California Passes Bill to Protect Land Sacred to Native American Tribes

August 29, 2002

Source: The San Francisco Chronicle

On August 29, 2002 The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the State "Assembly easily approved a bill Thursday that gives California's politically powerful Indian tribes greater say over development on land they consider sacred - both public and private - that lies outside their reservations...     The bill pitted tribes against a long list of business groups that said the measure would give tribes the power to hold up or stop commercial and residential development... Despite being watered down, the bill still would place some tall hurdles in front of projects touching lands tribes define as sacred sites...     It creates a process to identify and catalog sites and requires local governments to protect them when a development is proposed."