Latest news with #PitRiverTribe
Yahoo
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
This national monument is ‘part of the true history of the USA'. Will it survive Trump 2.0?
It's easy to get lost in the Sáttítla Highlands in remote north-eastern California. There are miles of rolling lava fields, untouched forest and obsidian mountains. At night, the darkness and silence stretch on indefinitely. This is one of America's newest national monuments. It's also one of the most threatened. In January, the Pit River Tribe celebrated a victory decades in the making when Joe Biden granted federal protection to nearly 230,000 acres of forested lands with the creation of the Sáttítla Highlands national monument. 'The awe-inspiring geological wonders collectively described here as the Sáttítla Highlands have framed the homelands of Indigenous communities and cultures for millennia,' the proclamation reads, recognizing the area as 'profoundly sacred'. Related: Biden designates two new national monuments after advocacy from tribes The tribe, along with environmental groups, had fought for years to safeguard the land from industrial energy development. The area just north of Mount Shasta, popular for recreation and some of the darkest nighttime skies in the US, is the site of the tribe's creation story and regularly used for ceremonies. 'This is a healing place for our people. It's really tied to our traditional health,' said Brandy McDaniels, a member of the Pit River Tribe. 'We've spent a lifetime trying to defend this area.' The designation ensures no future energy development and mineral extraction can occur on the land while keeping it available for public recreation. But then in March, Donald Trump said he would undo Biden's action and roll back protections for Sáttítla and Chuckwalla national monument, which he argued 'lock up vast amounts of land from economic development and energy production'. Although legal experts say there is no clear mechanism for a president to rescind monument protections – only to shrink them – the justice department argued in a recent memo that it is in fact within Trump's authority to 'alter a prior declaration', suggesting the administration will move forward with efforts to remove national monument designations for hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness. Now, as the tribe tries to move forward after years of pushing with limited resources, pro bono attorneys and 'scraping up every cent' to get to court hearings and protests, another battle could be on the horizon. Located five hours north-east of the California state capitol in a sparsely populated region, Sáttítla is far off the beaten path. 'You're not trying to get somewhere else if you're going there. It's very dark, it's very quiet, there's no cellphone reception,' said Nick Joslin, the policy and advocacy director with the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, an area environmental advocacy group. 'It's very easy to get lost.' The monument's 224,676 acres include portions of the Modoc, Shasta-Trinity and Klamath national forests, are home to endangered and rare flora and fauna, massive underground volcanic aquifers that supply water to millions of people and store as much water as 200 of California's largest surface reservoirs combined. Due to heavy snow, it's largely only accessible by car for a few months of the year. The landscape, with its islands of old-growth pine forests, snow covered mountainsides and scattered lakes, is stunning and otherworldly. It is filled with unique geological features such as ice caves, lava tubes and lava flows, Joslin said. Then there is the half-million-year-old dormant volcano, roughly 10 times the size of Mount St Helens, within the monument. Locals routinely camp, hike the hundreds of miles of trails or take boats out on Medicine Lake. 'It's a place that's known for its high quality of silence that you can't experience in any other place, and also its night skies,' McDaniels said. 'Depending on where you're at, people describe it as it's almost like you're in another world, like you're on another planet.' There are markers of human disruption. Checkerboard swaths of forest where trees have been clear cut, and large stretches of land with second-growth trees that look like toothpicks from the air. For Indigenous people, this area is sacred as the place of the creation narrative of the Pit River Tribe. The tribe holds important ceremonies there and collects staple foods such as berries from manzanita and currant plants, sugar pine seeds, and plants used in medicinal capacities. 'The landscape of the area literally tells the history of our people. In that way, it is part of the true history of the United States of America,' McDaniels said. The tribe fought to protect the area for nearly three decades, she added, challenging geothermal development and large-scale logging. Because Sáttítla is a volcanic area, there was speculation that there might be enough heat to develop geothermal resources, and in the 1980s the federal government awarded leases on thousands of acres to private energy companies, said Deborah A Sivas, the director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford. The Environmental Law Clinic represented the tribe in a series of litigation challenging the extension of some leases and proposed projects, arguing the federal government had failed to consult the tribe, Sivas said. Industrial energy development would have required a dramatic transformation of the landscape to achieve and the tribe was opposed to such an intrusion on sacred land, and feared the hydraulic fracturing used to generate geothermal energy could pollute the aquifers. Ultimately there wasn't the resource potential initially thought, Sivas said. The final settlement with Calpine, the last remaining company with control over the land, was signed just two days after the monument declaration. While there has been broad community support for a monument, Joslin noted, some elected officials in the conservative region have been more tepid. Doug LaMalfa, a congressperson whose district includes Sáttítla, described Biden's action as 'executive overreach' and argued it would 'create unnecessary challenges for land management, particularly in wildfire prevention and maintaining usage for local residents'. But there has been no organized opposition against the monument. Presidents have the authority to give protected status to land with cultural, scientific or historic resources of national significance, and Biden and other presidents have typically used it for conservation and to support tribes. In the case of Sáttítla, the designation protects against industrial energy development, but does not prevent recreation, Sivas said, or bar the US Forest Service from doing wildfire management work. But Trump has taken a combative stance on national monuments as part of his pro-energy agenda, slashing the size of Utah's Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments during his first term (a move that was later reversed by Biden). Earlier this month, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum opinion arguing that Trump has the authority to not only shrink but entirely abolish national monuments created by his predecessor. But the legal argument for that position appears tenuous. Sivas said the Antiquities Act, the statute under which national monuments are designated, does not give the president the authority to do so. 'There's no language in there that suggests that he could de-designate or roll back what prior presidents have done,' Sivas said. She added that the recent argument made by the administration was not particularly persuasive. Given the lack of opposition to Sáttítla, the move seems designed to instead test the limits of the president's power, Sivas said. If the administration does proceed with a rollback, legal action will follow, she added, which she expects will make its way to the supreme court. 'We will be filing litigation if that happens. This is a kind of a canary in the coal mine.' McDaniels described the efforts to rollback protections as 'perplexing'. She pointed to the interior secretary Doug Burgum's address to the National Congress of American Indians in which he indicated he didn't believe the nation's 'most precious places', such as parks and monuments, should be targeted for development. But the tribe is focused on celebrating the monument, informing the public about the significance of these lands and ensuring it continues to serve as a healing place for the Indigenous people who have endured a long history of genocidal acts and injustices, McDaniels said. 'Truth and healing cannot begin if we're constantly fighting to protect our sacred lands,' McDaniels said. 'That's what we don't want for our kids, our grandkids and all future generations. Everybody deserves the right to experience the gifts that this land makes available for people.'
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
This national monument is ‘part of the true history of the USA'. Will it survive Trump 2.0?
It's easy to get lost in the Sáttítla Highlands in remote north-eastern California. There are miles of rolling lava fields, untouched forest and obsidian mountains. At night, the darkness and silence stretch on indefinitely. This is one of America's newest national monuments. It's also one of the most threatened. In January, the Pit River Tribe celebrated a victory decades in the making when Joe Biden granted federal protection to nearly 230,000 acres of forested lands with the creation of the Sáttítla Highlands national monument. 'The awe-inspiring geological wonders collectively described here as the Sáttítla Highlands have framed the homelands of Indigenous communities and cultures for millennia,' the proclamation reads, recognizing the area as 'profoundly sacred'. The tribe, along with environmental groups, had fought for years to safeguard the land from industrial energy development. The area just north of Mount Shasta, popular for recreation and some of the darkest nighttime skies in the US, is the site of the tribe's creation story and regularly used for ceremonies. 'This is a healing place for our people. It's really tied to our traditional health,' said Brandy McDaniels, a member of the Pit River Tribe. 'We've spent a lifetime trying to defend this area.' The designation ensures no future energy development and mineral extraction can occur on the land while keeping it available for public recreation. But then in March, Donald Trump said he would undo Biden's action and roll back protections for Sáttítla and Chuckwalla national monument, which he argued 'lock up vast amounts of land from economic development and energy production'. Although legal experts say there is no clear mechanism for a president to rescind monument protections – only to shrink them – the justice department argued in a recent memo that it is in fact within Trump's authority to 'alter a prior declaration', suggesting the administration will move forward with efforts to remove national monument designations for hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness. Now, as the tribe tries to move forward after years of pushing with limited resources, pro bono attorneys and 'scraping up every cent' to get to court hearings and protests, another battle could be on the horizon. Located five hours north-east of the California state capitol in a sparsely populated region, Sáttítla is far off the beaten path. 'You're not trying to get somewhere else if you're going there. It's very dark, it's very quiet, there's no cellphone reception,' said Nick Joslin, the policy and advocacy director with the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, an area environmental advocacy group. 'It's very easy to get lost.' The monument's 224,676 acres include portions of the Modoc, Shasta-Trinity and Klamath national forests, are home to endangered and rare flora and fauna, massive underground volcanic aquifers that supply water to millions of people and store as much water as 200 of California's largest surface reservoirs combined. Due to heavy snow, it's largely only accessible by car for a few months of the year. The landscape, with its islands of old-growth pine forests, snow covered mountainsides and scattered lakes, is stunning and otherworldly. It is filled with unique geological features such as ice caves, lava tubes and lava flows, Joslin said. Then there is the half-million-year-old dormant volcano, roughly 10 times the size of Mount St Helens, within the monument. Locals routinely camp, hike the hundreds of miles of trails or take boats out on Medicine Lake. 'It's a place that's known for its high quality of silence that you can't experience in any other place, and also its night skies,' McDaniels said. 'Depending on where you're at, people describe it as it's almost like you're in another world, like you're on another planet.' There are markers of human disruption. Checkerboard swaths of forest where trees have been clear cut, and large stretches of land with second-growth trees that look like toothpicks from the air. For Indigenous people, this area is sacred as the place of the creation narrative of the Pit River Tribe. The tribe holds important ceremonies there and collects staple foods such as berries from manzanita and currant plants, sugar pine seeds, and plants used in medicinal capacities. 'The landscape of the area literally tells the history of our people. In that way, it is part of the true history of the United States of America,' McDaniels said. The tribe fought to protect the area for nearly three decades, she added, challenging geothermal development and large-scale logging. Because Sáttítla is a volcanic area, there was speculation that there might be enough heat to develop geothermal resources, and in the 1980s the federal government awarded leases on thousands of acres to private energy companies, said Deborah A Sivas, the director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford. The Environmental Law Clinic represented the tribe in a series of litigation challenging the extension of some leases and proposed projects, arguing the federal government had failed to consult the tribe, Sivas said. Industrial energy development would have required a dramatic transformation of the landscape to achieve and the tribe was opposed to such an intrusion on sacred land, and feared the hydraulic fracturing used to generate geothermal energy could pollute the aquifers. Ultimately there wasn't the resource potential initially thought, Sivas said. The final settlement with Calpine, the last remaining company with control over the land, was signed just two days after the monument declaration. While there has been broad community support for a monument, Joslin noted, some elected officials in the conservative region have been more tepid. Doug LaMalfa, a congressperson whose district includes Sáttítla, described Biden's action as 'executive overreach' and argued it would 'create unnecessary challenges for land management, particularly in wildfire prevention and maintaining usage for local residents'. But there has been no organized opposition against the monument. Presidents have the authority to give protected status to land with cultural, scientific or historic resources of national significance, and Biden and other presidents have typically used it for conservation and to support tribes. In the case of Sáttítla, the designation protects against industrial energy development, but does not prevent recreation, Sivas said, or bar the US Forest Service from doing wildfire management work. But Trump has taken a combative stance on national monuments as part of his pro-energy agenda, slashing the size of Utah's Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments during his first term (a move that was later reversed by Biden). Earlier this month, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum opinion arguing that Trump has the authority to not only shrink but entirely abolish national monuments created by his predecessor. But the legal argument for that position appears tenuous. Sivas said the Antiquities Act, the statute under which national monuments are designated, does not give the president the authority to do so. 'There's no language in there that suggests that he could de-designate or roll back what prior presidents have done,' Sivas said. She added that the recent argument made by the administration was not particularly persuasive. Given the lack of opposition to Sáttítla, the move seems designed to instead test the limits of the president's power, Sivas said. If the administration does proceed with a rollback, legal action will follow, she added, which she expects will make its way to the supreme court. 'We will be filing litigation if that happens. This is a kind of a canary in the coal mine.' McDaniels described the efforts to rollback protections as 'perplexing'. She pointed to the interior secretary Doug Burgum's address to the National Congress of American Indians in which he indicated he didn't believe the nation's 'most precious places', such as parks and monuments, should be targeted for development. But the tribe is focused on celebrating the monument, informing the public about the significance of these lands and ensuring it continues to serve as a healing place for the Indigenous people who have endured a long history of genocidal acts and injustices, McDaniels said. 'Truth and healing cannot begin if we're constantly fighting to protect our sacred lands,' McDaniels said. 'That's what we don't want for our kids, our grandkids and all future generations. Everybody deserves the right to experience the gifts that this land makes available for people.'
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
This national monument is ‘part of the true history of the USA'. Will it survive Trump 2.0?
It's easy to get lost in the Sáttítla Highlands in remote north-eastern California. There are miles of rolling lava fields, untouched forest and obsidian mountains. At night, the darkness and silence stretch on indefinitely. This is one of America's newest national monuments. It's also one of the most threatened. In January, the Pit River Tribe celebrated a victory decades in the making when Joe Biden granted federal protection to nearly 230,000 acres of forested lands with the creation of the Sáttítla Highlands national monument. 'The awe-inspiring geological wonders collectively described here as the Sáttítla Highlands have framed the homelands of Indigenous communities and cultures for millennia,' the proclamation reads, recognizing the area as 'profoundly sacred'. The tribe, along with environmental groups, had fought for years to safeguard the land from industrial energy development. The area just north of Mount Shasta, popular for recreation and some of the darkest nighttime skies in the US, is the site of the tribe's creation story and regularly used for ceremonies. 'This is a healing place for our people. It's really tied to our traditional health,' said Brandy McDaniels, a member of the Pit River Tribe. 'We've spent a lifetime trying to defend this area.' The designation ensures no future energy development and mineral extraction can occur on the land while keeping it available for public recreation. But then in March, Donald Trump said he would undo Biden's action and roll back protections for Sáttítla and Chuckwalla national monument, which he argued 'lock up vast amounts of land from economic development and energy production'. Although legal experts say there is no clear mechanism for a president to rescind monument protections – only to shrink them – the justice department argued in a recent memo that it is in fact within Trump's authority to 'alter a prior declaration', suggesting the administration will move forward with efforts to remove national monument designations for hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness. Now, as the tribe tries to move forward after years of pushing with limited resources, pro bono attorneys and 'scraping up every cent' to get to court hearings and protests, another battle could be on the horizon. Located five hours north-east of the California state capitol in a sparsely populated region, Sáttítla is far off the beaten path. 'You're not trying to get somewhere else if you're going there. It's very dark, it's very quiet, there's no cellphone reception,' said Nick Joslin, the policy and advocacy director with the Mount Shasta Bioregional Ecology Center, an area environmental advocacy group. 'It's very easy to get lost.' The monument's 224,676 acres include portions of the Modoc, Shasta-Trinity and Klamath national forests, are home to endangered and rare flora and fauna, massive underground volcanic aquifers that supply water to millions of people and store as much water as 200 of California's largest surface reservoirs combined. Due to heavy snow, it's largely only accessible by car for a few months of the year. The landscape, with its islands of old-growth pine forests, snow covered mountainsides and scattered lakes, is stunning and otherworldly. It is filled with unique geological features such as ice caves, lava tubes and lava flows, Joslin said. Then there is the half-million-year-old dormant volcano, roughly 10 times the size of Mount St Helens, within the monument. Locals routinely camp, hike the hundreds of miles of trails or take boats out on Medicine Lake. 'It's a place that's known for its high quality of silence that you can't experience in any other place, and also its night skies,' McDaniels said. 'Depending on where you're at, people describe it as it's almost like you're in another world, like you're on another planet.' There are markers of human disruption. Checkerboard swaths of forest where trees have been clear cut, and large stretches of land with second-growth trees that look like toothpicks from the air. For Indigenous people, this area is sacred as the place of the creation narrative of the Pit River Tribe. The tribe holds important ceremonies there and collects staple foods such as berries from manzanita and currant plants, sugar pine seeds, and plants used in medicinal capacities. 'The landscape of the area literally tells the history of our people. In that way, it is part of the true history of the United States of America,' McDaniels said. The tribe fought to protect the area for nearly three decades, she added, challenging geothermal development and large-scale logging. Because Sáttítla is a volcanic area, there was speculation that there might be enough heat to develop geothermal resources, and in the 1980s the federal government awarded leases on thousands of acres to private energy companies, said Deborah A Sivas, the director of the Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford. The Environmental Law Clinic represented the tribe in a series of litigation challenging the extension of some leases and proposed projects, arguing the federal government had failed to consult the tribe, Sivas said. Industrial energy development would have required a dramatic transformation of the landscape to achieve and the tribe was opposed to such an intrusion on sacred land, and feared the hydraulic fracturing used to generate geothermal energy could pollute the aquifers. Ultimately there wasn't the resource potential initially thought, Sivas said. The final settlement with Calpine, the last remaining company with control over the land, was signed just two days after the monument declaration. While there has been broad community support for a monument, Joslin noted, some elected officials in the conservative region have been more tepid. Doug LaMalfa, a congressperson whose district includes Sáttítla, described Biden's action as 'executive overreach' and argued it would 'create unnecessary challenges for land management, particularly in wildfire prevention and maintaining usage for local residents'. But there has been no organized opposition against the monument. Presidents have the authority to give protected status to land with cultural, scientific or historic resources of national significance, and Biden and other presidents have typically used it for conservation and to support tribes. In the case of Sáttítla, the designation protects against industrial energy development, but does not prevent recreation, Sivas said, or bar the US Forest Service from doing wildfire management work. But Trump has taken a combative stance on national monuments as part of his pro-energy agenda, slashing the size of Utah's Bears Ears and Grand Staircase national monuments during his first term (a move that was later reversed by Biden). Earlier this month, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum opinion arguing that Trump has the authority to not only shrink but entirely abolish national monuments created by his predecessor. But the legal argument for that position appears tenuous. Sivas said the Antiquities Act, the statute under which national monuments are designated, does not give the president the authority to do so. 'There's no language in there that suggests that he could de-designate or roll back what prior presidents have done,' Sivas said. She added that the recent argument made by the administration was not particularly persuasive. Given the lack of opposition to Sáttítla, the move seems designed to instead test the limits of the president's power, Sivas said. If the administration does proceed with a rollback, legal action will follow, she added, which she expects will make its way to the supreme court. 'We will be filing litigation if that happens. This is a kind of a canary in the coal mine.' McDaniels described the efforts to rollback protections as 'perplexing'. She pointed to the interior secretary Doug Burgum's address to the National Congress of American Indians in which he indicated he didn't believe the nation's 'most precious places', such as parks and monuments, should be targeted for development. But the tribe is focused on celebrating the monument, informing the public about the significance of these lands and ensuring it continues to serve as a healing place for the Indigenous people who have endured a long history of genocidal acts and injustices, McDaniels said. 'Truth and healing cannot begin if we're constantly fighting to protect our sacred lands,' McDaniels said. 'That's what we don't want for our kids, our grandkids and all future generations. Everybody deserves the right to experience the gifts that this land makes available for people.'
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Yahoo
CHP issues feather alert for missing Pit River Tribe woman, last seen in Redding
Police in four California counties are asking the public's help to find a missing "at risk" Shasta County woman who was last reported in Redding more than two months ago, according to the California Highway Patrol. The CHP issued a feather alert — one that indicates a missing person of indigenous heritage — for 26-year-old Destiny Gomez, a member of the Pit River Tribe. Gomez was last seen at 4 p.m. on Jan. 14 in the area of Vansicklen Way and Alamine Drive, according to the alert. That intersection is located in a Hilltop Drive neighborhood off Peppertree Lane in north Redding. Gomez is 5 feet tall, weighs 130 pounds and has brown hair and brown eyes. She's likely on foot, the CHP said in the alert, and may have gotten as far as San Francisco. Note to readers: If you appreciate the work we do here at the Redding Record Searchlight, please consider subscribing yourself or giving the gift of a subscription to someone you know. The alert went out Thursday evening on social media, and to law enforcement in Shasta, Tehama, Alameda and San Francisco counties. The CHP asked anyone who sees Gomez to call 911 to report her location. The Redding Police Department asked anyone with information about this case to call 530-225-4200. The CHP issues a feather alert when local and tribal law enforcement agencies aren't able to locate a person confirmed missing. Other criteria include possible physical danger to the person, or the person has a disability. For more information on criteria for feather alerts visit the CHP's website at Jessica Skropanic is a features reporter for the Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. She covers science, arts, social issues and news stories. Follow her on Twitter @RS_JSkropanic and on Facebook. Join Jessica in the Get Out! Nor Cal recreation Facebook group. To support and sustain this work, please subscribe today. Thank you. This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: CHP feather alert for missing woman Destiny Gomez of Pit River Tribe
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
US establishes two new national monuments with breathtaking characteristics: 'We're protecting 840,000 acres'
Before his exit from the White House, President Joe Biden secured one more win for Indigenous people and the environment: He established the Chuckwalla and Sáttítla National Monuments in California, according to the California Governor's office. These two sites, comprising more than 840,000 acres, are a valuable addition to California's 30x30 initiative — a push to conserve 30% of the state's land and coastal waters by 2030. As of this addition, the state sits at 25.8%, with 26.1 million acres preserved for future generations. Neither designation would have happened without the tireless efforts of the Indigenous tribes in the area. The governor's office praised "decades of work by local community leaders, business owners, and environmental organizations," and Gov. Gavin Newsom highlighted these facts in his statement. Do you think America does a good job of protecting its natural beauty? Definitely Only in some areas No way I'm not sure Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. "California is now home to two new national monuments that honor the tribes that have stewarded these lands since time immemorial," said Newsom. "Thanks to President Biden and the leadership of California tribes and local communities, we're protecting 840,000 acres of some of our state's most culturally significant lands." The Chuckwalla National Monument, found in the desert area of eastern Riverside County beside Joshua Tree National Park, holds sites of sacred significance to the Iviatim, Nüwü, Pipa Aha Macav, Kwatsáan, and Maara'yam peoples. The area will now be safe from environmental destruction from human development while being more accessible to the public. The Sáttítla National Monument is located in Northern California, comprising the Medicine Lake Highlands, a culturally significant site for the Pit River Tribe. It's also a critical area for Fall River Springs, which the governor's office describes as "the state's largest spring system and one of the most extensive aquifer networks in the Western United States." That makes it vital for everyone who relies on those aquifers for water. Not only that, but the establishment of national monuments is great for business and tourism in the surrounding area, which leads to job creation and an economic boost. It also benefits public services like safety, fire, recreation, and libraries, thanks to the added tax revenue from visitors. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
