Apaches Express Dismay Over Legislation Inserted into Defense Authorization Bill

Apaches Express Dismay Over Legislation Inserted into Defense Authorization Bill
Former San Carlos Apache Tribal Chairman Wendsler Nosie said he felt sick when he heard what legislators did last week. Members of Congress — including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. — inserted into the National Defense Authorization Act a controversial land-swap measure that would privatize national forest land sacred to Western Apache tribes. More than a dozen versions of the land-swap bill have failed to pass Congress since 2005. But now the U.S. Senate is expected to make a decision on the defense spending bill by late Thursday. http://bit.ly/1srJc6O – Arizona Daily Star

Society for American Archaeology’s Position on the Apache Leap Land Swap Resolution
The Society for American Archaeology (SAA) would like to express its opposition to Sec. 3003 of H.R. 3979, the Carl Levin and Howard P. “Buck” McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015, and urges its removal from the bill prior to Senate passage. SAA is an international organization that, since its founding in 1934, has been dedicated to the research about and interpretation and protection of the archaeological heritage of the Americas. With more than 7,000 members, SAA represents professional archaeologists in colleges and universities, museums, government agencies, and the private sector. SAA has members in all 50 states as well as many other nations around the world. http://bit.ly/16moUBp – Society for American Archaeology

Senate Passes Defense Authorization Bill
The Senate on Friday passed a sweeping $585 billion defense policy bill that will pay for the Pentagon’s activities in fiscal 2015, and give President Obama authority to expand the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The legislation passed 89-11, and now heads to Obama’s desk to be signed into law. http://bit.ly/1yR6BjE – The Hill

On the Other Hand – Defense Bill Provides Expanded Funding for National Parks
Tucked inside the defense authorization bill that the Senate passed Friday was an unrelated public lands package that’s set to bring the biggest expansion to the National Park Service in decades. Despite some conservative opposition—a chorus that skewered the legislation as a pork-barrel land grab—the measure also establishes thousands of acres of new wilderness areas. The bill designates seven sites as official national park units, many of which place a special emphasis on history, such as Manhattan Project work sites in New Mexico, Tennessee and Washington State.http://cnn.it/1yQX77Y – CNN

New National Monument in Nevada
Nevada is getting its first national monument, after Congress passed a measure setting aside nearly 23,000 acres full of prehistoric artifacts and bones. Democratic Congresswoman Dina Titus issued a statement Friday calling creation of Tule (TOO’-lee) Springs Fossil Beds National Monument a “mammoth” undertaking. http://bit.ly/133v9b8 – KTVN News

Salado Village and Cemetery Documented Near Apache Leap
A centuries-old Native American burial site has been uncovered along U.S. Highway 60 in Superior, including the remains of at least nine people and evidence of 40 rooms that once stood there. The human remains, discovered about five miles west of the Oak Flat Campground in the Tonto National Forest, will be repatriated to the Gila River Indian Community, on whose ancestral lands the remains were found, said Todd Pitezel, state repatriation coordinator for the Arizona State Museum on the University of Arizona campus. http://bit.ly/1wrwqVm – Arizona Daily Star

Fire, Flood, and Restoration – Santa Clara Fights to Preserve Sacred Landscape
For more than 1,200 years, Native Americans have called Santa Clara Pueblo home. But in 2011, a devastating fire blasted through the canyon they consider sacred, setting the stage for destructive floods. Now repairs have gone on for years, and there’s constant worry of more damage when it rains. http://to.pbs.org/1wwzZIz – PBS News Hour

Native Heritage and Green Energy Collide in Mojave Desert
Federally recognized Indian tribe has filed a lawsuit to block construction of a solar energy facility that will replace 4,000 acres of ancestral homelands in the Mojave Desert with reflective photovoltaic panels. The Colorado River Indian Tribes’ lawsuit claims the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact statement for the project failed to adequately take into account its effects on the area’s ecosystem, cultural resources, groundwater and the Colorado River. http://lat.ms/1341kar – Los Angeles Times

In Monumental Blunder, Greenpeace Damages Ancient Nazca Landscape
An expression of concern by the environmental group Greenpeace about the carbon footprint was marred this week by real footprints — in a fragile, and restricted, landscape near the Nazca lines, ancient man-made designs etched in the Peruvian desert. The Peruvian authorities said activists from the group damaged a patch of desert when they placed a large sign that promoted renewable energy near a set of lines that form the shape of a giant hummingbird. http://nyti.ms/1zaqLUL – New York Times

Another Paris Auction, Another Set of Sacred Items Under the Gavel
The U.S. Embassy in Paris is asking a French auction house to suspend the planned sale Monday of Navajo and Hopi artifacts. The embassy said Saturday that U.S. Ambassador Jane Hartley asked the auction house to withdraw the “sacred and culturally significant objects” to allow representatives from the two to determine provenance and see whether they can be reclaimed. http://yhoo.it/1wQ5pNf – Yahoo News

NMSU Anthropology Student Documents and Helps to Preserve Artists’ Home and Studios
Tucked away in a quiet corner of San Patricio in the mountains near Ruidoso, the 40-acre Hurd family home and studios might not be a destination everyone would immediately recognize. But thanks to a New Mexico State University student receiving her master’s degree in December, the property of artists Peter Hurd and his wife Henriette Wyeth-Hurd is now listed on New Mexico’s State Register of Cultural Properties and has been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. http://bit.ly/1srI0jC – Deming Headlight

Reminder: This Tuesday’s Phoenix Archaeology Café Features Dr. E. Charles Adams Discussing Ethnoarchaeology at Hopi 
On December 16, Dr. E. Charles Adams (Arizona State Museum) will share Ethnoarchaeology at Hopi: Opening a Window into the Past. Place: We meet in the Aztec Room of Macayo’s Central, 4001 N. Central Ave., Phoenix, near the Indian School light rail stop. Presentations begin after 6:00 p.m. It is best to arrive at about 5:30 p.m. in order to get settled, as seating is open and unreserved, but limited. Archaeology Café is free, but guests are encouraged to order their own refreshments from the menu. http://bit.ly/1AOm69R – Archaeology Southwest

Lecture Opportunity – Cortez
The Hisatsinom Chapter of the Colorado Archaeology Society is pleased to present Dan Simplicio on Tuesday, January 6th at 7:00 PM at the Methodist Church, 515 Park Street, Cortez, CO to discuss ‘Besides Jewelry:’ Other Uses of Turquoise by the A:shiwi (Zuni) People. Dan will discuss how turquoise is understood and used by the Zuni people, as well as how this relationship has changed through time. Contact Kari Schleher at 505-269-4475 with questions.

Lecture Opportunity – Santa Fe
Southwest Seminars Presents Dr. N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa), Recipient of the National Medal of Arts and Pulitzer Winner (1969, House Made of Dawn) for Fiction who will give a special holiday presentation A Celebration of Being on Dec. 22 at 6pm at Hotel Santa Fe as part of the Mother Earth Father Sky Lecture Series held to honor The New Mexico Environmental Law Center. No reservations are necessary but seating is limited. Refreshments will be served. Contact Connie Eichstaedt at 505 466-2775; email: southwest seminar@aol.com; http://bit.ly/YhJddr– Southwest Seminars

Thanks to Brian Kreimendahl and Cherie Freeman for contributing stories to this week’s newsletter.