On Being an Active Historian and the Usefulness of History: The Case of the Ongoing Struggle for dzil nchaa si'an (Mount Graham)

Abstract

Mount Graham, an ecologically unique mountain in southeast Arizona, is quite possibly the most studied mountain in the United States. 1 At 10,720 feet tall, Mount Graham contains five life or vegetative zones, the most of any isolated mountain in the United States. 2 Mount Graham is a "Sky Island," a mountain island surrounded by a sea of desert. There are approximately "30 or so endemic, rare, threatened, endangered, and unique distributions of plants and animals," including the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel, on Mount Graham, according to anthropologist and biologist Peter Warshall. 3 Warshall wrote, "The southwestern sky island 'archipelago' is unique on the planet. It is the only sky-island complex extending from subtropical to temperate latitudes … with an exceptionally complex pattern of species of northern and southern origins." 4 For at least the last 140 years, Mount Graham has been a site of intense battle over the ownership of Southwestern lands and mineral wealth. Mount Graham, or dzil nchaa si'an, as it is called by Western Apache people, "has been a locus of conflict through increasingly intrusive iterations of conquest pursued by Spanish, Mexican, and American forays since the 1700s." 5 The struggle for Western Apache traditional spiritual homelands, including this sacred mountain, began in the wake of the Mexican American War. In 1871, the American government ceased its treaty making responsibilities and created the White Mountain Reservation by Executive Order. In 1872, by presidential proclamation, President Ulysses S. Grant increased the size of the reservation to include the mountain range, but by 1873, the U.S. government returned mineral and water resources, including all of Mount Graham, "to the public domain." Between 1873 and 1902, a series of Executive Orders reduced the size of the reservation by about twothirds of its normal size and created two large, separate Western Apache reservations. Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, the mountain became a national forest while simultaneously the University of Arizona's (UA) astronomy program took off. Throughout the twentieth century, various Arizona peaks were gobbled up for telescopes and Southern Arizona became a hotbed for astronomy. However, Western Apaches maintained a lasting relationship to their sacred Mount Graham in the post-reservation era and throughout the twentieth century. In the early 1980s, a UA-led consortium of universities and research institutions selected Mount Graham as a location to highlight the next generation of telescopes. By the end of President Ronald Reagan's second term, a complex web of national and international alliances was formed. 6 As Christian clerics and scientific astronomers assembled on one side of the battlefield, Apache traditionalists and environmentalists gathered on the other side. These alliances illustrate a

Cultural Survival in Action: Ola Cassadore Davis and the Struggle for <em>dził nchaa si'an</em> (Mount Graham)

“…The Mount Graham issue has played major role in bringing Indian people and white people together," Ola pointed out, "in a working relationship which has trust and understanding. 44 The UA-financed Booz-Allen Report suggested making "outliers" of Apaches who disagreed with astrophysical development and offer "inducements" to the tribe that should not be seen as "bribes." We cannot help but be strengthened by these collaborations."…”