Windy NIMBY part II

The Wampanoag tribe, of Massachusetts, is joining the fight to thwart the Cape Wind Project planned for Nantucket Sound.

130 individual, 440ft, towers are planned to be erected on Horseshoe Shoal between Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.

Cape Wind Project

The Native American tribe, also known as the Massachusett, are citing cultural reasons in a bid to prevent the development going ahead.

Some Wampanoag representatives claim that the area in question was used by their ancestors for religious and ceremonial purposes. Also, in their claim, they say that the seabed itself is archaeologically sensitive because settlements were covered by the sea as it began to rise about 6,000 years.

The main ceremony that is said to be of great importance is the greeting of the Sun. However, not all Wampanoag believe this to be a genuine tribal ritual. One active member of the tribe, whose father and grandfather were medicine men, says that he never took part in or heard reference to a Sun worshiping ceremony.

Extensive geological surveys of the seabed in Nantucket Sound have brought up grasses and pieces of insects but no evidence of human habitation of remains.

The Cape Wind Project was begun in 2001 and has spent the last 9 years facing fierce opposition.

Ken Salazar, the US Secretary of the Interior, has now taken control of the situation. He has joined Wampanoag representatives for a dawn ceremony and taken a boat out to the shoal to see the area for himself. A spokesperson for Mr. Salazar said that he has not made up his mind whether to approve the project or not, but 9 years is long enough.

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The Wampanoag are the indigenous tribe in the South Eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island region. Their ancestors moved into the area at the end of the last Ice-Age, about 10,000 years ago.

The tribe estimates that there were 45,000 Wampanoag living in and around Cape Cod in 1616. At the time the first European explorers and traders unwittingly brought common European diseases, notably small pox, which decimated the aboriginal population.

Wampanoag were split into five distinct groups; Massachusett, Natick, Massassoit, Nantucket, Mashpee.

The tribe suffered the same fate as the majority of the indigenous ‘New World’ people; disease, starvation, slavery and predation. In 1928 the Wampanoag regained official recognition from the US Government. Only the Mashpee exist as a defined group today.

When the first European settlers came to North America on the Mayflower it was the Wampanoag tribe which helped them survive their first winter. This act of kindness is recognised today as “Thanks Giving”.

The Wampanoag name for Martha’s Vineyard is ‘Noepe’ and means ‘in the midst of the sea’.

In 1602, English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold was blown off course on his way to Virginia. Stumbling across this as yet undiscovered region he named it Cape Cod, after the abundance of Cod, and the island Martha’s Vineyard, after his mother and the abundance of ripe grapes.

Source:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wind26-2010mar26,0,7499957.story

http://www.mashpeewampanoagtribe.com/tribute.html

http://www.native-languages.org/wampanoag.htm

http://history.vineyard.net/hfnorton/history.htm

http://richardjlafferty.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/windy-nimby/

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