Irresponsible actions at a site demonstrating great Rock Art which was relatively undamaged. More Awareness and Education programs are needed.
Mar. 25, 2010
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Paintball play damages petroglyphs, rocks near Laughlin
SPECIAL TO THE REVIEW-JOURNAL
Petroglyphs in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area that American Indians consider sacred have been damaged by youthful paintballers.
National Park Service spokesman Andrew Munoz said portions of four petroglyphs and rocks were colored with green and red paintball splatter last Friday at Grapevine Canyon, about two miles northeast of Laughlin.
Munoz said the site and the petroglyphs are culturally and spiritually important to the tribes of the Lower Colorado River. "It's like their Garden of Eden," he said.
"This area in particular is incredibly sensitive and sacred," said Rosie Pepito, chief of cultural resource management for the recreation area. "It's unimaginable to think of someone having a paintball fight in the Sistine Chapel, however, from the perspective of the local tribal members, that's what happened here."
Munoz said there has been some success in removing the color from the rocks , but that the oil-based paint has left its mark.
A citizen who spotted the paintball play in progress made a 911 call Friday that prompted a response by park rangers who encountered the shooters who had made it to the trailhead after leaving the site of the criminal damage. Munoz said the rangers confiscated two paintball weapons.
A 20-year-old Bullhead City man was cited for defacing and disturbing an archeological resource, using and discharging a weapon, littering and vandalism. Munoz said no determination has been made regarding citing or prosecuting a 13-year-old accomplice, also from Bullhead City.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Prosecution of Petroglyph Theft
Friday, February 12, 2010
INCIDENTS
Lake Mead National Recreation Area (AZ,NV)
NPS Assists Forest Service In Petroglyph Theft Case
A man has been indicted by a federal grand jury on felony charges that he unlawfully removed and damaged a large petroglyph from Forest Service lands in the Spring Mountains National Recreational Area near Pahrump, Nevada. Michael Cook, 57, of Pahrump, is charged with one count of violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act. If convicted, Cook faces up to two years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He is charged under the felony provisions of the statute because the archeological resource is valued at more than $500. According to the indictment, between March and September 2008, Cook knowingly excavated, removed, damaged, and otherwise altered and defaced a large petroglyph depicting seven sheep from Spring Mountains NRA without a permit or exemption. Nye County Sheriff’s Department officials discovered the rock containing the petroglyph in Cook’s front yard in Pahrump on June 24, 2009, and reported it to the Forest Service. The rock weighed about 200 pounds. Cook was issued a summons and is scheduled for an initial appearance and arraignment on Friday, February 26th. This investigation is being conducted by the Forest Service, with the assistance of the law enforcement team of the Southern Nevada Agency Partnership (SNAP) which includes the Forest Service, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service (Lake Mead National Recreation Area), and the Bureau of Land Management. [Submitted by Andrew S. Muñoz, Public Affairs Officer]
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Nevada's Valley of Fire - Rock Art Resource
Valley of Fire is a very good resource for Native American Rock Art (or Rock Writing) and for photography. We can read about many threats of facility closures in today's economy, but if Nevada follows through on this possibility, we have lost a great resource. If you have interest and if you desire to visit the Park, you might want to do it soon.
The article from the Las Vegas Sun is below:
Would closing state parks to save money do more harm than good?
Cost-cutting move could devastate rural areas, critics say
Joe Elbert / Las Vegas Sun
Nina Kornblum and Alexander Kraft of Germany have their wedding day photographs taken Tuesday at Valley of Fire State Park, an hour north of Las Vegas. The state’s parks could close if a budget-cutting idea of state Sen. Steven Horsford is enacted by the Legislature.
By Stephanie Tavares (contact)
Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010 | 2 a.m.
The Nevada Legislature is thinking of closing state parks as it considers how to patch an estimated $900 million budget gap, a move that would save a few million dollars while killing the economies of rural towns and stunting tourism efforts across the state, opponents of the idea say.
Gov. Jim Gibbons has suggested a 10 percent budget reduction for a number of agencies, including the State Parks Division. But the Interim Finance Committee could take that a step further. At its meeting in Las Vegas on Thursday, the committee is expected to consider following the lead of cash-strapped states such as California and Arizona, that have closed some or all of their state parks.
In Nevada, the proposal is the brainchild of Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford, D-Las Vegas, who says he is considering shutting down all state parks to save money. He said teachers and other primary services are more important than recreation.
“It’s part of our quality of life, but the choice is between doing that or thousands of teachers laid off statewide, which is bad for education, bad for schools and bad for the economy,” he says. He estimated that about $8 million over the biennium could be saved. The parks division gets $5.3 million a year from the general fund.
Conservationists, outdoor enthusiasts, parks experts and the governor all consider park closures unnecessary. Gibbons figures the cuts can and should come from elsewhere.
“The governor believes parks play an important role in life in Nevada and they’re huge tourist attractions,” Gibbons’ spokesman Dan Burns says. “His highest priorities are getting more tourists and making jobs, and the governor would not be in favor of closing tourist attractions.”
The Nevada Conservation League and other environmental groups worry that endangered species will be lost, parks will be trashed and that the closures could worsen quality of life for the stressed-out populace.
“You have record unemployment and foreclosure in Nevada and you’re talking about taking away places where folks can go to get away from stress in their daily lives,” National Association of State Park Directors Executive Director Phillip McKnelly says. “You look at all the impacts and you’ll see this is one of the worst possible times to close parks.”
In Nevada, such closures would particularly hurt rural towns near state parks and slow Las Vegas’ budding eco-tourism efforts, parks experts warn. States that have closed state or national parks in the past say it had huge economic consequences for rural communities. Closures also leave cultural and historical sites and artifacts vulnerable to theft and vandalism and strain law enforcement agencies.
Horsford said that parks that are “entirely fee supported” could be excluded from his plan. He said there are two such parks but did not identify them.
The two most popular parks are Valley of Fire State Park, an hour north of Las Vegas near Overton, and Lake Tahoe-Nevada State Park, in Northern Nevada. Both are net earners — but they’re not “entirely fee-supported,” parks experts say.
Those two parks do, however, have significant economic effects on surrounding communities.
Valley of Fire, famous for its Native American petroglyphs and dramatic scenery, is a large tourism draw. About 65 percent of its visitors are from other states or countries. Many stay in the Las Vegas Valley and visit the park on tours. It’s also one of the state’s most popular wedding sites as well as for filming commercials and movies, Nevada State Parks Division Administrator David Morrow says. He estimates private Nevada companies generate about $9 million from activities in Valley of Fire.
Laughlin recently passed a bond measure to improve the campground at its nearby state park, Big Bend. The park is popular with RV-driving snowbirds who often spend part or all of winter living in the park, enjoying the relatively warm weather along with nearby casinos.
The bond financing would have to be repaid, whether the park stays open or not.
“If you close the parks, not only do you take the visitor economy away, you affect private businesses over all of Southern Nevada,” Morrow says.
That’s one of the reasons why experts argue that closing parks would be a money-loser for the state.
Though most parks don’t make a net profit, they have profound effects on the economies of rural communities. A 2003 state-sponsored study found that Nevada’s state parks generate about $62 million in income for the state, both from fees or through visitor spending in nearby towns.
That’s a great return on the $5.3 million the state sends from the general fund each year, Morrow says.
If the governor’s proposed 10 percent budget cut is enacted, Morrow will have seen his budget slashed by about 45 percent in the past four years. Yet the parks remain open and visitation is up. Nevada parks now get more than 3 million total visitors each year, he says.
And visitors pay not just for access to the parks, but also for guided tours, gasoline, rental cars, hotels, meals and souvenirs, says Daniel McLean, the Southern Nevada vice president of the state’s Recreation and Parks Society, also a recreation and sports management professor at UNLV.
“The impact is the same in most park systems across the country,” McLean says. “For every dollar spent on that park, that dollar goes back into the economy multiple times. It can generate 15 to 20 dollars for the local economy. You take that out of rural areas and you’ve got a significant impact.”
Just ask Arizona.
The state has a history of devastating park closures. In 1996, national parks across the country were temporarily shuttered due to economic distress. The state kept Grand Canyon National Park open though, because Arizona concluded that even a temporary closure of that park would devastate the state’s tourism industry.
A 1997 federal study on the economic effect of the closures found it had wiped out small towns.
Still, Arizona’s parks board recently closed eight parks, most of them in disrepair after years of deferred maintenance, agency Executive Director Renee Bahl says. Thirteen more parks will be closed by June, and the nine left will only stay open if the board can raise $3 million this year to pay for them.
That has caused Arizona’s state park fees to skyrocket, increasing from 20 percent to 100 percent.
Meanwhile, rural towns near closed and closing parks are facing economic calamity. With the recession, income from parks visitors was a growth area for rural towns as urban families sought low-cost, short-travel vacations.
A plan to close state parks in California causes so much contention there that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spiked the proposal and guaranteed the parks department baseline funding indefinitely. His state parks department took a one-time $14 million budget hit this year, plus mandated state employee furloughs. That forced parks to reduce hours and maintenance but they remain open.
States nationwide are scrambling to get their parks off the government dole, McKnelly says. Idaho tried to push its state parks off onto its counties and is now talking about turning them over to a landholding agency. Arizona is trying to get a ballot measure passed to add a $9 charge to each vehicle registration fee to fund parks. Montana and Washington do something similar to that. Oregon and Colorado get funding from the state-sponsored lottery. Arkansas and Missouri have a sales tax that goes to parks, and Florida and North Carolina parks get money from a land transfer tax.
“Every state parks director in the nation is looking at alternative funding,” McLean said. “The challenge here is finding alternative revenue sources that are palatable to politicians and to the public. Everybody is clamoring for additional funding sources right now.”
There’s also the issue of losing the investment poured into these parks over the past 75 years, experts warn. No state has ever closed an entire parks system, Bahl says, and in Arizona, they’re having a hard time figuring out how to preserve historic sites, artifacts and critical habitat in parks with no staff.
Nevada parks are filled with priceless historic artifacts, buildings and petroglyphs and countless endangered species, and the park system’s infrastructure alone is worth about $164 million.
Padlocking the gates and walking away isn’t going to protect all that.
A leak in one roof could eventually destroy an entire building, abandoned trails can cause erosion and water pollution in nearby streams. Most parks, including the Valley of Fire, can’t be fenced in, providing easy access for vandals, thieves, poachers and meth-heads putting everything from buildings to archeological artifacts in danger.
A closure of even one year could cause a park to degrade so much that it would take years and millions more dollars to recover — and that’s just the stuff you can replace, parks experts note.
“We protect and preserve some of the state’s most important cultural, historic and recreational resources,” Morrow says. “There’s no way to replace those things if they’re lost or destroyed. For a very small amount of money, in terms of general fund contributions, the state gets a huge economic return ... For 75 years we’ve preserved and taken care of these places and you’re tossing that out the window if you close them.”
Sun reporter David McGrath Schwartz contributed to this story from Carson City.
Nevada Public Lands Possible Protection
The protection of the Heart of Great Basin and Owyhee Desert may be good for the citizens of the US. But we should be told truthful information about the project in a timely manner, such as they are doing on Tule Springs.
Feb. 16, 2010
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Heller concerned over memo on national monuments
Heller says Interior Department bypassing public
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Rep. Dean Heller says he is worried about an Interior Department memo that calls for carving two national monuments out of parts of central and Northern Nevada to protect American Indian cultural sites and habitat for sensitive wildlife.
"The fact that this administration is already circulating internal memos to bypass Congress and the public process is troubling," Heller, R-Nev., said in a news release Tuesday. "There should never be a rush to develop proposals that will have long lasting impacts on the local communities."
Two undated entries from the memo list Heart of the Great Basin with ranges in Nye County and Owyhee Desert in Nevada and Oregon as areas the Interior Department is considering for designation as national monuments.
The Heart of the Great Basin contains "a globally unique assemblage of cultural, wildlife and historical values. ... Thousands of petroglyphs and stone artifacts provide insight to the area's inhabitants from as long as 12,000 years ago," one entry reads. The area contains creeks, aspen groves and habitat for sage grouse and pika, an alpine rodent.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that populations of American pika were most at risk in Nevada, citing global warming as the primary threat to the species. Nevertheless, the wildlife service decided not to list the pika for Endangered Species Act protection because the rabbitlike animal isn't in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future. Pika populations are found in nine other Western states.
The second entry describes Owyhee Desert as an unprotected region in Oregon and Nevada that is "home to the world's largest herd of California bighorn sheep, elk, deer, cougar, redband trout, sage grouse and raptors."
"The Owyhee Desert is one of the most remote areas in the continental United States, characterized by juniper covered deserts, natural arches, mountains and ancient lava flows. The many branching forks of the Owyhee River form deep, sheer-walled canyons between desert wilderness and entice river runners from around the nation," the memo reads.
Lynn Davis, manager of a conservation group advocating creation of a fossil beds national monument near Tule Springs in the northern Las Vegas Valley, said her organization was "completely unaware of these two areas being considered for any protective status."
In contrast, the Tule Springs area "has been going through a very public, very open process to examine it with community support as a national monument," said Davis, program manager for the Nevada Field Office of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.
A call to an Interior Department spokesman regarding the memo was not immediately returned late Tuesday.
Feb. 16, 2010
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Heller concerned over memo on national monuments
Heller says Interior Department bypassing public
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Rep. Dean Heller says he is worried about an Interior Department memo that calls for carving two national monuments out of parts of central and Northern Nevada to protect American Indian cultural sites and habitat for sensitive wildlife.
"The fact that this administration is already circulating internal memos to bypass Congress and the public process is troubling," Heller, R-Nev., said in a news release Tuesday. "There should never be a rush to develop proposals that will have long lasting impacts on the local communities."
Two undated entries from the memo list Heart of the Great Basin with ranges in Nye County and Owyhee Desert in Nevada and Oregon as areas the Interior Department is considering for designation as national monuments.
The Heart of the Great Basin contains "a globally unique assemblage of cultural, wildlife and historical values. ... Thousands of petroglyphs and stone artifacts provide insight to the area's inhabitants from as long as 12,000 years ago," one entry reads. The area contains creeks, aspen groves and habitat for sage grouse and pika, an alpine rodent.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that populations of American pika were most at risk in Nevada, citing global warming as the primary threat to the species. Nevertheless, the wildlife service decided not to list the pika for Endangered Species Act protection because the rabbitlike animal isn't in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future. Pika populations are found in nine other Western states.
The second entry describes Owyhee Desert as an unprotected region in Oregon and Nevada that is "home to the world's largest herd of California bighorn sheep, elk, deer, cougar, redband trout, sage grouse and raptors."
"The Owyhee Desert is one of the most remote areas in the continental United States, characterized by juniper covered deserts, natural arches, mountains and ancient lava flows. The many branching forks of the Owyhee River form deep, sheer-walled canyons between desert wilderness and entice river runners from around the nation," the memo reads.
Lynn Davis, manager of a conservation group advocating creation of a fossil beds national monument near Tule Springs in the northern Las Vegas Valley, said her organization was "completely unaware of these two areas being considered for any protective status."
In contrast, the Tule Springs area "has been going through a very public, very open process to examine it with community support as a national monument," said Davis, program manager for the Nevada Field Office of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association.
A call to an Interior Department spokesman regarding the memo was not immediately returned late Tuesday.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Reported Rock Art Damage in Libya
A member of the Coalition to Preserve Rock Art regularly visits the major Rock Art sites in Libya (he and his wife live in Germany). We sometimes tend to focus on damage in North America, but these photos might interest you. The damage was reportedly done by a driver / guide who had recently been fired by his company. He was apprehended but the damage is probably not repairable.
I was impressed by the quality of the Rock Art and disturbed by the damage. Note the pictures attached.
If you have any comments please advise at exploringrockart@gmail.com.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Nine-Mile Canyon Deseret News Summary
Note the second part is much more acceptable than the first part.
Many Rock Art advocates in Utah have followed this story, so the summary is for those who have not heard of the situation, primarily those who reside outside Utah.
On January 7, 2010, Deseret News, a Salt Lake City publication, printed the following editorial:
Ancient sketches graffiti or art?
By Lee Benson Deseret News Published: Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010 11:57 p.m. MST
News flash from Nine Mile Canyon: A team of archaeologists and linguists have finally — after years of painstaking study and, coincidentally, on the eve of their multi-million-dollar government grant running out — successfully translated a key pictograph known as the Great Hunt Panel in what has been called America's longest and oldest art gallery.
What was long thought to be drawings of bighorn sheep and human hunters holding bows and arrows actually translates in English to: ANYONE CAUGHT DRAWING ON THESE ROCKS WILL BE FINED.
It turns out, according to this translation, that the Anasazi, Fremont and, later, the Ute Indians that inhabited Nine Mile Canyon long before it was known as Nine Mile Canyon had a problem doodling on their beautiful surroundings. This prompted their chiefs and the environmentalists among them to draw the line, as it were.
Another pictograph nearby translates to: RESPECT WHERE YOU LIVE, AND WHERE YOU LIVE WILL RESPECT YOU!
I'm making all this up, of course, but the announcement this week from the State Capitol of an agreement hammered out after months and years of discussion among numerous public and private agencies, including apparently everyone but the BCS, which protects the rock artwork in Nine Mile Canyon from natural gas developers gave me pause when I saw some photos of the endangered rock artwork.
What's the big deal? I found myself thinking. If any of this gets lost we can put some third graders to work on nearby unmarked rocks.
I am aware that such thinking constitutes blasphemy among lovers of ancient Indian pictographs, so let me quickly apologize to them for not seeing what they are seeing and not appreciating what they are appreciating.
But I am only being honest here. I am one of the worst artists in the world and I could draw sheep on roller skates and men with no necks as well as the ones on those rocks. Maybe better.
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I am not beholding beauty. C.M. Russell did not do this.
This isn't to suggest the images shouldn't be protected. Age deserves its deference. There is a point when one man's graffiti becomes another man's historic marker.
Although there is also no doubt that timing is everything. Carve your initials or scratch out a drawing tomorrow in the rocks in Nine Mile Canyon, or anywhere on public land for that matter, and you're going to jail.
But 200 years from now, no matter if you carved "Go Lakers!" it will be a national treasure.
Just what would the Fremonts, Anasazis or ancient Utes who did the drawings in Nine Mile Canyon have to say on the subject if they were still among us and had been invited to attend the big announcement at the State Capitol?
I'm saying it's highly possible that they would be trying hard to keep a straight face while poking each other in the ribs.
Anasazi 1 to Fremont 2: "I did that one while I was drunk."
Fremont 3 to Anasazi 4: "I got grounded three moons for that one."
Ute 1 to Ute 2: "That doesn't even look like a bighorn."
Wise old Anasazi (I know, that's redundant) environmentalist (wearing horrified look): "We tried our darndest to leave no trace and they're remembering us for this!?"
Ute 3 to Ute 4: "You mean to tell me that this natural gas you speak of was right below our feet and we could have used it to cook all our meals and heat all our abodes and never have had to gather firewood? AYEEEEE!"
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the art gallery that is Nine Mile Canyon was the ancients' equivalent of the Louvre.
Or maybe it was the reason they left.
This editorial received many complaint letters, some of them can not be repeated here.
However, the Deseret News author issued another group of comments, reprinted below:
To the Ute Indian Tribe Historical Society; the Utah Rock Art Research Association; Forrest Cuch, executive director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs; my friend Tom Lovell; and all others who know way more about American Indians and ancient drawings than I do:
I am sorry for offending you.
Please accept my apology.
In an attempt at levity — and, OK, a poke at extreme environmentalists — in a recent column about the crusade to protect the rock art in Utah's Nine Mile Canyon from energy developers, I suggested that to my untrained eye the drawings look like stick figures a grade-schooler could duplicate.
Then I went on to imagine the possibility that ancient American Indians were perhaps just horsing around all those generations ago when they wrote on the rocks, not unlike modern graffiti artists, and they would be surprised to find them so revered today.
It turns out my eye is as untrained as a rock.
To quote from a letter written to the Deseret News by Stephen L. Robinson, president of the board of directors of the Utah Rock Art Research Association:
"The level of respect for, and understanding of, rock art reflected in this column is very unfortunate. We strongly object to the demeaning, disparaging and disrespectful tone of this article. We are deeply offended. It does considerable harm to the work we do in encouraging people to respect and preserve this irreplaceable evidence of ancient cultures. We do not speak for the Native Americans in our state, but are confident they are offended also."
He's right about that.
This is from a letter written by Larry Cesspooch (Whitebelly) of the Ute Indian Tribe Historical Society:
"Shame on you Lee Benson, for your ignorance. The writings in Nine Mile Canyon are our sacred history. It's people like you who have made respect and appreciation of the rock writings in Nine Mile Canyon a straight-up battle."
He goes on to add: "The writings weren't put there as art, but as messages. That's where things get misunderstood — calling the messages art. The so-called "hunting scene" in Nine Mile Canyon depicts a historic battle, not a hunt. All the animals depict people."
An archaeologist named Garth Norman e-mailed yet more elucidation:
"Technically it is neither graffiti nor art. It is writing. You really ought to get informed on this subject before making outlandish statements that are insulting to both the Indians and scholars. You might want to redeem yourself in your next article. I could send you my interpretation of the hunting panel in Nine Mile you refer to, which is a calendar shadow station that marks the spring equinox ritual for big horn sheep migration hunt."
Who knew?
Well, who didn't know besides me?
From now on, I'm going to try and stick to making fun of things I sort of understand — like Republicans and Democrats and James Cameron movies.
And over-the-top environmentalists, if only because it's so easy to pick on the hypocrisy of people who drive their gas-powered cars on paved highways to protest drilling for gas on unpaved highways.
That was my target with the Nine Mile rock art column. But I missed. I missed badly and, instead, scored a direct hit on a past and a culture standing innocently off to the side.
Sacred history should be respected even by the ignorant, which in this case is me.
Many Rock Art advocates in Utah have followed this story, so the summary is for those who have not heard of the situation, primarily those who reside outside Utah.
On January 7, 2010, Deseret News, a Salt Lake City publication, printed the following editorial:
Ancient sketches graffiti or art?
By Lee Benson Deseret News Published: Thursday, Jan. 7, 2010 11:57 p.m. MST
News flash from Nine Mile Canyon: A team of archaeologists and linguists have finally — after years of painstaking study and, coincidentally, on the eve of their multi-million-dollar government grant running out — successfully translated a key pictograph known as the Great Hunt Panel in what has been called America's longest and oldest art gallery.
What was long thought to be drawings of bighorn sheep and human hunters holding bows and arrows actually translates in English to: ANYONE CAUGHT DRAWING ON THESE ROCKS WILL BE FINED.
It turns out, according to this translation, that the Anasazi, Fremont and, later, the Ute Indians that inhabited Nine Mile Canyon long before it was known as Nine Mile Canyon had a problem doodling on their beautiful surroundings. This prompted their chiefs and the environmentalists among them to draw the line, as it were.
Another pictograph nearby translates to: RESPECT WHERE YOU LIVE, AND WHERE YOU LIVE WILL RESPECT YOU!
I'm making all this up, of course, but the announcement this week from the State Capitol of an agreement hammered out after months and years of discussion among numerous public and private agencies, including apparently everyone but the BCS, which protects the rock artwork in Nine Mile Canyon from natural gas developers gave me pause when I saw some photos of the endangered rock artwork.
What's the big deal? I found myself thinking. If any of this gets lost we can put some third graders to work on nearby unmarked rocks.
I am aware that such thinking constitutes blasphemy among lovers of ancient Indian pictographs, so let me quickly apologize to them for not seeing what they are seeing and not appreciating what they are appreciating.
But I am only being honest here. I am one of the worst artists in the world and I could draw sheep on roller skates and men with no necks as well as the ones on those rocks. Maybe better.
If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I am not beholding beauty. C.M. Russell did not do this.
This isn't to suggest the images shouldn't be protected. Age deserves its deference. There is a point when one man's graffiti becomes another man's historic marker.
Although there is also no doubt that timing is everything. Carve your initials or scratch out a drawing tomorrow in the rocks in Nine Mile Canyon, or anywhere on public land for that matter, and you're going to jail.
But 200 years from now, no matter if you carved "Go Lakers!" it will be a national treasure.
Just what would the Fremonts, Anasazis or ancient Utes who did the drawings in Nine Mile Canyon have to say on the subject if they were still among us and had been invited to attend the big announcement at the State Capitol?
I'm saying it's highly possible that they would be trying hard to keep a straight face while poking each other in the ribs.
Anasazi 1 to Fremont 2: "I did that one while I was drunk."
Fremont 3 to Anasazi 4: "I got grounded three moons for that one."
Ute 1 to Ute 2: "That doesn't even look like a bighorn."
Wise old Anasazi (I know, that's redundant) environmentalist (wearing horrified look): "We tried our darndest to leave no trace and they're remembering us for this!?"
Ute 3 to Ute 4: "You mean to tell me that this natural gas you speak of was right below our feet and we could have used it to cook all our meals and heat all our abodes and never have had to gather firewood? AYEEEEE!"
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the art gallery that is Nine Mile Canyon was the ancients' equivalent of the Louvre.
Or maybe it was the reason they left.
This editorial received many complaint letters, some of them can not be repeated here.
However, the Deseret News author issued another group of comments, reprinted below:
To the Ute Indian Tribe Historical Society; the Utah Rock Art Research Association; Forrest Cuch, executive director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs; my friend Tom Lovell; and all others who know way more about American Indians and ancient drawings than I do:
I am sorry for offending you.
Please accept my apology.
In an attempt at levity — and, OK, a poke at extreme environmentalists — in a recent column about the crusade to protect the rock art in Utah's Nine Mile Canyon from energy developers, I suggested that to my untrained eye the drawings look like stick figures a grade-schooler could duplicate.
Then I went on to imagine the possibility that ancient American Indians were perhaps just horsing around all those generations ago when they wrote on the rocks, not unlike modern graffiti artists, and they would be surprised to find them so revered today.
It turns out my eye is as untrained as a rock.
To quote from a letter written to the Deseret News by Stephen L. Robinson, president of the board of directors of the Utah Rock Art Research Association:
"The level of respect for, and understanding of, rock art reflected in this column is very unfortunate. We strongly object to the demeaning, disparaging and disrespectful tone of this article. We are deeply offended. It does considerable harm to the work we do in encouraging people to respect and preserve this irreplaceable evidence of ancient cultures. We do not speak for the Native Americans in our state, but are confident they are offended also."
He's right about that.
This is from a letter written by Larry Cesspooch (Whitebelly) of the Ute Indian Tribe Historical Society:
"Shame on you Lee Benson, for your ignorance. The writings in Nine Mile Canyon are our sacred history. It's people like you who have made respect and appreciation of the rock writings in Nine Mile Canyon a straight-up battle."
He goes on to add: "The writings weren't put there as art, but as messages. That's where things get misunderstood — calling the messages art. The so-called "hunting scene" in Nine Mile Canyon depicts a historic battle, not a hunt. All the animals depict people."
An archaeologist named Garth Norman e-mailed yet more elucidation:
"Technically it is neither graffiti nor art. It is writing. You really ought to get informed on this subject before making outlandish statements that are insulting to both the Indians and scholars. You might want to redeem yourself in your next article. I could send you my interpretation of the hunting panel in Nine Mile you refer to, which is a calendar shadow station that marks the spring equinox ritual for big horn sheep migration hunt."
Who knew?
Well, who didn't know besides me?
From now on, I'm going to try and stick to making fun of things I sort of understand — like Republicans and Democrats and James Cameron movies.
And over-the-top environmentalists, if only because it's so easy to pick on the hypocrisy of people who drive their gas-powered cars on paved highways to protest drilling for gas on unpaved highways.
That was my target with the Nine Mile rock art column. But I missed. I missed badly and, instead, scored a direct hit on a past and a culture standing innocently off to the side.
Sacred history should be respected even by the ignorant, which in this case is me.
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