Law will keep state's sacred tribal sites under wraps

By: ERIN SCHULTZ - Staff Writer | Wednesday, October 12, 2005 10:45 PM PDT ∞

A bill signed this week by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will keep information about sacred American Indian tribal sites from being released under a state law governing public records.

The law, pushed through by Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, and supported by a group of area tribes, protects information that could reveal the locations of tribal burial grounds and other sacred sites in California, which many tribes keep under wraps because of fears of vandalism and theft.

Information about sacred sites may be released if tribes wish, but it has been exempt for years from the California Public Records Act, which allows the public to see most government records.

But a 2-year-old law that requires local governments to talk to tribes about sacred sites before building in tribal areas made some of that information subject to the Public Records Act, because most government dealings are required to be public.

The new law, Senate Bill 922, exempts information exchanged between local governments and tribes about sacred sites in the state from the Public Records Act. That means members of the media and public will not be allowed to view information about sacred sites given by tribes to governments, such as the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.

Tribes fear that if information about burial and sacred sites is made public, those sites could be vandalized, burglarized or visited by unwelcome guests hoping to attain spiritual enlightenment, said Alison Harvey, head of the California Tribal Business Alliance, a group of several California tribes that sponsored the bill.

"There are places in the state where petroglyphs have had their faces ripped out by people who want to sell them or take them home," Harvey said. "When you destroy these places, you rip the heart out of a tribe's ability to sustain its culture."

North County's inland region is home to eight American Indian reservations, including Pala, Pauma, Rincon, San Pasqual, La Jolla and a handful of very small reservations. In total, reservation lands cover about 193 square miles of the county's 4,205 square miles.

The number and size of sacred tribal sites is relatively small throughout the state, said Harvey, whose alliance includes San Diego County tribes on the Pala, Pauma and Viejas reservations. She noted that the Pala reservation near Fallbrook has a sacred painted rock that is now fenced in order to protect it from vandals.

The new law creates a protection, known as an exemption from public records laws, for government information about sacred sites, including burial grounds and special places that tribes use to pass on their traditions and beliefs through generations, Harvey said.

More than 100 such exemptions exist, according to the California First Amendment Coalition, a nonpartisan group that advocates for free speech and open government records.

The head of the coalition said Wednesday that the exemption created by the new law appears to be a technical, warranted fix to an unintended problem with the law that requires governments to talk with tribes about sacred sites before building.

"It does, on the face of it, anyway, sound like it's confined narrowly to address a particular problem," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the coalition.

Ducheny, who represents parts of San Diego and who wrote the bill, said in an e-mailed statement Wednesday that the law closes "a technical loophole that would risk the release of confidential information about Native American sacred sites."

Contact staff writer Erin Schultz at (760) 739-6644 or eschultz@nctimes.com.

First name only. Comments including last names, contact addresses, email addresses or phone numbers will be deleted. All comments are screened before they appear online, so please keep them brief. Comments reflect the views of those commenting and not necessarily those of the North County Times or its staff writers. Click here to view additional comment policies.