After two construction seasons, nearly 30 cultural sites not documented in the first EIS have been found, Claus said. Renick added that the dozens upon dozens of “isolates,” smatterings of artifacts deemed not large enough to be considered a “site” might also be more significant than CalTrans is saying. Tension between CalTrans and tribal officials crescendoed in September 2013, when they learned construction workers had previously installed 85-foot wick drain pipes underground through a site that was believed to contain a hearth, fossilized seeds and other cultural items of great interest to the tribe. As concern grew, representatives from the Coyote Valley and Round Valley, which also have members descended from Little Lake Valley, joined Sherwood Valley in monitoring and consulting on the project.CalTrans had been aware of the site through ethnographic information, but because officials never created a map and only relied on written descriptions, they impaled the site with the wick drains anyway, which, in a letter to Fitzgerral, State Historic Preservation Officer Carol Roland-Nawi said severely damaged the site and indicated CalTrans had been non-compliant with the law.“We’re only a couple generations from removal, and they’re destroying our time capsules that could give us snapshots of what happened and what wasn’t preserved through oral history,” said Hillary Renick, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for Sherwood Valley.CalTrans Public Information Officer Phil Frisbie said staff was too busy working on the wetlands mitigation part of the project to map the Pomo sites earlier, but the site most likely would not have been eligible for historic preservation. The tribes vigorously disagree with many of CalTrans conclusions about the historic value of sites, including the hearth, which Renick says probably was actually a cremation site and may provide insight into what happened to the Pomo people during an 1830s smallpox epidemic.“There is so much information there about how we lived and what happened to us. The project goes right through villages that are on basic California Indian maps and described by well known anthropologists,” Renick said. “Since I became the THPO in 2004, this is the most frustrating Section 106 case I’ve seen.”Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act applies to the bypass because the Federal Highway Administration is partially funding the project, and recent amendments of Section 106 require CalTrans to consult with local federally recognized tribes and develop plans to avoid damaging cultural resources as much as possible.However, Pomo officials say the Willits Bypass project is emblematic of the inherent biases and conflicts of interest that affect the enforcement and application of the law. And while the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the federal overseer of Section 106 projects, has written stern letters rebuking some of CalTrans’ claims and actions, tribal officials say the system is toothless.“The system has become utterly corrupt, so agencies manipulated the system and go through the motions,” said Thomas King, an anthropologist, author and cultural resources consultant who previously worked for the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. “You’ve got clearly self-interested development firms and self-interested consultants leaning on the agencies, and the tribes get shafted. It becomes an archaeological endeavor and the cultural interests of the tribes get trampled.”Read more athttps://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork/mobile/2014/11/13/tribes-say-caltrans-illegally-destroying-historical-sites-bypass-157779
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 00:10:33 +0000
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