is often embedded in a cosmology that reveres the one-ness of life, considers nature as sacred and acknowledges humanity as a part of it. And it encompasses practical ways to ensure the balance of the environment in which they live, so it may continue to provide services such as water, fertile soil, food, shelter and medicines.”[iii]
"UNEP also engages with religious leaders and communities to work with Indigenous Peoples. A focus of our work is the mutual recognition of the sanctity of life and nature, and the equality among the beliefs of the world’s religions and the traditional spiritualities of Indigenous Peoples. In doing so, we hope to contribute to the safeguarding traditional knowledge, while healing our planet by facilitating the reconciliation of historical conflicts between religions and Indigenous Peoples."

What can we do, so far away from the mountains of Arizona, so far from the halls of power in Washington DC? In the short term we can send donations, we can sign petitions, call our lawmakers. But starting now, and for a long time, we must first listen to  “the original keepers of the lands, those who obey natural law and are in the service of the lands on which you stand.”[Joy Harjo] [iv] When someone like Noise who was raised in the traditional ways and served as former Chairman and Councilman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, chooses to give up his life in his home, to live for years in an encampment to protect one single sacred place, can we listen deeply? can we learn something about a radically different way of being in a place, of knowing a place, of protecting and living in reciprocity with a place?

Second, we can come to know our own places, even if we live, as I do, on a downtown street with the noise of heavy traffic competing with the twitter of birds. Even sitting on the porch watching the squirrels, scampering across the branches of the honey locust trees, noticing the patches where the soil looks healthy and happy, and the places where living things struggle, is a spiritual practice. It brings me joy and grounding, but also the intimate knowledge of the family of beings. The more we pay attention, the more we listen as if place can be a teacher, can be a guide, a wise elder, the more we will understand the importance of that relationship. The more we will see ourselves as relatives. We begin to look out for our tree neighbors, our bird neighbors the same as we look out for our human neighbors.

As Noise said in his talk with the Poor People's Campaign: “we really needed to come back and to re-strengthen the connection that we have with Mother Earth, and with ourselves, before we can go anywhere or impact anything. It really started from there.”

Our new Unitarian Universalist statement of values says:

“We honor the interdependent web of all existence. With reverence for the great web of life and with humility, we acknowledge our place in it. We covenant to protect Earth and all beings from exploitation. We will create and nurture sustainable relationships of care and respect, mutuality and justice. We will work to repair harm and damaged relationships.”

This practice is good for our spirits and hearts, but it is also good for the world, human and non-human alike. The more we know the land, the more we listen and love the land, the better protectors we will be. Let us listen to those known this land intimately for generations, and follow practices that nurture and protect these sacred places. And let us listen the earth herself, the spirit of life who are part of this healing. They will support us in this healing as they have always held and supported us. We, UUs, renew our commitment to listen and participate in restoration and healing as each of us is called in our own unique ways.

 

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[i] http://www.apache-stronghold.com/take-action.html 

Another helpful article about the Oak Flat campaign https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/oak-flat-exchange-arizona-sacred-site-mining-company

 [ii] Intergovernmental Science-Policy  study on Biodivserity https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment

[iii]  The United Nations: [Siham Drissi is a Programme Management officer at the Ecosystems division at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)]

08 Jun 2020 Story Nature Action

Indigenous Peoples and the nature they protect

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/indigenous-peoples-and-nature-they-protect

[iv]  [Joy Harjo “For those who would govern” p. 74. ]