“Native People relate to rock art with our hearts. I regularly visit one rock art site that is a holy site. It provides us knowledge of our past and future. We do not view these panels as just art, but almost like a coded message that exists to help us understand. This knowledge informs our life and reality as humans.”
—Malcolm Lehi, Ute Mountain Ute Council Member, from “Bears Ears: A Native Perspective on America’s Most Significant Unprotected Cultural Landscape”
Love for Place
A reflection on our October spiritual theme: Love
To love a place. Can one love…a place? Love is a word some of us may use freely and casually, yet is also often the most powerful word we have when it is difficult to articulate the intensity of what we feel. It is strange, perhaps, that I may use the same word in regards to a food I enjoy, as I use for my family every day. “I love you” to my child feels drastically different than, “I love avocado.” To love a place—in the truest sense of the word love—lies somewhere on this complex spectrum (that is probably not linear).
If I ask myself what is the place I love, the first place that comes to mind is the “sky islands and desert seas” of southeastern Arizona. Isolated mountain ranges rise high above the varied lowlands, creating an incredible diversity of ecosystems and microclimates. I grew up with the Huachuca Mountains out my back door, a habitat with arguably the highest number of bird species in the U.S., a place where ocelots and jaguars still make the occasional appearance on remote cameras, in spite of a border wall that has been a great detriment to the natural and necessary movements of wildlife, in addition to its harmful impact on humans. The beauty and significance of this place is unsurpassed—yet that is not the reason I love it so, at least not entirely. I love it because it is where I am rooted—a home I can always come back to. A place to reconnect with the past. A place where I am spiritually awed. A place that helped shape who I am. A place I have tried to help protect. And—loving this place also means reconciling the fact that it is not my ancestral homeland. It is the ancestral homeland of The Chiricahua Apache. The Sobaipuri. The Jacome. The Opata. European colonists displaced all of these tribes from the area. What does it mean that I—of majority European descent—have had the opportunity to live there, be there,and love this place in my way, while they no longer do?
Love for place may be a deep and enduring love, but perhaps it is also the channel by which other loves are known, such as love for the divine mystery. Love for the sacred. Love for ancestors. What is the place that you love? Do you feel loved by this place? What is your role in this place?
In closing, let us acknowledge some good news from last week. On Friday, October 8, three days before Indigenous Peoples’ Day, acting on the recommendations of Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, President Biden signed an executive order restoring the boundaries of Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah that had been reduced by 85% by the previous administration. From the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, comprised of the Hope, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, Diné, and Ute Tribes: “By taking this action, President Biden will be recognizing the deep and enduring ancestral and cultural connections that Tribes have to this landscape and taking a step toward honoring his commitment to Indigenous People by acknowledging their original place in this country that is now our shared home.”
I leave you with a quote from Alfred Lomahquahu, vice chairman of the Hopi Tribe.
“Bears Ears National Monument is a victory not just for Native Americans, but for all who love and whose lives are intertwined with this remarkable place.”
To learn more about Bears Ears National Monument and the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition and how to support them, visit www.bearsearscoalition.org.