August 27, 2000

For Immediate Release:

Contact: Paul W. Mortensen

(801) 298-7856

Centerville, Utah -- Citing violations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Jefferson 21st Century Institute ("J21CI") has strongly condemned plans for the Interior Department to purchase and close a pumice mine located on public lands held sacred by Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt and certain American Indians.

Babbitt is scheduled to sign an agreement at the site of the White Vulcan Mine on the San Francisco peaks of northern Arizona on Monday. According to Associated Press reports, the agreement provides that the mine's owner, Tufflite, Inc. will be paid $1 million to close and reclaim its mine and to abandon all mining claims. The reports also make clear that the reason for the action is to cleanse the affected public lands of mining activity in order to provide tranquility for worshipers to gather medicines and conduct sacred ceremonies.

"These are not reservation lands," said Paul W. Mortensen, J21CI executive director. "These are public lands which belong to all Americans. Using public funds to designate public lands as sacred sites for Native Americans and New Age worshipers violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution."

Mortensen noted that Babbitt has a personal religious interest in transforming the San Francisco Peaks into a religious preserve. In a 1995 speech titled, "Between the Flood and the Rainbow: Our Covenant to Protect the Whole Creation," Babbitt lamented that his Roman Catholic upbringing failed to teach him to worship land as sacred. "Yet outside that church I always had a nagging instinct that the vast landscape was somehow sacred, and holy, and connected to me in a sense that my catechism ignored," said Babbitt.

Babbitt told of experiencing an epiphany when a young Hopi friend taught him that a "great blue mountain" at the edge of Babbitt's home by the San Francisco Mountains was "truly, a sacred place." "[B]y the end of that summer" said Babbitt, "I came to believe, deeply and irrevocably, that the land, and that blue mountain, and all the plants and animals in the natural world are together a direct reflection of divinity." Babbitt emphasized the importance for the nation to value its "ancient [pre-Columbian] religious values."

"Mr. Babbitt has no business establishing animism as the official American religion," said Mortensen. "He is abusing his powers as Secretary of the Interior."

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