A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [87]
After the Mormons came logging trucks: the land not taken by settlers was put under the care of the Forest Service, which led predictably to roads and clearcuts. Still some wildlife persisted, and still the San Carlos Apaches prayed.
Then came vacation homes and a Bible camp. Still the ecological, spiritual, and cultural backs of the mountain and its people had not been broken.
A new irrationale was conjured to justify the further burdening of the mountain and its people: the telescope. In 1984, the University of Arizona, the University of Ohio (which because of student pressure has since withdrawn from the project), and the Vatican came together to build a world-class observatory on Mount Graham. It hardly seems necessary at this point to go into the details of the last thirteen years: it's a story we've heard too many times. It's the story of study after study showing damage to indigenous peoples and to wildlife, and the suppression of these studies. It's the story of men with money intimidating scientists to fabricate more studies—fraudulent but effective barriers to truth—that find precisely what men with money wish to hear. It's the story of politicians waiting with open hands for their votes to be purchased. It's the story of willful, fatal, and all-too-familiar ecological ignorance on the part of those who run the country: Manuel Lujan, Secretary of the Interior, said about protecting the Mount Graham red squirrel, "Nobody's told me the difference between a red squirrel, a black one or a brown one."
It's the story of routine deceit by the government: when part of the way through the project, University of Arizona researchers realized the site where they'd already installed multiple telescopes was not optimal (thirty-eighth out of fifty-seven sites studied), they requested permission from the government to place more telescopes elsewhere on the mountain: at first federal bureaucrats demurred, but pressure and money convinced them to sign on, and so on December 3, 1993, the Forest Service sent a letter by regular post to several San Carlos Apache people asking for input on the proposed site addition. When those opposed to the observatory hadn't responded by December 6 (they had yet to receive the letters) the Forest Service declared the public input requirement fulfilled and quietly issued permission for the University of Arizona to build on the new site. Before dawn the next morning, the University began cutting ancient trees. The documents do not record whether the trees screamed as they were felled.
It's the story of the silencing of native voices: contrast the words of San Carlos Apache medicine man and spiritual leader Franklin Stanley, Sr—"We have listened to you tell us Mount Graham is not sacred. But those who say that do not know, and they have not talked to the spiritual leaders, like myself. . . . Nowhere else in this world stands another mountain like the mountain that you are trying to disturb. On this mountain is a great life-giving force. You have no knowledge of the place you are about to destroy"—with the words of Charles W. Polzer, S.J., Curator of Ethnohistory at the Arizona State Museum in Tucson, brought in by the Vatican to dispute the sacrality of Mount Graham—"Had Mount Graham been a sacred locale for the Apache nation, military records would clearly mention it as the focal point for punitive raids."
The story of Mount Graham is also the story of routine genocide: Father George V Coyne, Director of the Vatican Observatory and former housemate