Pipeline creates tribal dissentBy Carol Berry, Today correspondent
|
“Their biggest
mistake was not coming to us to say, – Perry Chocktoot, cultural and heritage director for the Klamath Tribes – Klamath, Modoc, Yahooskin |
The 42-inch pipeline has an initial capacity
of up to 1.5 billion cubic feet per day, traversing remote areas of
Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Oregon, according to Ruby Pipeline LLC,
Colorado Springs, Colo., whose parent company, El Paso Corporation,
Houston, Texas, is partnered with transnational Global
Infrastructure Partners on the project.
The Southern Utes, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe of Colorado, and the
Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, Utah, CERT
member tribes with oil and gas reserves, wrote letters of support
for Ruby Pipeline, as did A. David Lester, Muscogee Creek, CERT
executive director, who praised El Paso Corporation’s tribal
outreach program.
Although tribal resources exist along the pipeline route, the tribal
nations’ present-day boundaries will not be crossed, so neither the
tribes nor BIA were enlisted as cooperating agencies, a designation
held by FERC, the lead agency, as well as by BLM and other federal
and state agencies with jurisdictional authority or special
expertise.
In addition, because the project did not transect contemporary
tribal reservation boundaries, the pipeline could proceed without
tribal nations’ approval, said Mark A. Mackiewicz, BLM project
manager. The project is, however, required to comply with federal
laws protecting the environment and tribal culture and mandating
government-to-government consultation with the tribes.
Nevertheless, despite federal agencies’ documentation of calls,
letters and meetings with tribes, “It’s all about archaeology,” said
Ted Howard, director for cultural resources protection and tribal
member, Shoshone/Paiute Tribes of the Duck Valley Indian Reservation
of Idaho and Nevada, one of the tribal leaders contacted by phone.
“It should be a two-way street – they need to learn about Native
American spirituality from us, as well.”
“Adequate consultation is something that should have been done at
the beginning – they’re trying to do it now, but the last thing
should have been the first thing,” said Warner Barlese, chairman of
the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, whose reservation is located less than
one mile south of the project area. The tribe’s traditional homeland
and current hunting and gathering territory extend into the project
area.
Other Nevada tribes are looking to Summit Lake “to take the lead in
fighting this, even though we don’t have a lot of resources,
either,” he said.
Noting there have been some pipeline micro-reroutes to avoid
thousands of prayer-stacks in the Klamath Tribes’ area, Chocktoot
said Ruby’s changes were like “missing the pews, but still going
through the church, if you know what I mean.”
“Their biggest mistake was not coming to us to say, ‘Where in your
homelands do you have an area where we can put this pipeline?’” he
said, noting that for the Klamath Tribes, mandatory
government-to-government consultation was “a big lip service,
because we’ve time and time again voiced our displeasure with their
pipeline and it has landed on deaf ears.”
Mackiewicz said tribal consultation was “sovereign nation to
sovereign nation,” and even if tribes withhold approval “we did our
level best, and are still working with some of the tribes.”
The project’s Native American Tribal Employment Program, coordinated
by Ruby
Pipeline, its construction contractors, and Denver-based CERT,
has hired 22 Native employees to date, a number that could soon be
doubled if a second group completes mandatory informational meetings
for site monitoring and other jobs, said Richard Wheatley, media
relations manager for El Paso. That number is out of some 5,000
employees overall on a peak day along the entire pipeline.
Barlese and Chocktoot pointed out that under the program 50 percent
of jobs are for Ruby Pipeline employees, 50 percent are union jobs,
and many union workers are already employed there. Tribal cultural
resource technicians may not always be hired because the pipeline
route has already been configured and tribal members might point out
sites it should not cross, Barlese said.
Ruby’s tribal coordinator, Les Anderson, Modoc/Pit River, tells
tribes the employment program, while “history-making and unique,” is
“just a draft – you can change it to whatever you want.”
Anderson contacted 31 tribes along the proposed pipeline route,
which is planned to cross or adjoin nearly 1,000 cultural resource
sites, about half of which were determined to be potentially
eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
Construction began July 31 and the pipeline is scheduled to begin
operation in March 2011, according to Ruby Pipeline’s website. The
Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit July 30 in the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the project over wildlife
concerns.
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