Native American rituals and beliefs have emerged as a surprising last-minute obstacle to federal approval of the nation’s first offshore wind farm, threatening to significantly delay the Cape Wind project.
Two Massachusetts tribes say the 130 proposed wind turbines in Nantucket Sound would disturb their spiritual sun greetings and submerged ancestral burying grounds.
The Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanoag tribes - with help from the main opposition group to Cape Wind - are pushing for the entire sound to be listed as a traditional cultural property on the National Register of Historic Places. A listing by itself would not necessarily stop the project, but would make permitting much more cumbersome.