The Conflicts within the San Francisco Peaks

Rising out of the Colorado Plateau in Northern Arizona are the majestic San Francisco Peaks. To the Hopi, the mountains are Nuvatukaovi, “The Place of Snow on the Very Top”, home to the ancestral kachina spirits who live among the clouds around the summit. To the Navajo, the mountains are Doko’oo’sliid, “Shining on Top”, a place where medicine men collect herbs for healing ceremonies. 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 (San Francisco Peaks). To skiers, the mountains are home to the Arizona Snowbowl, a 777 acre ski resort only four hours away from Phoenix.
The San Francisco Peaks have long been the source of land-use conflicts. Starting in the late 1800s, the area was extensively logged and grazed. At the same time, the area’s natural beauty attracted tourists and outdoor adventurists. The use of the west side of the San Francisco Peaks for skiing began in 1937, when the Civil Conservation Corps built a road and a small lodge at the base of the Anazani Peak. In 1978 the US Forest Service approved a major expansion into what today is known as the Arizona Snowbowl, with thirty-two trails and four lifts that can accommodate up to 180,000 skiers (Nabokov, pg 140).
In 2002 the US Forest Service accepted a proposal from the Snowbowl to expand the resort and to use reclaimed water for snowmaking. The proposal received approval in 2005 from the Southwest Regional Forest Office. Following the approval, a group of Native American tribes sued the government challenging the Forest Service’s approval of the expansion under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”), and the National Historic Preservation Act (“NHPA”). The first challenge was denied in Arizona Federal Court. The group appealed the decision and a ruling was made in their favor in March, 2007 (Fletcher).
This current land use conflict on the San Francisco Peaks between the Arizona Snowbowl and the Native American Tribes represent three major ethical themes: Respect for Personal Beliefs, the Balance of Uses on Public Lands and the Right to be Prosperous. The three themes intersect on a portion of the San Francisco Peaks that are sacred to some, leased by another and managed by the government.
For the Native American Tribes, the lawsuit represented their request for respect of their personal beliefs and how those beliefs would be impacted by the expansion proposal. The lawsuit also illustrated their desire to be a part of the decision making and to have equal representation and respect in the discussion about their ancestral mountain. The Peaks are sacred to the Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Navajo, Apache, Yavapai, Hualapai, Havasupai, and Paiute tribes. Many of these tribes share beliefs that water, soil, plants, and animals from the mountains have spiritual and medicinal properties and are home to deities and other spirit beings (Fletcher). Over the years the Hopis and other tribes have fought against the use of the mountain for mining and for the ski resort. They were successful in stopping the mining in 2000, but not the 1979 expansion of the ski resort.
The issue can’t be simply stated as wanting religious freedom. The concept of religion and even the word “religious” do not really apply to Native Americans. No Native American language has a word for “religion”, at least not how Westerners conceive of religion, as an institution. Native Americans have no formal institution, dogma, commandments, or even a name for “God”. For the Hopis, ultimate reality is simply “a’nehimu”, a “mighty something” (Cousineau, xix).
To understand the significant of the San Francisco Peaks to the Native Americans, one must comprehend how they conceive of reality. To the Hopis all things in the world have two forms; as a visible object and as a spiritual counterpoint. One aspect of the Hopi religion that exemplifies this dualism is the Kachina. The Kachinas are the spirit essences of everything in the real world and are the spiritual messengers between the Hopi people and their gods. The Kachinas are represented to the Hopi people through the Kachina cult, a group comprised of every Hopi male over the age of 10. Embodying the essence of the Kachinas, the males represent the spirits by wearing elaborate costumes and masks and emulate the spirits in ceremonies. The Hopi males do not simply wear the costumes; they take on the individuality of the particular Kachina spirit during the ceremony (Wright, preface).
The Kachinas live in the San Francisco Peaks during the winter, then emerge in the clouds that form over the summit. It is the Kachinas who are bringing the rain when the clouds drift down from the mountain range and rain on the Hopi villages (Wright, preface). After the raining season, the Kachinas return to the underworld through the “sipapu” in the middle of the San Francisco Peaks (Olsen, pg 31). For the Hopis, the San Francisco Peaks are not simply mountains; they are home to their “gods”.
The proposal to expand the ski area and use wastewater for snowmaking followed several years of environmental review and public comment. Representatives from several tribes had testified at the public meetings, but the proposal was approved following a Final Environmental Impact Statement that stated that the plans were consistent with the Coconino National Forest Plan regulations. Regional Forester Harv Forsgren found that the expansion is needed for a “consistent/reliable operating season, and to improve safety, skiing conditions, and recreational opportunities by bringing terrain and infrastructure into balance with existing demand” (San Francisco Peaks). Seeking to have a greater voice in the decision making, several Native American tribes joined together in the latest lawsuit as, “…the use of reclaimed water is believed by the tribes to be impure and would have an irretrievable impact on the use of the soil, plants, and animals for medicinal and ceremonial purposes throughout the entire Peaks, as the whole mountain is regarded as a single, living entity.” (Fletcher) To pollute what the Navajo Nation calls the “Holy house of our sacred deities whom we pray to and give our offerings” was an attack on the cultural and spiritual traditions of virtually all of the local tribes (San Francisco Peaks).
The second ethical theme illustrated by the land use conflict is the Balance of Uses on Public Lands. The San Francisco Peaks are in the Coconino National Forest and it is the U.S. Forest Service that determines what activities can take place on the public lands. One of Forest Service’s stated goals is “To achieve sustainability, the capacity of forests and grasslands to maintain their health, productivity, diversity, by integrating environmental, social, and economic issues and values into its management decisions and actions while accounting for future as well as present needs” (USDA, pg 5). As noted by Jim Golden, Coconino National Forest Supervisor, “The mountain provides outdoor recreation opportunities that are extremely important to the public's quality of life and the area's tourism industry. Part of the Forest Service mission is to manage for multiple uses. Balancing conflicting uses on National Forest land is always challenging" (Begay).
What is the right balance of uses on public lands? The San Francisco Peaks are currently used for numerous recreational activities. Mining was once allowed on the mountains, but the use ended in 1984 when Congress designated 18,960 acres as the Kachina Peaks Wilderness, identifying the Peaks as eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places and as a “traditional cultural property. A traditional cultural property is one “associated with cultural practices or beliefs of a living community that are rooted in that community’s history, and are important in maintaining the continuing cultural identity of the community” (Fletcher). Having such a designation protects the area from mining proposals.
To the owners of the Arizona Snowbowl, they are impacting only a small area of the mountain. “There is room for quality recreation on the San Francisco Peaks,” said J.R. Murray, Snowbowl general manager. “The Snowbowl operates on just 1% of the Peaks. The Peaks are very special to everyone in Northern Arizona, not just the Tribes. Skiers have been very patient and loyal. They deserve better facilities and a better skiing experience, like at other ski areas located on public land” (Ninth). But as the noted professor Garrett Hardin wrote, the idea that it’s acceptable to use just a small part of the mountain exemplifies the “Tragedy of the Commons”. “We want the maximum good per person; but what is good? To one person it is wilderness, to another it is ski lodges for thousands.” Using the National Parks as an example of the struggle to find balance on public lands, Hardin noted that while National parks are open to all, the parks themselves are limited in the extent of their ability to accommodate all users. He wrote, “The values that visitors seek in the parks are steadily eroding. Plainly we must soon cease to treat the parks as commons, or they will be of no value to anyone.” Everyone is locked into a system that compels them to use the commons (or the mountains in this case) for their own benefit (Hardin). But the world and the mountains are limited. Even simply using a portion of the mountains, or “enclosing a portion of the commons”, somebody’s personal liberty is infringed.
The third ethical theme is the Right to be Prosperous. Having the ability to expand and to make artificial snow is essential to being profitable, according to the Snowbowl owners. The ski resort has always depended on natural snowfall. In dry years, the operating season is short, with few ski able days and few skiers. The driest year in recent memory was 2001-02, when there were 87 inches of snow, 4 ski able days, and 2,857 skiers. By contrast, in wet years, in 2004-05, there were 460 inches of snow, 139 ski able days, and 191,317 skiers (Fletcher).
The General Manager of the Snowbowl, JR Murray, estimates the ski resort brings in $20 million annually to the Flagstaff economy based on an economic impact study for rooms, food and beverages. As Flagstaff store owner, Steve Chatinsky noted, “When there is a ton of snow on the mountain the whole town prospers” (Ferguson). However, during the last two snowless winters the city’s sales tax continued to grow over 2004 and 2005 years, two of Snowbowl’s best seasons. Economists speculated this discrepancy may be due to other winter events and festivals in the city. The Chamber of Commerce countered that city sales tax is a poor indicators of Snowbowl’s impact (Ferguson).
Snowbowl owner Eric Borowsky has commented publicly that without the snowmaking capability he may be forced to sell. The economic situation was viewed differently to the district judges, who wrote in their decision that while the owner may need to sell the resort due to lack of snow, selling is not the same thing as closing. Even if there is a substantial threat that the Snowbowl would close, the judges were not convinced that there was a compelling governmental interest in allowing them to make snow to avoid that result. Even without the expansion, the public could enjoy the mountain (Arizona).
How then to balance the three rights? The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIFRA) is limited in how to approach sacred lands. Because the ski resort does not prevent the Native Americans from practicing their religion, the Arizona Federal court found that the expansion proposal was acceptable. This is due in part that AIFRA does not take into account situations that involve an entire landscape, as is often the case with sacred places. The San Francisco Peaks are a classic example of a large area that has been used by more than a dozen tribes over centuries, including foot trails, shrines, and view sheds (San Francisco Peaks). Part of the problem is most people not familiar with the notion of a sacred mountain (Nabokov, pg 151). For the Hopi, the issue is not simply the ability to go onto the mountain to collect herbs for healing ceremonies, the issue is the protection of the essence of their culture. As the Chairman of Hopi tribe noted. “If the ski resort remains or is expanded, our people will not accept the view that this is the sacred home of the kachinas. The basis of our existence as a society will become a mere fairy tale to our people” (Nabokov, pg 140). Jude Todd in his essay, The Hopi Environmental Ethos, noted that it is tempting to look for a way to translate the Hopi perception of reality into ideas that are both understandable and workable in the non-Hopi world (Todd). But this may be harder than it seems. For Westerners, it is difficult to accept that inanimate objects are living. But what if we were to take on this viewpoint? Would we be able to find the balance and address environmental issues in a new way? Would we make decisions that would result in less pollution and destruction of our environment (Todd)?
On March 12, 2007 the Ninth Circuit Court reversed the Arizona Federal court decision that would have allowed the expansion and snowmaking, stating that the Forest Service’s approval of the Snowbowl’s use of recycled sewage effluent to make artificial snow on the San Francisco Peaks violates RFRA and does not comply with NEPA. The court held that the use of treated sewage effluent to make artificial snow on the Peaks would substantially burden their exercise of religion with the “…inability to perform a particular religious ceremony, because the ceremony requires collecting natural resources from the Peaks that would be too contaminated, physically, spiritually, and/or both, for sacramental use.” The court also held the use of effluent would burden the exercise of religion with the “….inability to maintain daily and annual religious practices comprising an entire way of life, because the practices require belief in the mountain’s purity or a spiritual connection to the mountain that would be undermined by the contamination” (Fletcher).
For the Arizona Snowbowl, the decision meant another year without snowmaking capability. To owner Eric Borowsky, losing the lawsuit meant the environmental laws have been abused and the taxpayers have been held “…ransom by a small group of activists who believe they personally own the nation’s public lands” (Fischer). Borowsky continued by stating, “Even more disappointing is the fact that long standing laws governing the use of America’s public lands and the intent of the U.S. Congress would no longer apply if this ruling stands. If this ruling is allowed to stand, then our national policy and congressionally mandated multiple use doctrine on public lands is dead for all practical purposes. The ramification of this ruling, if left unchallenged, will be devastating to the taxpayer’s access and use of its lands.” (Ninth)

Post script – Arizona Snowbowl was able to stay open until mid April this year, having accumulated over 150 inches by mid February (Kluger). On December 11, 2007, an eleven-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard arguments on rehearing of a prior decision involving plaintiffs’ environmental and religious freedom claims against the government and Arizona Snowbowl. A decision is expected this summer. (Ninth)

Works Cited

“Arizona Snowbowl, Ski Area, Coconino National Forest.” Religious Case Reporter. 2007. .

Begay, Samantha. “Navajos, Hopis Speak Against Snowbowl Plan.” Navajo Times. December 12, 2002 .

Cousineau, Phil, ed. A Seat at the Table; Huston Smith in conversation with Native American on
Religious Freedom. University of California, Berkeley, CA, 2006.

Ferguson, J. “Local Businesses Lament ‘Lost’ Opportunity.” Arizona Daily Sun, March 13, 2007.

Fischer, Howard. “Court blocks effluent on sacred peaks.” Arizona Daily Star, March 13, 2007.

Fletcher, Judge William A., opinion, Navajo Nation vs USFS, Appeal from the United States District Court for the Court of Arizona, San Francisco, CA, filed March 12, 2007.

Hardin, Garrett. Tragedy of the Commons. 1968. .

Olsen, Brad. Sacred Placed in North America: 108 Destinations. CCC Publishing, Canada. 2003

Nabokov, Peter. Where the Lightening Strikes; The lives of the American Indian Sacred Places. Viking, New York, NY, 2006.

“Ninth Circuit rehears Snowbowl Case”. In the News Press Releases. December 14, 2007

San Francisco Peaks,

Todd, Jude. The Hopi Environmental Ethos.

Wright, Barton. Hopi Kachinas. Northland Press. Flagstaff, Arizona 1977.

USDA Forest Service Strategic Plan FY 2007-12,