I was away from my modem for awhile and haven't even read through all
the build-up of messages, I look forward to finding aut about the
angry messages regarding Mt. Graham. I know that in late 1990 I
attended a conference at Harvard which addressed the problems involved
in extending our Western legal concepts to accommodate religious views
not rooted in the Judeo-Christian traditions which underly U.S. first
amendment rights. The people I met there who spoke about Mt. Graham
were not eco-terrorists, and were far from the lunatic fringe. They
discussed the importance of maintaining traditional values (we hear
a lot about values these days, don't we?) they wondered about the
values of people who would build a ski lodge where the kachinas live,
permit construction even if it would do "irrevokable damage" to a
cultural tradition, or log a mountain named "Medicine Mountain" even
though there aren't really very many trees on it but since the Forest
Service has overlogged elsewhere, they look in unlikely places to pull
up their "numbers" for the yearly accounting.
They also wondered why the endandered species act gets more action than
the religious traditions and values of human beings. It is confusing
to me too. Maybe it's because the Wyoming toad, spotted owl, and the
red squirrel are easy to count. There's strength in numbers, they
say. It's those "nasty" intangibles that Westerners seem to have big
problems with...just ask George and Barbara and Bill and Hilary. It
is time to consider values, it is clear that the ones we have valued
before are unsatisfactory.
Paula