Timbisha Ask To Halt Briggs Mine

Timbisha Shoshone Ask Babbitt To Halt Briggs Mine Over Lack of Consultation

by Robert J. Paton

Attorneys for the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe of Death Valley are appealing directly to Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt to halt the Briggs mine in eastern California, two miles from Death Valley National Park. The Timbisha cite concerns about Federal agencies meeting consultation requirements with Indian tribes after an Interior Department decision recently relegated consultation with tribes to that of ordinary citizens. The tribe's contention is that they were never directly consulted, as required by law and regulation, by either the Bureau of Land Management of Inyo County, the two lead agencies cooperating on the environmental imapct report for the project.

The CR Briggs project is a cyanide heap-leach gold mine, owned by Canyon Resources, of Golden, Colorado, planned for the Panamint Mountains and Valley west of Death Valley National Park. According to the tribe's attorneys the CR Briggs Project has violated numerous laws requiring consultation with the tribe about the impact of the mine. The Federal agency coordinating the environmental review process, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), has violated its trust responsibility to the Tribe because BLM failed to adequately notify and directly consult with the Tribe about the proposed mine. Inyo County also has not met the standards of consultation with the tribe, under state and county regulations, according to the Tribe.

BLM and Inyo County both contend that they went out of their way to notify the tribe of the proposed mine, but never made personal contact. Frederick Marr, Attorney for the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe, has said that "this begs the questions of what the requirement for consultation is between Federal agencies and Indian tribes."

Interior Appeal

After the Tribe's administrative appeal was denied, they decided to appeal directly to Secretary Babbitt because of the importance of defending the trust responsibility which mandates that Federal agencies deal with tribes on a government to government basis.

According to Jane William's, with Desert Citizens Against Pollution (DCAP), one of the appellants, not stopping the project because of inadequate consultation with the Timbisha "throws out the Interior Department's tribal consultation manual they have spent the last three years working on."

The Appealants focused on petitioning Babbitt, with support from other Indian tribes and organizations, because of the major importance of this issue. Roger Flynn, of the Western Mining Action Project, attorney for DCAP, explains that the denial of the tribe's appeal to the Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) "guts the President's and Secretary's initiatives to bring Indians in as partners. This decisions strikes at the heart of theses initiatives. They said tribes were equal partners, and yet now have relegated tribes to nothing more than the general public."

Flynn pinted out that the decisions to appeal directly to Babbitt is due to the importance of consultation within Indian Country. "This is a major policy departure that we feel Secretary Babbitt should be aware of and do something about," he said.

According to Marr this appeal is a chance for Babbitt to "do something positive for Indian people, when he has been facing mounting criticism from Indian Country, Marr said, and other tribes will support the petition for this reason. The IBLA is saying that outside reservation boundaries there is no consultation required. The implications for this are immense."

Attorneys for the Timbisha anticipate filing a suit in Federal court charging violation of Federal trust responsiblity to the Timbisha by failing to directly consult with them, as mandated by NEPA, the National Historic Preservtion Act, among others. A suit has also been filed in California State Court for violations of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which mandates that Inyo County fulfill its similar responsibilities of consulting with affected governments, in this case the Timbisha Shoshone.

CEQA Suit

The lawsuit filed in Inyo County Superior Court charges that there are substantive inadequacies in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR), in which information was inadequate or incomplete; that there were procedural violations of Inyo County's process, which requires consultation with other government entiries, such as the Tribe; that there were technical violations, including the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act (SMARA); and finally violations of the Inyo County code, which is clear about consulting an affected Tribe if there is going to be any impact on Native American resources. The County has claimed that they sent a post card notifying the tribe of the project. "If the County is going to hide behind this, they are in trouble," said Luke Cole, of the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, another attorney for the Tribe. "Other governments were sent the EIR, the tribe was not. The process was in motion for two years before they allegedly sent the card."

An important part of the case is the charge that Canyon Resources is planning massive mineral development in the Panamint Valley and are only putting this one project forward for review at this time. This action is known as piecemealing. Ironically, the preeminent case on piecemealing was against Inyo County, in which they lost. Cole commented that Inyo County has not "learned from their stinging rebuke in that case."

According to the Annual Report of Canyon Resources, "prior to October 1994 most of the claim block was inaccessible due to its designatin as a Wilderness Study Area. Passage of the California Desert Wilderness [sic] Act inlate 1994 removed such designation and opended Canyon's other gold target areas in the RAnge to further exploration and potential development. The company plans to conduct exploration, including drilling, on several targets during 1995."