Footnotes to:
Moon, Mars, and Chumash Traditionalism

1. The Chumash archaeological town site currently under study by the state Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is called Jonjonata (Xonxonata ) by the Chumash. For a discussion of this Chumash site, see: Identifying The Old and New Jonjonata (Anderson, 1998).

2. The American government, the military, and the aerospace industry knew about the strategic presence of water on the moon long before recent information was released for public consumption in early March of this year. The Christian Science Monitor, for example, did not release its news on the discovery until March 9, 1998. The Monitor staff writer Peter Spotts used the subtitle: "New evidence of water on the moon prompts talk of deeper space exploration." A leading spokesperson for the company running the Lunar Prospector spacecraft, which detected the water, acknowledged that "the implications are tremendous" (Christian Science Monitor, March 9, 1998, 7). The European Space Agency is studying a proposal to launch a lunar orbiter in two years. Japan is planning to put an unmanned lander on the moon in five years. Spotts ends his article with a prediction from the Lunar Prospector mission manager, who advised the American public that the implications of water on the moon could be "profound" (7).

3. If you get on the internet, you will find many webpage covering the commercial exploitation of both the moon and Mars. Webmasters of some pages remind their readers that this is not fantasy any more. NASA is currently launching a series of exploration satellites to Mars, focusing on the ice caps already documented at both the north and south poles of this planet. The Martian south ice sheet is most promising for commercial development. It is continent sized, and may be made up of a mixture of water and carbon dioxide. This pole will be explored by the Mars '98 mission, which will begin transmitting data in 1999. If this data is commercially promising, it is probable that the aerospace industry will move forward far more rapidly than the public will be able to keep up with it, or citizen action groups will be able to lobby for its regulation.

4. What do I mean when I assert in this statement that "immense profits" are at stake in the commercial development of spaceports? At first hearing about the spaceport being built on the(Vandenberg Air Force Base, it can be difficult to comprehend the full scope of potential profits that will benefit either the private companies or nations which get to the moon first. To put the situation in perspective, it is helpful to examine the news release on this subject, by D. Isbell (Washington, DC), D. Morse (Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA), J. Gustafson (Los Alamos National Laboratory, NM), and J. Watson (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA). In a March 5, 1998 release entitled "Lunar Prospector Finds Evidence of Ice At Moon's Poles" this group of leading American space scientists estimated the worth of the ice on the moon at a minimum of $60 trillion.

Given the import of this estimate, let us further consider a quote from the press release: "Currently, it costs about $10,000 to put one pound of material into orbit. NASA is conducting technology research with the goal of reducing that figure by a factor of 10, to only $1,000 per pound. Using an estimate of 33 million tons from the lower range detected by Lunar Prospector, it would cost $60 trillion to transport this volume of water to space at that rate, with unknown additional cost of transport to the Moon's surface." The 33 million ton base line is, to put it mildly, very low. The American military has known about this strategic resource since the Clementine satellite used a radar-based detection system , which estimated from 110 million to 1.1 billion tons of water ice located on just the moon's south pole. This ice was spread over an estimated 5,500 square miles and would be worth many, many times the $60 trillion cited in the above quote. Imagine if the California spaceport became a major player in this international space race and only 1% of this money was put aside to help the native peoples of California build new reservations and viable economies for the future. In case you are still wondering.... this is big bucks.

5. Haley and Wilcoxon cite 3,000 people living in California who call themselves Chumash. (Anthropology, 762). They argue, however, that the majority of these people lack authentic continuity with the ancient Chumash. "Chumash Traditionalists lack the kinds of biological and cultural linkages with the region's aboriginal past that they claim- few are descendants of the aboriginal inhabitants they consider their ancestors" (766). According to the authors, the people who do have legitimate claims to Chumash ancestry are "nontraditionalists" (787). "They are descendants of the Catholic Indian communities in San Luis Obispo, Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara, Ventura, and Tejon" (787). I am troubled by Haley & Wilcoxon's argument that the residents of the Santa Ynez Reservation have the best claim to Chumash descendency. As I understand their statements on this topic, this small group of 200 "Catholics"deserve more empowerment that the other 2,800 Chumash claimants! How convenient such a proposed narrowing of legitimate Chumash descendency would be to for developers such as the aerospace industry, who would not have to deal with the rest of the claimants.

6. One focus of the Haley & Wilcoxon and article was the discrediting of the greater Point Conception area as a major religious shrine for the ancient Chumash. Point Conception lies very close to the Commercial Spaceport facility being built and represents (along with political challenges from no-growth citizen groups and lawsuits over environmental degradation of the coastal flora and fauna) a potential obstacle to massive development in the area. Federal laws protect native American historic use sites, and development projects which might negatively impact them can end up in the courts for years. The California aerospace industry does not have time to wait for such litigation. The Haley and Wilcoxon article is not the focus of this paper. I cite it only as an example of a publication by scholars paid to study the Chumash sites near the California Spaceport. Other scholars have researched sites near the spaceport [such as Glassow, Hyder, and Lee] but their finding have not yet become the focus of public debate. I cite them in my Spaceport webpage, located at: https://www.angelfire.com/id/newpubs/spaceport.html.

7. For detailed information on the Chevron pipeline project of the 1980?s, see M.O?Connor?s article cited in the bibliography.

8. Rattlesnake Shelter is located near the California Spaceport on Vandenberg Air Force Base. I can locate no evidence that it was considered as an important Chumash religious site in the first EIR submitted by the spaceport. Yet it has been studied by a number of American scholars, including William Hyder, from the University of California at Santa Cruz. This Chumash site is unusual for its quartz banding in the rock facing. When seen from a distance, it sparkles in the sun with mystical quartz light. Panels of rock art can be seen at this site, consisting of incised fine lines cut into red ocher base areas. These white-on-red images include drawings depicting a European ship and anchor.

9. Polar orbit data taken from the Spaceport Systems International webpage, listed as a CCSI-ITT partnership, ( accessed 3/15/98).