49er Staff
3/20/2008

What do Huntington Beach and Native Americans have in common?

The answer is not much, at least not on an apparent surface level. But the two have been receiving unusually high amounts of attention this month by the Daily Forty-Niner news department, and for good reason.

Just beyond the shore break of Surf City, USA, another housing project is under way.

This kind of project wouldn’t be that unusual in a county - and region - that uses every square inch of its land for some kind of capitalistic purpose were it not for one huge thing: 174 sets of human remains - the buried ancestors of Native Americans - have been found in the area.

But there’s more. According to the Los Angeles Times, an ancient tool shed containing 5,000 artifacts and rare stones that resemble modern-day gears have been uncovered in this spot, too. Claims that the area was once a major prehistoric Native American settlement abound.

Common decency toward our oldest and arguably most-historically-screwed-over Americans - in other words, American Indians - would have been to not build there at all. Especially because it was known well before the development that there were historically significant items buried there.

Opponents of the development, which include open-space preservationists fighting for the precious acreage still left in Southern California’s urban jungle, claim the developer has tried to keep the archaeological finds a secret.

“Had they known of the extent of the remains earlier… they might have been able to persuade the California Coastal Commission to reject the development,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Enter Hearthside Homes, the apparently PR-less “evil developer” of the land in dispute. This genius company has yet to respond to the unfolding dilemmas its project faces. Calls for comment from the Los Angeles Times, Huntington Beach Independent, Orange County Register and your humble Daily Forty-Niner were not returned.

Furthermore, no statements regarding the controversy had been posted on Hearthside’s website as of Wednesday.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. The following was taken from Hearthside Homes’ mission statement webpage: “Our first priority is to listen. Our second is to ensure satisfaction.”

Funny how the company appears to be doing neither of these. Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.

Hearthside is instead boosting how grand its new homes are going to be on the grounds of formerly sacred tribal lands without ever mentioning said sacred tribal lands. The development, called Brightwater, has a beautiful website that gives “the lay of the land” of the development’s four integrated communities.

There’s “The Sands,” “The Trails,” “The Breakers” and “The Cliffs.”

The only one they’re missing is “The Cemetery,” which should boast haunted houses instead of luxury condos.

Unlike Disney fairytales, this story does not have a happy ending. The Huntington Beach Independent reported that “options to fight the developer now are slim. All the excavations are done, and even opponents of the digging say they don’t see much legal recourse… It’s late in the game for opponents to derail or modify the development. Not only do the planned houses have all their permits from the California Coastal Commission, but numerous other agencies have signed off on it.”

What’s done seems to be done, and it’s hard to say whether the bad publicity from the development will deter future home buyers - buyers who might not like knowing that gardening their backyards could be more like excavating ancient societies.

We hope respect can be paid somehow to the tribes who lay claim to the lands, even after this housing debacle.

Executive Director Flossie Horgan of the Bolsa Chica Land Trust said it best in the Huntington Beach Independent: “At some time in the future, we will look back and wonder really what our history is in this region. But it’s important that everybody know at some point we had an opportunity to preserve the site, but we didn’t save it.”

© 2007 Daily 49er

Posted on March 20th, 2008 by hunwut
Filed under: Healing, Opinion, Repatriation