Peace walk to protest mall built on sacred site
Posted on Sun, Nov. 06, 2005
By Tom Lochner
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Shellmound Street is just an address to most shoppers at Bay Street Emeryville. A turn onto Ohlone Way leads to Banana Republic, Old Navy, California Pizza Kitchen, Steve Madden footwear and P.F. Chang's China Bistro.
But many American Indians consider this a sacred area, and they bitterly resent what they consider its desecration.
The Bay Street mall stands atop what is left of the Emeryville Shellmound, a vast site at least 2,700 years old containing buried human remains as well as shells, tools and artifacts of the East Bay's early inhabitants, the Ohlone. A historical display at the mall along the channeled Temescal Creek acknowledges some of the broken past.
"Bay Street Emeryville was a shellmound site," one panel reads. The display does not mention human remains.
"No other people's cemetery would be disturbed in America unless they're Indians," said Corrina Gould, an Ohlone who lives in Oakland and a member of Indian People Organizing for Change.
The Emeryville Shellmound is one of scores along the Bay shore that were bulldozed, built over, and used for fill and road-paving material. Indian leaders and preservationists want to protect other shellmounds and sacred sites in the area, including Breuner Marsh in Richmond, currently the object of a tug-of-war between the East Bay Regional Park District and a developer allied with the city.
On Monday, Indian leaders, Buddhist monks and people from many spiritual and political persuasions will begin a three-week Sacred Site/Shellmound Peace Walk.
"People in the Bay Area have no clue about the shellmounds and the people that are still here, that have ties to this land," said Gould, one of the organizers of the walk.
Sponsors include the Vallejo Intertribal Council, Richmond Urban Indian Council, Oakland's Martin Luther King Jr. Freedom Center; and Indian People Organizing for Change.
About five years ago, when the Bay Street mall was planned, "we went to the (Emeryville) City Council meetings and asked them not to build there," Gould said. "They could have made a precedent and left the cemetery alone. But at the time, all the dot-comers were making money and they wanted to bring in money to Emeryville."
Emeryville City Manager John Flores said the city did the best it could, faced with having to clean up a toxic site while respecting the concerns of Indians and archaeologists and their varied points of view.
Desecration of the site had occurred a lot earlier, he said.
A dance pavilion was built in 1877 on top of the shellmound as part of a Shell Mound amusement park. The shellmound was razed in 1924 for industrial buildings, among them a pesticide plant that left behind arsenic and lead. A pigment plant occupied the site later in the century, leaving behind tens of thousands of gallons of hydrochloric acid, which formed a highly toxic combination with the arsenic.
"We needed to clean up the soil; respect the Native American Indians' point of view; and recover the costs of the cleanup," Flores said.
The Bay Street project followed state rules, which included getting the approval of the closest relative of the buried people the city could locate, Flores said. Remains of about 125 people uncovered during construction were reburied onsite, he said.
The walk will begin at Vallejo's Glen Cove and wind through West Contra Costa and northern Alameda counties, taking in Point Pinole, the Breuner Marsh, Point Molate, the West Berkeley shellmound site in the parking lot of Spenger's Fish Grotto, and other sacred sites.
"Along the shoreline and the interior there are probably about 300 recorded sites," said Michael Ali, a Cherokee and a Richmond community activist.
The Sikh Temple in El Sobrante will provide overnight shelter, food and a place to shower Tuesday, said temple member Harpreet Sandhu. Several churches have offered shelter later in the walk, Gould said.
On Nov. 24, the walk will take in the annual sunrise service on Alcatraz Island. There will be a protest at the Bay Street mall the day after Thanksgiving.
Ali said the Breuner Marsh contains remains of medicine men and sages and that there will be bad karma if the site is disturbed.
"It's going to be the cholera, the yellow and the scarlet fever of the paranormal world," Ali said. "They don't know what they're touching out there. They don't have a clue."
Reach Tom Lochner at 510-262-2760 or Tom Lochner
IF YOU GO
FRIENDSHIP POTLUCK
HISTORY IN ACTION
What: Sacred Site/Shellmound Peace Walk
When: prayer 6:30 a.m. Monday; walk leaves 7:30 a.m.
Where: foot of Whiteside Drive, Glen Cove, Vallejo
Information: 510-453-9002
IF YOU GO
FRIENDSHIP POTLUCK
HISTORY IN ACTION
What: Potluck Kickoff dinner
When: 4-7 p.m. Sunday
Where: Intertribal Friendship House, 523 International Blvd., Oakland
IF YOU GO
FRIENDSHIP POTLUCK
HISTORY IN ACTION
What: "Shellmound," a half-hour film about Bay Street Emeryville and the Shellmound site it is built on.
When: 6:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: KQED-TV Channel 9
© 2005 ContraCostaTimes.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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Last updated on November 06, 2005