A major Native American site is being looted. Will Obama risk armed conflict to save it? |
06 Jun 2016 10:00 AM
A major Native American site is being looted. Will Obama risk armed conflict to save it?June 5 at 8:48 PMRIM OF CEDAR MESA, Utah — For centuries, humans have used the red sandstone canyons here as a way to mark their existence. First came archaic hunter-gatherers who worked in Glen Canyon Linear, a crude geometrical style dating back more than 3,500 years. Then about 2,000 years later, early ancestral Pueblo farmers of the Basketmaker period used more subtle lines to produce a man in headdress. A little more than 700 years ago came their descendants, who used the same kind of hard river stone to make drawings of bighorn sheep and a flute player in the ancient rock. Now, President Obama is weighing whether and how he can leave his own permanent imprint on history by designating about 2 million acres of land, known as the Bears Ears, as a national monument. A major Native American site is being looted. Will Obama risk armed conflict to save it?
|