BATTLE GROUND

SONGS OF THE SOUTHWEST

A DUSTY HAZE PERMEATES THE LONG RAYS OF SUNSET BREAKING THROUGH CLOUDS DRIFTING OVER A LANDSCAPE OF SAGUARO AND TEDDY BEAR CHOLLA CACTUSES IN SOUTH MOUNTAIN PARK (LEFT). A PATCH OF SNEEZEWEED ADDS A GOLDEN GLOW TO A MISTY MEADOW SITUATED BENEATH THE SAN FRANCISCO PEAKS (BELOW) NEAR FLAGSTAFF.

Battle Ground TELESCOPES ON MOUNT GRAHAM, SNOWMAKING MACHINES IN THE SAN FRANCISCO PEAKS, A HIGHWAY THROUGH SOUTH MOUNTAIN ... THESE ARE JUST SOME OF THE CONFLICTS BREWING OVER SACRED NATIVE LANDS AND THE USES THAT 21ST CENTURY AMERICA HAS IN MIND FOR THEM. THE NEW YORK TIMES CALLS IT "A NEW KIND OF INDIAN WAR," WITH ARIZONA AS ITS GROUND ZERO.

Awraparound two-story window in the lobby of the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa dramatically cradles a view of Vii Kwxas on the horizon, 5 miles away. Any number of Arizona mountains would practically fill this window, but modest Vii Kwxas-known as South Mountain to the more than 4 million residents of Metropolitan Phoenix - rises only 2,690 feet, a long, low geologic baguette with the usual plunging canyons and spiky ridges kneaded mostly into gentle creases. By Arizona standards, it's practically a throwaway mountain.

But these are not the standards of the Gila River Indian Community people, whose ancestors lived here for a millennium before a place named "Arizona" came to exist, and who still view the mountain as a sacred place. Deeper than sacred, actually: Indians deploy the word because it's the best approximation English can muster, but a sacred mountain is more than a church or consecrated ground. It's seen as a living thing, a vital organ in the tribe's history, culture, ecology and spiritual life.

"We don't idolize it, we don't worship it," says Tribal Councilman Anthony Villareal Sr. "But it has such a close connection to us that we are a part of it."

We're talking in the Sheraton's lobby, where we enjoy a prime view of the mountain, and of something that might strike non-native Americans as wryly ironic. The Gila River tribes own this luxury resort, along with three casinos, three golf courses and an industrial park. This development has dramatically ratcheted up the community's prosperity, thanks largely to the proximity of booming Phoenix. (Sky Harbor International Airport is only 11 miles away.) Phoenix wants to complete a freeway loop by stringing a segment of the South Mountain Freeway across tribal land or over the mountain. The tribes have firmly said no to both.

"When you destroy a piece of the mountain, you destroy a piece of us," Villareal tells me. "It's like cutting off a piece of my finger because it's in your way."

South Mountain is one in a spreading series of knotty conflicts between off-reservation sacred lands and the uses that 21st century America has in mind for these same places - roads, resource extraction, recreation and even scientific research. The New York Times has called it "a new kind of Indian war" and reported on Arizona as its ground zero. One reason is the state's rich quilt of native peoples; 21federally recognized tribes reside here. Another reason might be the character of the powerfully etched and sculpted landscape itself. It doesn't seem like a vast leap from feeling awed and inspired, as modern non-Indians do, to vesting a mountain with a spiritual dimension. Since 1988, the White Mountain and San Carlos Apaches have protested the use of Mount Graham as a site for observatories. There are now three on the mountain's 10,472-foot Emerald Peak summit, including the 2004 Large Binocular Telescope Observatory, touted as the world's most powerful. But Mount Graham is also home to the gaan, four benevolent spirits who long ago instructed the Apaches that they must not be disturbed. The mountain is a traditional place of prayer and a repository of natural resources used in spiritual ceremonies. The Forest Service's lease expires in April; the Apaches continue to oppose its renewal.

In 2004, Arizona Snowbowl, Flagstaff's 70-year-old downhill ski area, floated an expansion plan that included using treated municipal pal effluent for making snow on the San Francisco Peaks. In 2005, 13 tribes filed suit to block both the expansion and snowmaking scheme. The Indians lost the first round in U.S. District Court, won the first appellate hearing before a three-judge panel, and then lost again in August 2008 when the full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals made its ruling. The case could go to the Supreme Court.

The San Francisco Peaks, Arizona's highest range at 12,633 feet, are sacred to several tribes. The Hopis believe their Katsinam, or deities, reside there. The Katsinam are vital mediators between the physical and spiritual worlds, bringing life-giving rain to the crops. To the Navajos, the peaks are among the four sacred mountain ranges that define the tribe's homeland - and, at an even deeper level, its identity.

"Like the human body, the mountain can tolerate some level of contamination," Navajo activist Robert Tohe tells me at a coffeehouse in downtown Flagstaff. "People should have the enjoyment of the mountain. Skiing, hiking, camping ... these have taken place for a long time, and not in a contentious way. But the Snowbowl development did not bring tribal perspectives to the table. The use of reclaimed water is the hottest button, and it's deeper than the gesture of symbolically peeing on the sacred slope. Navajos assiduously avoid contact with the dead, and Flagstaff's municipal water is, of course, used in mortuaries. In spiritual terms, no degree of chemical treatment can remove that contamination.

The Snowbowl expansion advocates contend that science has declared the treated effluent to be absolutely safe, and that the snowmaking serves a broad constituency. In drought years, the winter playground struggles to survive; in the 2001-02 season, it was open only four days. "There's room for quality recreation on the San Francisco Peaks," J.R. Murray, Snowbowl's general manager, said in a statement. "The peaks are very special to everyone in Northern Arizona, not just the tribes. Skiers have been very patient and loyal. They deserve better facilities and a better skiing experience, like at other ski areas located on public land."

The dispute has polarized Flagstaff, whose population is 10 percent Native American. At first there was a breakout of pro-Indian "Save the Peaks" bumper stickers, quickly followed by "Reclaim the Peaks" retorts, and finally the parody, "Pave the Peaks." Mayor Sara Presler Hoefle chooses her words carefully, trying to weigh the competing interests: "This is much more complex than any single issue. We must balance the phenomenal experience and religious culture of the Native American community with the economic priorities of cities, states and the nation. It's a real challenge, but I don't see it as an impossibility."

Attorney Laura Berglan, who represents the tribes, drills right to the heart of the issue. "It's very difficult for Anglo-Americans to wrap their minds around the Indian concept of sacredness in the land," she says. "I think the real problem is not being connected enough to nature to grasp the effect that the introduction of reclaimed water would have."

"MAYBE YOU CAN UNDERSTAND IT IF YOU LOOK IN POETIC TERMS," Tohe says. He doesn't specifically mention his sister, but I've already read some of Laura Tohe's poetry in one of her books, Tséyi, Deep in the Rock: Reflections on Canyon de Chelly. She teaches English and American Indian literature at Arizona State University, and frequently addresses her Navajo homeland in her work, as here: It's a powerful concept, and not really so abstract. Tohe is writing that apart from nature, she is nothing. And this is the core idea in the Indian relationship with Earth, weather, plants and animals: All nature is connected, and all things, animate or not, must show respect for each other. When they don't, the intricate web of Creation fails. What's intriguing - almost uncanny - is that Aldo Leopold, the Wisconsin ecologist whose 1949 book, A Sand County Almanac, helped trigger the environmental movement, said essentially the same thing. In fact, Robert A. Williams, a Lumbee tribal member who teaches law and American Indian studies at the University of Arizona, assigns his students to read Leopold. "I like Leopold because he talks like an Indian," Williams says. "He shows that these worlds are bridgeable and translatable."

The human species, Leopold wrote, needs to abandon its view of itself as master of nature and learn to live instead as a respectful citi zen. His most frequent quotation sums up his philosophy precisely: "We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."

Even more intriguingly, when, in the 1990s, assorted historians and technology gurus began talking about the phenomenon of unintended consequences, many of the examples seemed to mesh with traditional Indian thinking about nature. The epidemic of forest fires, cited in Edward Tenner's 1996 book, Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences, forms a perfect example. A century of suppressing natural fires, along with people settling in scenic lands at the fringe of fire-prone forests, has dramatically escalated the dan ger and destructiveness of fires. Native American spiritual phi losophy has eerily anticipated sci ence. The idea that all living crea tures and even inanimate things, such as rocks and weather, are inter dependent probably arose many centuries before Leopold. The idea that one could harm the environ ment through spiritual pollution is a prelude to the modern under standing of chemical pollution.

Many of the decisions ancient peo ple made about where and how to live may have had their foundations in religious practice, but they seem altogether logical in light of what we know today. For example, the O'odham peo plewhich include the Gila River tribes today and their likely ances tors, the prehistoric Hohokam peo pletraditionally believed that human illness was caused by cer emonial lapses or the ill will of animals. That might be one reason South Mountain was a ceremonial center, not a homesite. Believing that their own health pivoted on nature, the ancient people did what they could to preserve the integrity of the animals' environments. They made mistakes, of course: The Hohokam and Ancestral Pueblo civilizations probably collapsed because they expanded beyond the natural resources - including small game and wood for fire and shelter - available to support them. But they instinc tively understood the interdependent weave of nature, and constructed an elaborate religious system to try to preserve it. "Respect is the bottom line," says Jennifer Allison-Ray, lieutenant governor of the modern Gila River Indian Community. "Respect for nature, respect for all religions, and respect for the Creator, whatever he or she may be called."

THERE'S UNLIKELY TO BE ANY READY RESOLUTION TO THE SPREADING rash of disputes over traditional sacred lands. Williams says there's "a whole matrix of machinery" now in place that gives the tribes tools to challenge new uses of their traditional sites, even when they're far