Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Navajo, Ute tribes restaking a claim to their homeland with proposed Bears Ears conservation area

Even some Native Americans don't know about the archaeological riches their ancestors left in Cedar Mesa.  A week ago, on a tour of the area, a member of the Hopi Tribe was shocked to find his family's Flute Clan symbol in a rock pictograph.  "It was a very powerful, very emotional tour," said Mark Maryboy, a Navajo elder. "A lot of them didn't realize how much history and how much evidence their people left behind. There are many generations." In a campaign to reclaim the place from Anglo grave robbers, off-roaders and benignly ignorant campers and hikers who have traversed the region since state and federal leaders carved it up to distinguish public from private land, Utah's Navajos are leading a push to create the Bears Ears National Conservation Area in the southeastern corner of Utah.  Their proposal stretches from the southern edge of Canyonlands National Park to the San Juan River and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in the south to approximately U.S. Highway 191 on the east and the Colorado River on the west. The tribe's 1.9 million-acre proposal is larger than three other plans to expand federal land protections in the region — including the Greater Canyonlands notion from the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, four conservation areas pitched by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and another from Friends of Cedar Mesa...more

I wonder how the writer knows that all the past, present and future grave robbers are "Anglo"?

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