ARIZONA REPUBLIC: Quechan Tribe seeks protection of sacred lands with national monument at Indian Pass

Read the full story here in the Arizona Republic.

Published February 26, 2024

Story by Debra Utacia Krol

YUMA — Quechan tribal members Elan and Donald Medart were excited for the opportunity to see some of their tribe's most significant lands along Haquita — known to the greater world as the Colorado River — from the air. The day was especially noteworthy for Elan, who's 14, because it was his first-ever flight over the rugged peaks and washes of Indian Pass, about 30 miles north of here.

The six-passenger Cessna took load after load of tribal members and other interested people over the Colorado River Valley in Imperial County, California, to see Indian Pass, Picacho Peak and the nearby Picacho Peak Wilderness, the Colorado, and glimpses of trails, sleeping and prayer circles and an occasional geoglyph that hasn't yet been ground to death under the wheels of ATVs and RVs.

"Seeing it all at once helped me see how the area relates to our culture and how it's important to all tribes in the area," Elan said.

Elan's dad, Quechan Council Member Donald Medart, was just as thrilled as his son to see ancestral sites from the air. "It's all part of our story from when we came from Avi Kwa Ame."

If the Quechan and other tribes in the Colorado River Valley and southern Nevada succeed in their quest to create not one but two new national monuments, the Chuckwalla and the Kw'tsán, they will not only be able to see their ancestral trails and sites, they'll be able to direct their future.

Tribes seek to reconnect ancestral cultural corridors

The proposed monument is the third that Great Basin, Mojave and Sonoran desert tribes have proposed or backed in recent years.

Presiden Joe Biden established the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in 2023 under the federal Antiquities Act. The 500,000-acre monument northwest of Laughlin, Nevada, encompasses Spirit Mountain, or Avi Kwa Ame, a peak held sacred by the Mojave, Chemehuevi and Southern Paiute peoples and that also holds great cultural significance to about 12 other tribes in Nevada, California and Arizona. The region is also rich in biodiversity and is a popular area for hikers.

In September 2023, a coalition of tribes, including Quechan, joined local and state officials and California Rep. Raul Ruiz to call for the establishment of the Chuckwalla National Monument. The proposed 700,000-acre monument would parallel Joshua Tree National Park to the south, with boundaries along Interstate 10 from the edge of the eastern Coachella Valley all the way to the Colorado River and hugging the eastern border of the Chocolate Mountain Air Gunnery Range.

Ruiz, a Democrat representing the Coachella Valley, introduced legislation in Congress to establish Chuckwalla and expand Joshua Tree.

Indian Pass and the rest of the proposed Kw'tsán National Monument are currently federal lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and a monument could be established by Biden or through Congress.

Lena Ortega, a member of the Quechan Cultural Committee, said the tribal council issued a resolution to protect ancestral Quechan lands on July 4, 2023, Independence Day.

"We thought it was important to do this on the white man's holiday to make our point," she said.

The formal campaign to ask for national monument status launched Feb. 1.

If Chuckwalla and Kw'tsán monuments are established, the greater cultural landscape that includes the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument, Picacho Peak Wilderness, Indian Pass and a number of other important cultural and environmental lands will finally be reconnected. The Quechan Tribe also intends to push for co-management status so they can direct how the lands and the cultural resources will be protected.

'Snake's blood':Quechan Tribe prepares for a fight over a gold mine on ancestral lands

Quechans' decades-long battle to protect Indian Pass and Running Man

Over the past several decades, Quechan tribal and traditional leaders have fought to preserve Indian Pass, which includes the Running Man geoglyph site, Avikwalal or Pilot's Knob, Avi Kwa Suen or the Cargo Muchacho Mountains, sleeping circles, trails and other cultural resources.

Most recently, the 3,200-member tribe fought off several proposed gold mines that would have affected on the Indian Pass area, currently designated the Picacho Area of Critical Environmental Concern by the BLM.

Another gold mine could still threaten Indian Pass. Southern Empire Resources, a Canadian mining company known in the area as SMP Gold Corp., obtained approval from the BLM to drill 65 exploratory holes in the Cargo Muchacho Mountains south of Indian Pass Road about 30 miles northeast of Yuma in Imperial County, California. The test area lies within within the 183,970-acre Picacho critical environmental area, which was under a mining ban until 2020.

The project alarmed Quechan and other Colorado River Valley tribes. In addition to the cultural resources, the region serves as critical habitat for desert tortoise and a migration path for wildlife including bighorn sheep and mule deer, according to the BLM.

Cristobal Illingsworth, a Quechan tribal member who's part of the coalition to fight more mining and to establish the monument, said he's working to form an intertribal group to address mines in cultural areas.

"We need to bring people together again," he said. "People need training on how to advocate."

The Quechan have revived ceremonies to reaffirm their cultural connections, Illingsworth said: "We brought back a full four-day ceremony that hadn't been done since the 1950s."

Read the rest of the story here in the Arizona Republic.