Arizona Daily Sun-
Navajos appeal to U.N. to protect Peaks
Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., has gone to the United Nations to ask that the San Francisco Peaks be made a World Heritage Site in an attempt to block snowmaking there. [the mountains Navajos call Dook’o’sliid]
Shirley met with an assistant director-general for the UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, to ask for help in preserving the Navajo, or Dineh, language, protecting tribal sovereignty and preventing what Shirley sees as desecration of sacred mountains for steady ski seasons.
“One of the ways of preserving our way of life is to move UNESCO to declare the San Francisco Peaks as a World Heritage Site,” Shirley said.
Some of the best-known such sites in the United States are the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Chaco Canyon and Monticello.
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Mountain Gazette : Vigil ? Michael Wolcott
In February, Coconino National Forest released the Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Arizona Snowbowl’s proposal to use 180 million gallons of “reclaimed” wastewater — processed sewage — annually to make snow on the San Francisco Peaks. The plan calls for fourteen miles of pipeline, giant pumps, a 10-million-gallon holding pond, 70 acres of new ski runs, a new lift, a “snow play area” and 400 more parking spaces. At least thirteen Southwestern tribes consider the mountain sacred. Commercial activity there is seen as desecration.
The Peaks — actually the collapsed remains of a single giant volcano — are currently being considered for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places as a Traditional Cultural Property. To the Navajo, the mountain is Dook’o’ sliid, one of four cardinal points in the universe. To the Hopi it is Navatikyaovi. Throughout the year, the Hopi dances lure water from the sky above the mountain and marry it to the soil. This keeps the world in balance.
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dine’ underground
You can tell your kids and grandkids that one time long ago the Dine’ people got together and saved Dook’o’sliid from being desecrated.
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Sounds like desecration to me. All so people won’t have to go farther to find snow where nature puts it?
This aught to have the UN-haters foaming at the mouth. mjh