MOBILE, Ala. – The two largest American Indian organizations are calling on the Obama administration to reverse its approval of a massive off shore wind energy project in Nantucket Sound, a sacred site to the Wampanoag people, and reconsider its decision before moving forward.

The United South and Eastern Tribes and the National Congress of American Indians both passed resolutions in opposition to the proposed Cape Wind industrial wind energy project in Nantucket Sound during their recent mid-year meetings in Mobile, Ala., and Rapid City, S.D., respectively.

The Cape Wind energy factory would be built across 25 square miles of public waters in Nantucket Sound in a triangle between Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket, and would include the construction of 130 wind turbines reaching 440 feet above water level, an electric service platform with 40,000 gallons of oil, more than 65 miles of buried transmission lines and other related equipment.

Nantucket Sound is a sacred site to the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe on Martha’s Vineyard and to the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. Not only is the eastern-oriented view a necessary component of the sunrise ceremonies performed by the People of the First Light, but the seabed was once dry land where their ancestors lived and died.

Both tribes vigorously opposed the project. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made a well-publicized visit to the area in February, inviting the press to accompany him on a Coast Guard ship to the wind factory site in the middle of Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound.

Salazar’s task was to weigh the value the Obama administration places on respecting an irreplaceable and immovable American Indian sacred site against the worth and importance of a privately-owned for-profit renewable energy plant that could be built elsewhere.

On April 28, Salazar gave his stamp of approval to the plant. The project is still in the permitting process with local and federal agencies.

USET, which represents 25 federally acknowledged tribes from Maine to Florida, passed a resolution June 17 asking for a full reversal of the project.

“The USET Board of Directors calls upon the Department of Interior to reverse its decision with regard to the Cape Wind Project before any sites are damaged and to explain in detail its rationale for rejecting tribal proposals, especially in the context of similar development proposals across the United States, as well as rejecting tribal proposals to locate the project on alternative off-shore sites that would not interfere with or harm tribal spiritual interest,” the resolution says.

The resolution points out that state, federal and tribal historic preservation entities “expressed opposition and even alarm at the harm that this proposed project would do to ceremonial activities as well as to a site of extraordinary spiritual and cultural value.”

Among the opposing entities were the Keeper of the National Register of Historic Places and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation – expert entities within the Interior Department that Salazar was required by law to consult, but whose opinions he ultimately rejected, on the grounds that he disagreed with them.

The Cape Wind Project, which would be the first off-shore wind factory in the U.S., has been cited by Salazar and the Obama administration as a model of the off-shore wind energy factories they envision developing along the East Coast on sites that potentially could raise tribal objections similar to those raised against Cape Wind.

The USET resolution clearly states its priorities: “Indian country supports the development of renewable energy, but such development should not come at the expense of Native historic and cultural places and over the objections of tribal and cultural leaders.”

The resolution specifically mentions the San Francisco Peaks, where the federal government approved the use of treated sewerage to make snow at a ski resort, and Mount Taylor in New Mexico where mining companies have pending applications to mine uranium in areas that would impact tribal sacred sites, lands and resources.

NCAI passed an emergency resolution almost identical to USET’s a week later.

NCAI’s resolution does not call for a reversal of Salazar’s approval of Cape Wind, but asks Interior instead “to reconsider its decision with regard to the Cape Wind Project before any sites are damaged.”