The heart of genuine sadness: astronomers, politicians, and federal employees desecrate the holiest mountain of the San Carlos Apache

Whole Earth, Winter, 1997 by Peter Warshall

The Apaches wonder just how far the Vatican will go to save allegedly impure, extraterrestrial souls. As at the time of first contact, are Apaches still to be treated as extraterrestrials?

The Authority of Knowledge

In 1987 in Phoenix, Pope John Paul II received an eagle feather for the Vatican collection. "I encourage you," he said, "as native people belonging to different tribes and nations in the East, South, West, and North, to preserve and keep alive your cultures, your languages, the values and customs which have served you well in the past and provide a solid foundation for the future." Five years later, Father Coyne: "Nature and the Earth are just there, blah! And there will be a time when they are not there.... It is precisely the failure to make the distinctions I mention above [between Nature, Earth, cultures, human beings] that has created a kind of environmentalism and religiosity to which I cannot subscribe and which must be suppressed with all the force that we can muster." Under heavy pressure, Coyne later backed off -- eliminating the statement from his missive.

Keep in mind that the whole astro-project never would have occurred if it had been a proposal for a ski resort or hotel. The project has been able to get this far by implying that it operated in a manner superior to steamrollering corporate powers or federal agencies; by using its "authority" and image as a university to blunt or undercut the public's concerns; by plugging the overriding importance of their quest (astronomical science, spin-off technology, and the mysteries of the universe); by dredging up allegedly countervailing "facts" and rebuttals from pseudo-independent expert biologists or historians as well as unscientific opinion polls; and by dismissing the opposition as if it were all an angry mob. The University of Arizona's action has been a classic case of how not to deal with a concerned and frustrated public. The University replicated the style of Three Mile Island, Disney's theme park in Virginia, or Exxon's Valdez administrators by never admitting they could be wrong, denying there's a real problem, dismissing all dissenting comment as if it were the most extreme, and confusing themselves into believing that political power is wisdom.

Dr. Keith Basso, the leading anthropologist on the Western Apache and greatly respected by them, asked: "Would the University of Arizona and its affiliated institutions know more about the heavens or would they rather know they have affirmed the religious integrity of a people who have worshipped for centuries it a sacred place beneath them? What will it be? Better science or human justice?"

What the University underestimated was the moral power catalyzed by a synergy of Apache and environmentalist world views. Their common moral ground is simple: desert dwellers fall in love with the wetness of the Pinalenos. They adore this mountain range, which receives more rain, snow, and cloud cover than any other Southwestern series of peaks. They hold clear the nine perennial streams and high elevation springs, unique features among the Southwestern desert ranges. Apaches and most non-astro scientists feel the mountain range nurtures all kinds of special life, power, and wisdom. Its creatures populate Apache moral and historical stories as well as scientific journals. Biologists, in particular, have found that the living species (many endemic or Pleistocene relicts) have inspired them to advocate protection of the upper elevation habitats. In six weeks of field work, biologists "found" eighteen unreported or newly-appreciated rarities. With differing vocabularies, but similar gestalts, both the Apaches and enviros acknowledge their respect for the mountain's intact foodweb, a web that still includes two most powerful mammals (the largest bear and mountain lion populations south of the Colorado plateau).