December 2001:                       suggested link Weatherman Draw featured on the Sacredland.org website "This isn't just some place on a hill; this is a living spiritual center. The church is alive here."

From Sacredland.org . . .

  Native Americans struggling to protect an important sacred site
  find themselves at odds with a strongly pro-oil Bush administration

Weatherman Draw

"Weatherman Draw in south-central Montana is a valley that contains the largest
collection of Native American rock art on the continent. If the Bureau of Land
Management's recent decision to allow oil drilling stands, this sacred landscape will
be invaded by machines, barbed wire fences, security guards, and vandalism.
Jimmy Arterberry, a Comanche preservation leader who testified against the permit,
explained: "This isn't just some place on a hill; this is a living spiritual center.
The church is alive here." [...]

Threat

"Phil Anschutz, a billionaire businessman and Republican donor, has been waiting
since 1997 for a decision on his company's permit application to the federal Bureau
of Land Management (BLM). Anschutz wants to drill for gas and oil in Weatherman
Draw [bold added ] and he expects to find 10 million barrels of black gold. Just 12
days after the Bush administration took office, the BLM approved the exploration permit,
prompting 10 tribes, Congressional Democrats, the Sierra Club, and the National Trust for
Historic Preservation to question the BLM's abrupt decision. Some politicians have shown
an extreme lack of sensitivity to the concept of sacred land. During the June 6, 2001 House
Resources Committee hearing Rep. Joel Hefley (R-OK) said, "it is interesting ... the way
Indian tribes oftentimes... come up with something that all of a sudden is sacred ground...
I would be very interested to know... how long this has been the Valley of the Chiefs.
Is this a modern thing or is this a long time thing?" [...]


Other related links . . .

The Sierra Club's Valley of the Chiefs Weatherman Draw campaign
http://montana.sierraclub.org/

The Valley of the Chiefs - Weatherman Draw

"Eastern Montana has a rich array of archaeological resources - stratified cave
deposits, buffalo jump sites, tipi ring sites, stone quarry sites, wickiup sites,
and a large number of pictograph and petroglyph sites, like those found in
Weatherman Draw or Valley of the Chiefs. Tribes, like the Crow and the
Shoshone left paintings of large and colorful shields on the rocks - perhaps
symbols of powerful warriors- for other tribes to see. Various Native
Americans Tribes consider Weatherman Draw a sacred place." [...]

Mining moratorium nears end at sacred Indian site  
http://www.enn.com/    By Stephen R. Miller

[...] "Even with a valid lease, AE still needed a final OK from the BLM to begin
exploration on the land. Under the Clinton administration, the BLM buried the
lease in red tape. That changed when George W. Bush was elected president.
Anschutz was a major supporter, donating more than $100,000 to Bush's campaign
and more than $300,000 to the Republican party in the last four years. Twelve days
after Bush's inauguration, Anschutz received permission to start
drilling [bold added ] on the land in June." [...] 

Unrelated, but of interest . . .

GM Corn Contaminates Distant Native Plants  
http://sciam.com/

"In news that will surely fan the flames of the heated debate over genetically
modified crops, scientists have found evidence that genes from GM plants can
spread far and wide to native ones. According to a report published today in the
journal Nature, wild corn from the remote mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico contains
transgenic DNA. This, the researchers note, bolsters concerns that such unintentional
contamination can threaten the genetic diversity of natural crops.

"DNA analyses of the Oaxaca corn revealed several signs of gene transfer from
transgenic plants, including a gene of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a bacterium that
produces a toxin lethal to common pests. The results came as a surprise to study
co-author Ignacio Chapela of the University of California. "I repeated the tests at
least three times to make sure I wasn't getting false-positives," he remarks. "It was
initially hard to believe that corn in such a remote region would have tested
positive."  [...]

An historic PDF
http://www.fas.org/nobel.pdf

Nobel Laureates: NMD Targets the Wrong Threat: PDF

"A letter, signed by 50 American Nobel laureates and sponsored by FAS,
was delivered to House and Senate leaders September, urging Congress not
to fund or build missile defense because it will squander resources needed to
protect Americans against terrorism." [...]