Tribes fear loss of sacred sites

SANTA CLARA PUEBLO, N.M. -- A wildfire that forced federal employees to flee the desert birthplace of the atomic bomb neared the sacred sites of several American Indian tribes on Saturday, raising fears that tribal lands passed down for generations would be destroyed.

More than 1,600 firefighters were working to stop the fire in northern New Mexico as it burned through a canyon on the Santa Clara Pueblo reservation and threatened other pueblos on the Parajito Plateau.

The area, a stretch of mesas that run more than 15 miles west of Santa Fe, N.M., includes the town of Los Alamos and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nation's premier nuclear weapons laboratory.

The blaze reached the Santa Clara Pueblo's watershed in the canyon this week, damaging the area that the tribe considers its birthplace and scorching 20 square miles of tribal forest.

Fire operations chief Jerome MacDonald said it was within miles of the centuries-old Puye Cliff Dwellings, a national historic landmark.

Tribes were worried that cabins, pueblos and watersheds could be destroyed by the 177-square-mile blaze, the largest wildfire in state history.

"We were also praying on our knees, we were asking the Creator in our cultural way to please forgive us, `What have we done?"' Santa Clara Pueblo Gov. Walter Dasheno said. "Bring moisture so that the Mother Fire can be stopped. But that was not meant to be."

About 2,800 tribe members live in a dusty village nestled in New Mexico's high desert, near the mouth of Santa Clara Canyon where aspen and blue spruce forests provide relief from the dry desert and ponds provide water for irrigation. The canyon is north of the town of Los Alamos.

Pueblo fire chief Mel Tafoya said it was unclear whether cabins in the canyon or the ponds survived the blaze. Members of the state's congressional delegation have promised federal help for the tribe pending a damage assessment.

Dasheno said that despite the pain of losing an estimated 75 percent of the tribe's forest to three recent fires, "we are going to come back."

"We're going to tell the story of what occurred to our children and grandchildren. And yes, we're going to cry," he said.

Archaeological sites at the northern end of the blaze at Bandelier National Monument hold great significance to area tribes. About half of the park has burned, Bandelier superintendent Jason Lott said.

Authorities said the fire, in its seventh day, has been fueled by an exceptionally dry season in the Southwest and erratic winds. It surpassed a 2003 fire that took five months to burn through 94,000 acres in the Gila National Forest.

Crews have managed to keep the fire in Los Alamos Canyon several miles upslope from the federal laboratory, boosting confidence that it no longer posed an immediate threat to the facility or the nearby town. Firefighters were hoping to make progress with higher humidity Saturday, but worried about afternoon thunderstorms in the area.