#24: Mt. Taylor (media advisory)

(Thank you for sharing this, Manny Pino.)

News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 5, 2009

Contact:
Governor Chandler Sanchez, Pueblo of Acoma, Office of the Governor (505) 552-6604
Governor John E. Antonio, Sr., Pueblo of Laguna, Office of the Governor (505) 552-6654
Governor Norman Cooeyate, Pueblo of Zuni, Office of the Governor (505) 782-7000
The Hopi Tribe, Office of the Chairman, (928) 734-2441
Vice President Ben Shelly, Navajo Nation, Office of the President and Vice President (928) 255-2132

Tribes Applaud Permanent Mount Taylor Traditional Cultural Property Designation

SANTA FE, N.M. – Tribal leaders commended the decision of the New Mexico Cultural Properties Review Committee to permanently designate Mount Taylor as a Traditional Cultural Property today.

Laguna Governor John E. Antonio, Sr., Acoma Governor Chandler Sanchez, Zuni Governor Norman Cooeyate, and Navajo Vice President Ben Shelly represented the nominating tribes during the CPRC meeting.

“This designation highlights the rich historic and cultural connections that each tribe maintains with the mountain, especially for the Pueblo of Acoma,” said Acoma Pueblo Governor Sanchez. “The nomination, now on public record at the New Mexico State Historic Preservation Office will serve as guidance for any future development on Mt. Taylor.”

In April 2009, the nominating tribes, including the Pueblos of Acoma, Laguna, Zuni, the Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Nation, submitted an application to the CPRC for a permanent TCP designation and State listing on the National Register of Historic Places for Mount Taylor.

Rising to an elevation of 12,000 feet, Mount Taylor is located midway between Albuquerque and Gallup in the southwestern corner of the San Mateo Mountains.
For hundreds of years, Mount Taylor has been an important cultural site for 30 Native American tribes, especially to the Pueblos of Acoma, Laguna, Zuni, the Hopi Tribe and the Navajo Nation.

“The Zuni relationship to Mount Taylor, as an important place on the landscape and as a marker of the extent of the Zuni homelands, has been documented through historic records for more than 300 years,” said Zuni Governor Cooeyate. “First by the early Spanish representatives in the eighteenth century, later by American military personnel and early anthropologists throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and more recently in land claims cases in the latter half of the twentieth century. While the importance of Zuni’s relationship to Mount Taylor can be found in writings that are very old, our relationship to the mountain exceeds the historic record by many centuries.”

Centuries before the mountain was named for President Zachary Taylor, it was known to the Acoma as Kaweshtima, to the Hopi as Tsiipiya, to the Zuni as Dwankwi Kyabachu Yalanne, to Laguna as Tsibina, and to the Navajo as Tso Dzil.

“To many area tribes, Mount Taylor is tied to our history, culture, and way of life,” said Navajo Vice President Shelly. “The mountain is culturally significant to the tribes, especially to the Navajo people. Through our belief system, we are tied to the land and sky through oral history and cultural customs. The Navajo people travel to the four sacred mountains, including the south sacred mountain, Mount Taylor, to obtain soil, tobacco, minerals, medicines, and other resources to create the sacred Mountain Soil Bundle, which are used in our Blessing Way Ceremony, the foundation of all Navajo ceremonies and Navajo Way of life.”

Cultural resources on Mount Taylor including pilgrimage trails, shrines, and archeological sites have been threatened by increased development.

In June 2008, the nominating tribes were granted a one-year temporary designation for Mount Taylor as a Traditional Cultural Property.

With the temporary designation in place, the nominating tribes worked collectively for one year to gather information needed to support a permanent designation, including the refinement of the TCP boundary, identifying non-contributing properties, and recording historical and cultural use areas.

“Many Laguna elders speak of guardian peaks that surround the mountain. While these guardian peaks do not constitute a boundary per se, their distribution is significant in assessing the boundary of the traditional cultural property delineated by the Cibola National Forest. They surround the boundary identified by the U.S. Forest Service,” said Laguna Governor Antonio. “The boundary we presented in our application represents a year of research, dialogue and collaboration in order to meet the standards required, and independent of the determination by the Forest Service. The Forest Service ultimately decided that its nominated boundary is appropriate for Mt. Taylor because it “more accurately reflects the widespread cultural use and the face of the mountain is encompassed within a larger cultural landscape that has been used by all for centuries.”

The ethnographic information and the detailed mapping supplement were provided by the nominating tribes to meet the stringent criteria needed for a permanent TCP listing for Mount Taylor.

“With today’s decision by the New Mexico CPRC, it is the tribes’ desire that all those considering development on Mt. Taylor will use the TCP designation as a tool to help guide and ensure the protection and preservation of a place important to the Tribes, to all New Mexicans, to the Nation and to the rest of the world,” said Governor Sanchez.

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