And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Offer is made to tribes /
City's $1.5 million called
'an insult'
http://www.gatewayva.com/rtd/dailynews/virginia/tribes07.shtml
Sunday, March 7, 1999
BY LAWRENCE LATAN� III
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
KING WILLIAM -- Newport News has offered three King William
County Indian tribes $1.5 million in compensation for the
cultural damage of a proposed water supply project the Indians
oppose as a threat to their history and way of life.
But the initial reaction among Indians indicates the
difficulties
ahead as the city and federal regulators embark on the first
traditional cultural properties study ever done in Virginia and
seek ways -- if the reservoir is approved -- to dampen its
impact on one of the state's smallest minorities.
"Some things cannot be mitigated, and one of them is our
heritage and our culture," said Carl Custalow, assistant
chief of
the Mattaponi Tribe, when he learned of the offer last week.
The city made its offer at a meeting Tuesday among tribal
representatives, the Corps of Engineers and members of state
and federal historic preservation and environmental agencies.
The group is involved in federal efforts to determine the
reservoir's threats to "traditional cultural properties" and to
define ways the threats can be moderated as required by federal
law.
Custalow had a scheduling conflict and was unable to attend the
meeting and did not see the proposal. But the Pamunkey
Tribe's Assistant Chief Warren Cook dismissed Newport News'
overture during an interview Thursday.
"All I can say is, it's an insult," said Cook "If you're
going to
destroy a peoples' whole culture, you've got
to do better than that."
Retired Upper Mattaponi Indian Chief Raymond Adams
refused to disclose to a reporter his opinion of the city's
mitigation proposal. He said it was a matter for his tribe's
council to decide. "I don't really have an opinion."
Newport News made the offer to keep the ball rolling on
cultural mitigation, which is an unwieldy but crucial piece
in a
puzzle of federal environmental requirements the city must
complete if it wants to build a reservoir.
"We took a leap of faith to put something on the table, not
knowing if we were offering too much or not enough," said
David Morris, the planning manager for Newport News
Waterworks. "We wanted to start somewhere and show the
tribes we're genuinely serious in wanting to come up with a
mitigation plan."
The city's proffer would establish what Newport News is
calling Powhatan's Legacy Foundation. It would "mitigate the
adverse effect perceived by the Native People on traditional
cultural properties associated with the King William Reservoir
project," a three-page proposal reads.
Powhatan was the famous Indian ruler and father of
Pocahontas who held sway in Eastern Virginia when the British
colonists began settling the coast in the early 17th
century. All
three tribes in King William County trace their ancestry
back to
Powhatan's subjects.
According to the proposal, the $1.5 million would be
distributed
equally among the three tribes as startup capital for the
foundation. The city envisions the foundation as a vehicle for
obtaining grants to preserve, maintain and study "their
traditional cultural values, historic places, artifacts,
and records"
as well as buy land, build and maintain museums or hire staff
for tribal activities.
King William Indians have been a skeptical audience ever since
learning of Newport News' plans. The city wants to build a
1,500-acre reservoir by damming Cohoke Mill Creek. It would
also develop a pump station on the Mattaponi River to draw up
to 75 million gallons of water a day out of the river to
replenish
the reservoir.
The three tribes have officially opposed the project. The
Mattaponi are the most visibly adamant for three main reasons:
First, the Mattaponi fear the water withdrawals from the river
will upset the ecology of the river that supplies the
isolated tribe
with shad, striped bass and herring. Second, they say the
reservoir would encroach into a three-mile buffer zone around
their riverside reservation that was dictated by a 17th-century
peace treaty. Third, the reservoir would landlock their
150-acre
reservation and preclude any hope of some day buying
contiguous lands for reservation expansion.
Fundamental to the three tribes' common history is the
reservoir site itself. Archaeologists discovered a remarkable
array of Indian campsites in 1986 sown with stone tools, pot
fragments and quartz projectile points. The survey, required by
the federal government to see what cultural remains might be in
the area the reservoir would flood, found some 70 sites dating
back 8,000 years. <<END EXCERPT
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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