Flagstaff, USA - Vince Randall's voice cracks with emotion as he reflects on his many trips to the Inner Basin of the San Francisco Peaks to pick wild tobacco for Apache religious ceremonies.
There were the texture and the smell of the fragrant leaves, which filled a 25-pound sack, recalled Randall, former chairman of the Camp Verde Yavapai-Apache Nation. And the many herbs that his mother collected to treat diseases.
But, more important, he said, was being in the presence of the Apache mountain spirit Gaán, messenger of the Creator, and the feeling of "drifting out into the cosmos with all the peaks around you."
Experiences like these have created an intense reaction on the part of Native Americans in northern and central Arizona against planned improvements at the Arizona Snowbowl ski area and the introduction of snowmaking. The artificial snow would be made from treated wastewater piped from Flagstaff.
In March, Coconino National Forest gave a green light to the Snowbowl plans, which was followed by a flurry of appeals from many of the state's tribes and conservation groups. New Mexico's pueblos also entered the fray recently, meaning that about 40 Native American tribes are on record against the changes at the ski area.
The U.S. Forest Service's regional office in Albuquerque must issue its decision by Thursday after analyzing those appeals.
If the Snowbowl plan approved by Coconino forest Supervisor Nora Rasure is not overturned or modified, months and possibly years of federal lawsuits are expected, spurred by Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., the Snowbowl's most vocal opponent.
Shirley and other Native American leaders from cultures as diverse as the Navajos, Hopis and the various Pai tribes have been united on at least one thing: Not only should there not be snowmaking and other changes at the ski area, they would like to see the ski area go away. They say the peaks should return to their natural state in keeping with their federal wilderness designation.
"To Native Americans, desecrating the San Francisco Peaks with wastewater is like flushing the Koran down the toilet. . . . The federal government is ignoring the pleas and wishes of the Native people," Shirley said.
But Snowbowl operators have a legal right to operate the ski area, which has been reaffirmed by the federal courts, because management for multiple uses is a guiding principle for federal land management. The ski area also provides about 400 jobs and infuses about $20 million a year into Flagstaff's economy.
But the federal decisions so far don't cater to the will of the majority, Randall said.
"The Forest Service keeps saying that they are reflecting the majority, the skiers," Randall said. "But there are over 250,000 Native Americans north of Phoenix, and the Snowbowl didn't even draw 200,000 its best year. And much of that is one person being counted 25 or 30 times if they ski regularly."
Navajo medicine man Larry Archie of the Steamboat community is more succinct.
"The peaks have a lot of religious power when they are undisturbed. But putting wastewater up there would be like turning our shrine into a toilet," Archie said.
Whether Navajos evolved in the Four Corners area, which Archie and other traditional teachers contend, or migrated from central Asia across the Bering Strait, as archaeologists claim, the cultural boundaries of their homeland have never been in dispute.
Those boundaries are four sacred mountains: the San Francisco Peaks, Mount Taylor in northwestern New Mexico and Blanca Peak and Mount Hesperus in southern Colorado.
But the San Francisco Peaks are especially profound to Navajo religion because Humphreys Peak, the state's tallest mountain at more than 12,600 feet, and the other lofty benchmarks are in sight of most of the western and central part of the three-state reservation.
Navajo medicine men travel great distances to perform religious ceremonies on the San Francisco Peaks and collect herbs for healing ceremonies. They contend that any kind of development on the peaks, the topography of which resembles a reclined body facing to the east, reduce their healing powers.
The peaks are considered to be home to Changing Woman, the mother of the four original Navajo clans in traditional teachings, and one of the residences of Spider Woman, who taught the people elaborate weaving techniques for rugs, for which they later became famous.
"Our traditions teach that Changing Woman was born in the east but went to the west and had a beauty way ceremony on the north side of the peaks," Archie said, referring to a rite that restores balance and harmony in life. "That's where most of our people were placed, and they came back east to live."
To the Navajos, the peaks also represent the fall season and adult stage of life, because of the sun's movement from east to west and the peaks' location west of the reservation.
Archie also said that other deities live in the peaks, like Yellow Corn Girl, to whom many traditional Navajos pray in the evenings for sustenance, in keeping with the sun cycle.
The Hopis, generally regarded as the country's most traditional tribe, believe the Creator communicates to them through various spiritual intermediaries, known as kachinas, who live in the peaks from early August until midwinter.During the remainder of the year, the Hopis teach, the kachinas travel to the tribe's ancient villages, atop three mesas with bird's-eye views of the peaks, to participate in various dances for health, happiness and moisture for crops and in religious ceremonies in below-ground chambers, known as kivas. After a home dance in late July, the kachinas return to the peaks.
The kachinas' activities on the peaks bring about summer rains and winter snows, Hopi traditionalists teach.
Like Navajo medicine men, Hopi religious leaders travel regularly to the peaks. The tribe's many religious societies, like Bear Clan and Two Horn Priests Society, have many shrines on the mountains and collect animals, herbs and plants from the area for ceremonies.
"I don't know how any mountains could be more important to a religion than the peaks are to us," said Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office. "Part of the rites of passage of all of our children is to be initiated in the kachina belief way, and what's being lost there is that the federal government keeps substituting technology in place of nature."
Kuwanwisiwma also said that in his numerous discussions with the Forest Service about the Snowbowl, the agency has an attitude of " 'What's the big deal? You already have tens of thousands more acres you can worship on,' " he said. "But this isn't a question about access, it's a question of our place of worship under attack."
In testimony during a 1983 federal court case that unsuccessfully attempted to stop expansion at the Snowbowl, former Hopi Chairman Abbott Sekaquaptewa warned that continued existence of the Snowbowl could destroy Hopi culture.
"If the ski resort remains or is expanded, our people will not accept the view that this is the sacred home of the kachinas," Sekaquaptewa said. "The basis of our existence as a society will become a mere fairy tale to our people."
Charles Vaughn, chairman of the Hualapai Tribe, also said that more disturbance on the peaks has dire ramifications for his people in the future.
"The peaks are in all of our creation stories, and our first woman lived in a cave on the west face and gave birth to two sons," Vaughn said. "It's an integral part of our culture because of our interactions all around it since we traded historically with the Hopis."
Vaughn also didn't mince words when asked what he thought about the planned changes at the Snowbowl.
"Sacrilege," he said. "They (Forest Service) really need to look at this whole region in their decisions rather than just the Flagstaff economy."