Barbara Adam’s book Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazardsargues that many of the most fundamental problems modern (often understood as Western) society faces are due to government decisions that are often made based on short-term and spatially narrow impact decisions. As she argues in her book, these decisions are being made when long-term and spatially wide impacts are involved. These long-term and spatially wide impacts, it is further argued, disrupt the timescapes of the human and natural environment. Timescapes, as Adams defines them are the timings and tempos – the changes and contingencies – of the human and natural environment (Adam, 1998: 11). Timescapes, in essence, are the physical and cultural embodiment of practiced approaches to time in space; they are the traditional lifeways of indigenous peoples.

In a recent article entitled “Timescapes in Conflict: Cumulative Impacts on a Solar Calendar,” anthropologists, researchers, and Native Americans discuss how the timescapes of a solar calendar, along with traditional lands in which it is located, have been impacted over the last 200 years, with a special focus on recent gas and electric developments. Their article and case study prove to be a valuable example of how governments, agencies, and others should look at impact assessments and other methodologies used in modern development projects, as it clearly demonstrates the consequences of multiple impacts over time.

The headwaters of the Tunakwint River, known today as the Santa Clara River, begin in the upper reaches of the western flanks of the Pine Valley Mountain range in southern Utah. This watershed is the focus of hundreds of special Native American Indian places, especially of the Paiute, including ceremonial, religious, and cultural sites and resources. It is also an area full of water and puha (a kind of creation energy), deriving from the tall volcanic mountains and small lava flows that constitute the headwaters, the boundaries, and the topography of the Tunakwint River basin.

Abstract

This paper contributes an analog case for assessing cumulative impacts. An American Indian solar calendar was identified in the first large-scale power line environmental impact assessment (EIA) in an isolated region of southern Utah in 1983. That study identified increased access as a potential adverse impact, but that the solar calendar would be best protected by a commitment of silence. During the next 25 years, five utility projects were placed in this corridor. In 2006, an American Indian study team revisited the site and found it and the pilgrimage trail to it exposed to recreational visitors and partially damaged. Indian leaders chose to now publicly discuss the site so they can recommend in a new EIA mitigations to protect the solar calendar by restricting access and interpretative signs.

Keypoints of this paper include:

• The Veyo Hot Springs area and pilgrimage path from Veyo Hot Springs to the solar calendar have been impacted by Old Spanish Trail travelers and their caravans from 1829 to 1849. The impacts initially were to the hot springs where animals and people stopped, the water was drunk, grasses grazed, and caravans camped.
• The number of visitors to the Tunakwint River basin and Paiute sacred sites dramatically increased during the 1849 US gold rush expansion to California. The impacts of these subsequent travelers on the Native American Indian people were devastating with estimates of up to 90% of all near-trail indigenous people dying by 1850 (Stoffle and Evans, 1976; Stoffle et al., 1995).
• In 1983 the area immediately surrounding Veyo Hot Springs to Solar Calendar Cave was extremely rural. Most roads, excluding the paved road along the Tunakwint River, were poorly maintained dirt paths primarily traveled by local ranchers servicing their herds of cattle.
• Over the past 25 years, the initial Intermountain Power Project (IPP) single line corridor became a massive utility corridor involving three major power lines and a series of underground gas lines. Each subsequent project was officially squeezed into the initial IPP corridor, which was in fact expanded by the practice of project construction workers going where they needed to be for specific construction tasks. The current footprint of the utility corridor is not only much wider than the initial IPP corridor, but virtually all of the corridor has been disturbed and surrounding roads have been cut and upgraded to form a braided network of roads.

As this case study suggests, many Native American Indian sacred sites and indigenous people’s lands in North America had seen minimal to moderate impacts from the point of colonization to the modern era. However, the timescapes of these lands and sites have radically changed over the last quarter century or so. These changes to the timescapes are from the long-term and spatially wide impacts many development projects have had, and as this case study argues, it is from this perspective that we need to begin examining electric, gas, and energy corridors and projects.

References and Further Reading

Barbara Adam. 1998. Timescapes of Modernity: The Environment and Invisible Hazards.New York: Routledge.

Richard Stoffle, and M. Evans. 1976. Resource Competition and Population Change: A Kaibab Paiute Ethnohistorical Case. Ethnohistory, 23(2):176-197.

Richard Stoffle, K. Jones, and H. Dobyns. 1995. Direct European Transmission of Old World Pathogens. American Indian Quarterly, 19(2):181-203.

James M. Grijalva. 2008. Closing the Circle: Environmental Justice in Indian Country.Carolina Academic Press.

Richard Stoffle, Glen Rogers, Ferman Grayman, Gloria Bulletts Benson, Kathleen Van Vlack, and Jessica Medwied-Savage. 2008. Timescapes In Conflict: Cumulative Impacts on a Solar Calendar. Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal, 26(3):209-218.

Tags: environmental impacts  justice  gas  development  electric  corridors  timescapes  sacred sites  land