Controversy over the proposed Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and the issue of Sacred Ground

Some of you may know I lived over 40 years in Utah. My involvement with native culture and ceremony began there in the early 70’s. In the news for a while has been the controversy over the proposed Bears Ears national monument in the southwest portion of the state. The Inter-Tribal Logo to the left is a clickable link to the Inter-Tribal Coalition’s website where they have placed a wealth of material and some stunning photos. For many of the non-indigenous peoples these lands offer access to mineral wealth and recreation, all monetized. To the native Elders this is sacred land. Land continuously occupied for over 12,000 years. Here is a listing of the tribes and Pueblos with cultural ties to Bears Ears: Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe, Uintah and Ouray Ute Indian Tribe, White Mountain Tribe and Jicarilla Apache Tribe, San Juan, Kaibab, & Utah Paiute Tribes, White Mountain and Jicarilla Apache, Hualapai Tribe, Pueblos of Acoma, Cochiti, Isleta, Jemez, Laguna, Nambe, Ohkay Owingeh, Picuris, Pojoaque, Sandia, San Felipe, San Ildefonso, Santa Ana, Santa Clara, Santo Domingo, Taos, Tesuque, Ysleta Del Sur, Zia and Zuni. I had the great fortune to know many among the Navajo, Ute, Paiute, Apache and Hopi. I have walked many miles and camped in a number of places in the area of the Bears Ears and it is a wondrous, sacred place.

As important as the Bears Ears issue is, I was prompted to write because of a long held concern with the endangered nature of so many sacred places. All religions with strong ties to the earth have their sacred places. I became radicalized about this issue and worked on the fringe of the environmental movement not because species, including Homo Sapien, were endangered by rapacious attitudes towards lands and natural resources, but because I couldn’t tolerate the ugliness being made in places of beauty where the mark of the creator was still clear, imprinting the land. Early on I sensed the hallowed nature of certain places. In later years I participated in ceremony throughout the deserts and mountains of Utah. My last trip back to there was to attend the Parliament of the World’s Religions in October 2015 and I was deeply gratified by the solemn welcome, and for the guidance and wisdom offered by the indigenous peoples of the Great Basin. Among them the Paiute, the Ute, the Goshute, and the Navajo And for the sacred fire which burned continuously throughout the Parliament, there were elders present to facilitate the offering of prayers and tobacco twenty-four hours a day.

I arrived in Utah early enough to spend three days in the remote House Range of the west desert. Emptying and cleansing myself were part of it, but I had two sacred tasks specifically to attend to. The making of my “intention” as the stick one plays the drum with is sometimes known, and the painting of the drum, which my lodge helped me make the week before. The weekend following the Parliament was a reunion, a gathering of Aho, a large spiritual family my wife and I have been connected with for some thirty years.  That final Sunday evening I would ceremonially awaken this drum at a sweat lodge, or Inipe ceremony. A Shoshone elder sang a special song in that lodge as his gift to my drum. This drum has since served me well and I say thank you again to those who made it possible. Reconnecting with that awe inspiring patch of the desert that I knew well, left me with an assuring sense of belonging to our mother earth again, I have sometimes struggled with maintaining that nurturing connection here in South Carolina. It also renewed my commitment to speaking out for the protection of sacred lands and the access of native peoples to them for the spiritual practices that have sustained them and their lands across more than a dozen millennia.

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