By David Webster
Catholic New Times
Toronto, Canada
22 September 1991
"The Great Spirit sends his mountain spirit to our people by
way of Dzil nchaa si an. He comes to teach the Apache men
and women to sing special spiritual words that help them
acquire the power to become medicine men and women.
This is our religion, these are our traditions. We Apache
must retain Mount Graham as a sacred mountain in ortder
to follow our religion."
-- Franklin Stanley, Apache medicine man
While indigenous groups from Baffin Island to Tierra del
Fuego prepare to mark 1992 as "500 years of resistance
and survival" since Christopher Columbus "discovered"
America, a consortium including the Vatican observatory is
preparing a celebration of quite a different kind.
By next year, the century-old Vatican observatory
expects to be working from a new telescope being built atop
Mount Graham, Arizona. The Vatican telescope plan, known
as Project Columbus, will share observatory space with a
consortium headed by the University of Arizona and
including the German Max Planck Institute, the Italian
Arcetri Observatory, and Ohio State University. The
University of Toronto recently announced its intention to
join the group.
The observatory announcement, however, sparked a
wave of protest from the Apache natives of the area, who
venerate Mount Graham as Dzil nchaa si an (Big Seated
Mountain), much as Sinai, Ararat, and Fuji are venerated
elsewhere.
Traditional Apache people believe that the Great Spirit
dwells in Big Seated Mountain, and sent the Mountain Spirit
to the Apache to teach them spiritual words and songs and
show them the right way of being. Ceremonial and healing
plants found only on this mountain play an important part
in the traditional Apache religion, which survives today
side by side with the newcomer, Catholicism. The key to this
tradition religion is the medicine men and women of the
Apache, who draw their power and knowledge from Big
Seated Mountain.
When the Apaches surrendered much of their land to
the expanding United States, they insisted that Big Seated
Mountain be included as the centre of their reservation.
"After the U.S. Cavalry killed many Apaches all throughout
Arizona, eventually the U.S. government allowed the
Apache nation a reserve which was a place where they
could live in peace," explains Danny Beaton, a Six Nations
Mohawk who has galvanized local protest against the
University of Toronto's part in the consortium. ""Over the
past few years that reserve that they were given has
dwindled and dwindled. What they have left to live on isn't
enough; it's very disgraceful."
In 1873, white complaints resulted in the removal of the
Big Seated Mountain from Apache land. Ten years later, the
grizzly and wolf populations on the mountain were extinct
and the once-plentiful deer herds were a shadow of their
former size. Logging was under way on the lower slopes of
the sacred mountain.
Despite the loss of exclusive use of the sacred mountain,
Apache medicine men and women continue to this day to go
to the mountain to practise their religion. Now, the coalition
says the construction of an observatory on the summit,
with associated roads, parking lots, tour buses and
buildings, will desecrate traditional sites and burial grounds
on the previously-untouched upper slopes and make
religious practise impossible.
"Christian people sing with Bible books," said medicine
man Anthony Logan. "We sing with the songs that come
from the mountains. Telescopes must not be built, they will
disturb mountain spirits and song."
The Apache campaign has attracted enough white
support to make the observatory an issue in Christian as
well as native circles. Speaking to the annual meeting of the
U.S. Catholic Press Association, novelist Tony Hillerman
called the installation of telescopes "as bad as the Israeli
government putting a radar tower on top of the Church of
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem."
Indeed, much of the Apaches' outrage has been directed
agaisnt the involvement of the Vatican observatory. The
Vatican telescope will be the first to be installed, early next
year.
Vatican involvement in astronomy dates from 1891,
when Pope Leo XIII ordered the foundation of an
observatory to atone for the church's role in silencing
Galileo, and to begin a dialogue between religion and science.
With the skies over Italy now too overcast with pollution for
effective observation, the Vatican Observatory was casting
about for a new site, and seized on the opportunity
presented by the Mount Graham Observatory consortium.
Native Americans, however, fell betrayed by the Vatican
move in the light of promises made to them by Pope John
Paul II in 1987 "to preserve and keep alive your cultures,
your language and customs." Wendsler Nosie, a Catholic and
tribal councillor at the San Carlos Apache reservation, says
the Pope should be aware of the spiritual damage the
Vatican telescope will cause. "The only religious group
invloved in this is the Vatican and that's why this bothers
me so," he told the Catholic Sun, published for the Phoenix
diocese. "Our medicine men are our spiritual leaders. They
go there (to the mountain) to receive all the gifts so that the
culture can continue. We're Catholics but what comes first is
our culture."
In an unusual embrace of technology, the Pope has
endorsed the Vatican telescope, going so far as to travel to
the United States in June to personally thank individual
donors who have covered the telescope's $3.5 million price
tag. Project scientists have "sought to interfere as little as
possible in the natural processes of the earth, that small and
precious part of the universe," the Pope said, but added that
he found the telescope project "gratifying."
Apache leaders, however, continue to maintain their
opposition. On August 19, the Apache Survival Coalition
launched a lawsuit against "the actions and omissions of the
United States Forest Service in approving a telescope
project on Dzil nchaa si an ... in violation of the U.S.
Constitution [which guarantees freedom of religious
practice] and various federal statutes." The laws violated,
the coalition said, include the American Indian Religious
Freedom Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the
National Historic Preservation Act, and the National Forest
Management Act.
On the same day as the lawsuit, protests were held at the
three universities -- Arizona, Ohio State, and Toronto --
Jparticipating in the telescope consortium. The Toronto
protest, sponsored by ACT for Disarmament, called on the
university's Physics department to follow the lead of the
Smithsonian Museum in Washington and pull out of the
project on environmental and human rights grounds.
Protest organizer Danny Beaton told demonstrators "there's
a great sickness in people's minds today. One way people can
find direction is by trying to help their mother the Earth."
Beaton called up the memories of the great heroes of
Apache struggle: "Geronimo and Cochise are dead now. Now
it's up to this generation to help Mother Earth. I think it's
very important that the teachers in the University of
Arizona and the University of Toronto start to think with
their hearts, not only with their heads. And the so-called
political leaders, they have to start working for the people
instead of themselves."
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