THIS COLUMN is directed to the University of Virginia administration, its students and the citizens of the Commonwealth of Virginia. On behalf of Apaches for Cultural Preservation, I am saddened to write and have to explain our position concerning your university's decision to support funding for the University of Arizona's telescope project on the Holy Mountain named Mount Graham.
We understand you may already have completed the deal with the University of Arizona and will be assisting with financial support for the telescope project. If this is true, your decision to automatically support a project that clearly violates human rights used to surprise us, but not anymore. If you study history, this type of action has been quite common. To lie, take the land, cause disorder among the people, and use that to your advantage is what the University of Arizona has done. Our question is: How can an institution of higher learning be so eager to feed into what is evil in this world? Is deception a common practice? This does not surprise us anymore. It has been a common practice against all Native Tribes.
Usen (God) blessed the entire world with many beautiful gifts such as the land, water, animals, air and all of us as humans. Usen gave each of us a spirit and a spiritual way to communicate. This was to ensure there would be balance in the world. Mt. Graham is this special place for all living spirits to communicate and to receive special blessings. A person may request blessings for himself or for the community or the world. It is here that the cries of our people can be heard and Usen can be heard through the wind. We fail to understand your way of living. Is it your intent not to understand those who exist here, to show no feelings? And disrespect what God blessed here in North America?
I believe there still are people in your culture that hold deep in their hearts the feeling of knowing what is wrong and what is right. This abusive way of treating people whom God has laid his hands on and blessed with the knowledge of mother earth needs to stop. I don't need to travel to the east to teach you or convince you of what is right. You already have your spirit telling you that what's happening on Mt. Graham is wrong.
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Has America forgotten about the tragedy that took place when the Europeans traveled west, to remove us from the land and to end our way of life, so that they could prosper with their greed? The University of Arizona officials, with their team of investors from Italy and Germany, as well as Notre Dame and Ohio State, are no different than the people who made treaties with Native Americans then broke them with no second thought of our children. We have lost many Native Americans and many things were taken away from us. Why now do you wish to take our religion away?
Is it not written in American history that this country was founded for people to exercise their freedom of religion, that this country was founded for people to exercise their human rights? For all Americans who have enjoyed the wealth of this country, what have you truly contributed and how have you rendered service to all the atrocities that occurred during the migration of white European Americans? We, Natives, not only Apaches, face the obstacle of rebuilding our communities created by our civilization being torn to pieces.
We at times struggle among ourselves and search for answers to heal the wounds. We pray for guidance to see a future in America that includes Native tribes having a bigger part in American society. It saddens me that a higher institution with thousands of recorded documents can completely ignore reports from the first Europeans along with Spanish expeditions which compiled an outline of their encounters with Apaches in the Southwest. The University of Arizona, knowingly, had to avoid laws that protected Mt. Graham. They worked together with Congress to receive exemptions from the Protection laws. They did not allow any studies on recorded history to surface in the federal courts or be given to institutions or investors that were interested in joining the Mt. Graham project.
One deception of the University of Arizona was the undermining of our Holy people, traditional people, and our next generations of Native Americans. But I guess their biggest deception is to all Americans, who believe that every human being in this country is being treated fairly. We here in San Carlos will never move from our traditional homelands, we were born here and we will die here. So I strongly encourage the good people of Virginia to question your institution and advise them to stop and do what is right.
It is really sad that even today, not even the United States president, Congress, or our own state elected officials recognize that we are the foundation of this country and that in America, Native American religion is the oldest religion. Tell me what do my children, my grandchildren and the ones I will not live to see, have to face in their lifetime? How will they be treated? Apparently, no different than myself, my father, his father before him and the generation before.
(Wendsler Nosie Sr. is a member of Apaches for Cultural Preservation.)
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