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To 76-year-old Lillian Valenzuela Robles, it is the same issue that for the past five centuries has caused so much bloodshed, hatred and pain.
White society wants to develop the land. And American Indians want to keep it the way it is.
"They aren't going to win this time," said Robles, a diminutive, white-haired elder of the Juaneno tribe who has been maintaining a vigil to protest plans by Cal State Long Beach to develop a small tract of land that she and other American Indians say is sacred. "How would you like somebody to come along and put a fence around your church and say, `Get out of here, we're going to put up a mini-mall?' You wouldn't let them do that. And we aren't going to, either."
For the past two weeks, Robles, a Long Beach resident, has been sleeping on the hard ground on or near the site. At dawn and sunset, she walks around the contested area, carrying tobacco and sage in an abalone shell and performing an ancient ceremony to purify the land.
Although she knows it may sound strange to non-Indian ears, she insists that "this land speaks to me. It calls to me. And I have to do whatever I can to protect it. It's hard (sleeping on the ground), but when you have a just cause, it gives you strength."
At issue is a 22-acre parcel next to Bellflower Boulevard, on the west side of the Cal State Long Beach campus. The dispute began not as a battle between university officials and American Indians, but between the officials and a group that proved to...