Movement to create Utah monument leads to another Western land fight

[WhiteTara]

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/movement-create-utah-monument-leads-another-western-land-fight

BLANDING, Utah — Laminated sheets of paper held in place by rocks rest inside ancient cliff dwellings nestled underneath a spectacular red rock overhang in southeastern Utah.

“Don’t erase the traces of America’s past,” the signs read. “Please do not enter interior rooms.”

The weathered signs and a similar warning at the trailhead are the only protections in place for these easily accessible ruins along a canyon hiking path.

The cliff dwellings are part of an estimated 100,000 archaeological sites within a 1.9 million-acre area that a coalition of American Indian tribes wants President Barack Obama to designate a national monument to ensure protections for lands considered sacred.


U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell visited the area this week to meet with proponents and opponents — the latest indication the Obama administration is giving serious consideration to the “Bears Ears” monument proposal.

snip

Since October 2011, the BLM has recorded 28 cases of archaeological damage within the agency’s Cedar Mesa area that comprises a large chunk of the proposed monument, spokeswoman Kimberly Finch said. In one case this year, somebody etched a heart with initials on a wall with petroglyphs.

Jonah Yellowman, a Navajo spiritual adviser, regularly travels in the area to gather wood for his home and for rituals. Standing in a grassy field dotted with purple wildfires at the foot of the Bears Ears buttes, Yellowman reflected on the importance of the monument.

“Every monument has its purpose. This one has medicines here. This one has prayers, offerings, something that is very spiritual to us,” Yellowman said. “We’d like to keep it that way.”

[Igel]

1. Sometimes it's worth preserving.

Sometimes it's about dignity derived from the power to make others do what you want.

One estimate for age is found here: http://www.bearsearscoalition.org/proposal-overview/ancestral-and-modern-day-land-users/

The vast majority of the archaeological and cultural sites in the area have been dated by western archaeologists to at least 700 years old (with some dated as far back as 12,000 B.C.E.), though tribal peoples of the Colorado Plateau trace their connections here back much farther, since time immemorial.

The late 13th century was a time of a lot of change. Many nations that had been there since forever (they say) showed up in the SW--N. Mex., AZ, UT. If the petroglyphs are from 1300 at least, and many of them older than that, they were put in place by the folk that the Navajo took over from. Perhaps they drove them out; perhaps famine had killed them off already so the Navajos didn't engage in genocide or ethnic cleansing. So the Navajo has as much intel about their original purpose as I do. (Yeah, it's saying they're wrong. They're wrong. But it's a convenient and possibly deeply held bit of bad information. It's hard for most modern people, even Native Americans, to say, "This land is our land because we killed off the bastards who were here before us." Sort of undoes the whole "Columbus was bad" when your claim to the land was based on invasion.)

The nearby Ute quite likely were there when many petroglyphs were made. How their culture's changed since then is anybody's guess.

Still, much of the argument boils down to, "This has great religious meaning for us. It's like a cross or chapel on public land, and it deserves respect as a religious symbol. You need to make it safe." Now, were it a cross most people would be heading for the jackhammer or the chainsaw to cut it down, that whole "religious symbol on public land" business and a particular interpretation of the 1A. But since it's Native Americans who want the Federal government to protect it because it's sacred, nah, gotta have the Federal government respect that religion.

The valid reason (in a secular society) for protecting the site is historical. The problem is that it's on public lands, and we keep hearing that we need to safeguard public lands for the people. It's hard to safeguard it when people have access and do things like carve initials or hearts+arrows into the rock. (Oddly, that would be a kind of petroglyph, wouldn't it? I wonder if older petroglyphs defaced even older petroglyphs. Interesting ...)