Category: Events

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DIGGERS

Take a look at this petition and consider signing it. A show like this has the ability to destroy many cultural, as well as historic sites.

Late last week the SAA Board was informed that there are two TV series planned that promote and glorify the looting and destruction of archaeological sites. They are American Diggers and Diggers. The first is scheduled for Spike TV and the other for National Geographic TV. As past SAA President Bob Kelly wrote in a recent e-mail in response to American Diggers,“This shameless and shameful program will glorify and promote the mindless destruction of archaeological sites in the U.S.”

SAA and other groups, such as SHA, have already prepared and sent strong letters condemning both of these programs to the production companies, networks, and others. Copies of the SAA letters can be found on the SAA website (http://bit.ly/w2MHJM, and http://bit.ly/wzT7IA). The letters provide details on why we are so concerned. Up to this point Spike TV has not responded to the public outcry. Leadership of National Geographic, however, has indicated that, while they are unable to stop the showing tomorrow on such short notice, they will place a disclaimer into the show that speaks to laws protecting archaeological and historic sites. They are also willing to enter into discussions with the archaeological community to determine how to raise awareness of the impacts of the use of metal detectors for treasure hunting. We will advise you of developments in this area. Continue reading “DIGGERS”

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Santa Maria River Watershed Total Maximum Daily Load

Please find the attached agenda item notice for the March 15, 2012 Central Coast Water Board Hearing for the Santa Maria River Watershed Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for Fecal Indicator Bacteria (FIB).
See our Calendar for more meeting location etc.

 

All documents will be available online via the agenda link by February 29, 2012.  You can also view the documents now via the TMDL project pages at: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralcoast/water_issues/programs/tmdl/docs/santa_maria/fib/index.shtml.

 

Please call or email Shanta Keeling if you have any questions.
Water Resources Control Engineer
Central Coast Water Board
895 Aerovista Place, Suite 101
San Luis Obispo, CA  93401
(805) 549-3464
(805) 788-3516 fax
skeeling@waterboards.ca.gov
www.waterboards.ca.gov/centralcoast
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Earth Wisdom

Earth Wisdom
A California Chumash Woman
By Yolanda Broyles-González; Pilulaw Khus

256 pp. / 6.00 in x 9.00 in / 2011
Pilulaw Khus has devoted her life to tribal, environmental, and human rights issues. With impressive candor and detail, she recounts those struggles here, offering a Native woman’s perspective on California history and the production of knowledge about indigenous peoples. Readers interested in tribal history will find in her story a spiritual counterpoint to prevailing academic views on the complicated reemergence of a Chumash identity. Readers interested in environmental studies will find vital eyewitness accounts of movements to safeguard important sites like Painted Rock and San Simeon Point from developers. Readers interested in indigenous storytelling will find Chumash origin tales and oral history as recounted by a gifted storyteller.

The 1978 Point Conception Occupation was a turning point in Pilulaw Khus’s life. In that year excavation began for a new natural gas facility at Point Conception, near Santa Barbara, California. To the Chumash tribal people of the central California coast, this was desecration of sacred land. In the Chumash cosmology, it was the site of the Western Gate, a passageway for spirits to enter the next world. Frustrated by unfavorable court hearings, the Chumash and their allies mobilized a year-long occupation of the disputed site, eventually forcing the energy company to abandon its plan. The Point Conception Occupation was a landmark event in the cultural revitalization of the Chumash people and a turning point in the life of Pilulaw Khus, the Chumash activist and medicine woman whose firsthand narrations comprise this volume.

Scholar Yolanda Broyles-González provides an extensive introductory analysis of Khus’s narrative. Her analysis explores “re-Indianization” and highlights the newly emergent Chumash research of the last decade.

In the world of book publishing, this volume from a traditional Chumash woman elder is a first. It puts a 20th (and 21st) century face, name, identity, humanity, personality, and living voice on the term Chumash.