The Redding Rancheria, a group of three California Indian tribes, operates a casino on Highway 273 near Redding. They want to relocate and build a bigger casino a few miles south along Interstate 5, a project they've been working on for nearly 20 years:
But the proposal has been buffeted by influential opponents, including the city of Redding, neighborhood groups and the billionaire next door — who happens to be the largest private landowner in America. The naysayers list a cavalcade of complaints against the new Win-River casino complex, saying it would despoil prime farmland, exacerbate traffic, increase police and fire protection costs and threaten native fish in the Sacramento River.
This year two neighboring tribes suddenly brought up a new objection:
Construction of the casino would desecrate what the tribes say should be hallowed ground — the site of an 1846 rampage by the U.S. Cavalry that historians say probably killed hundreds of Native people.
For 20 years nobody cared about this. It was all but forgotten even among the local tribes. There are no monuments, no memorials, not even a signpost. It's not even clear exactly where the massacre happened. The whole "hallowed ground" protest is plainly invented from thin air as an excuse to oppose the casino.
This is yet another example of why so many people are skeptical about claims of sacred areas or burial sites or ancient hunting grounds. Too often they appear to be all too conveniently manufactured out of nothing.
As opposed to all those sites that can be proven to be "sacred" in a laboratory.
... or in the bible.
Another Indian Casino along (the) I-5 to drive pass.
Finally, more parking lots!
Exactly. And this is hardly limited - just like I'm sure there are some sincere cases of "hallowed ground" that aren't taken seriously, US adversarial legal culture leads to a place where you just can't take any of it seriously.
It is exactly like Xians and abortion. You can't take any of them at their word, even though there are some sincere (misguided) folks.
I doubt any tribal descendants "forgot" about the Wintu massacre. And for California indigenous the land comprising each tribe's small nation could indeed be considered sacred:
"In each tribal area, children grew up surrounded by an ideology and cosmology that was embedded in and made incarnate by the very form of the land itself. Individuals belonged to-- and drew much of their personal identity from-- specific places." (Milliken, A Time of Little Choice, 1995)
+1
Besides everything else, the white people in Shasta County are insane:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/23/california-shasta-county-far-right-extremists-politics-pandemic
I consider it a “no go zone”.
Or maybe hallowed ground, like a cemetery, is not given much attention until
someone wants to do something with it. Perhaps we best honor hallowed ground
by leaving it alone.
Or as Humans are Humans, whatever the current faddish identarian political lens the cultural Left is adopting of late, one set of humans is adopting opportunistically an excuse and leverage point that they know that US Lefties will immediately and unquestionalingly jump on to White Knight.
Rather amusing at some level that a very Christian concept of hallowed ground is readily imported to be exploited although when one has that tool set, unsurprising to use it.
Perish the thought of course to examine if the hallowedness stands up to reasonable scrutiny, the mere assertion by identity politics fetishised group means it should be unquestioningly white knighted.