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rjzimmerman:

Excerpt:

Those who make the climb up Blanca Peak know that it’s an incredible mountain. But for Len Necefer, CEO of Natives Outdoors and an obsessed Navajo climber who has summited Blanca six times, there is more to tell beyond the visceral physical experience. In the Diné language, the peak is called Sisnaajini, and it marks the eastern boundary of the traditional Navajo Nation—the place where the sun rises to begin the day. Sisnaajini features in several Navajo songs that tell the chapters of the nation’s history, and when Necefer climbs it, he is thinking not only about its incredible granite. He also reveres it for the sacred place that it is, and wonders what the standard route to the summit was for his ancestors 10,000 years ago.

But since the American education system does a terrible job of covering the pre-Colombian history of the United States, this added perspective on Sisnaajini—even the idea that it has another name to begin with—is lost on most non–Native American adventurers. To try to remediate this ignorance, Necefer started playing around with a very simple, nonintrusive tool to pique interest about the indigenous history of the outdoor places many of us love: geotags on Instagram and Facebook.

By providing outdoor enthusiasts the opportunity to rename places with their Native American words—Mukuntuweap for Zion Canyon, or Babad Do’ag for Arizona’s Mount Lemmon, for example—Necefer hopes to encourage those who already have a deep connection to a natural place to investigate that peak or landscape’s indigenous significance and history. Along with partners like Joseph Whitson and his Indigenous Geotags, Necefer is trying to promote a deeper connection to landscapes and the passion to protect those places.

While Necefer doesn’t expect that the European names of cherished outdoor places will be swapped out for their indigenous ones, he does hope that a greater understanding of the Native American histories of these places—places they have cherished, recreated on, and managed sustainably for hundreds or thousands of years—will increase public appreciation for them. And maybe even spur some people to respect those places more.

“It’s not respectful to go climb a church,” Necefer says. “That’s a
mainstream cultural norm. But the idea of respecting native sacred
spaces in the same way is a pretty new discussion, at least on a
national level.” Necefer believes, for instance, that the campers at
Lake Como who left the pile of trash that he stumbled across during his
first visit to Blanca would have paused before doing so if there was any
information to let them know it was a sacred Navajo site.

As
Necefer has sought to increase awareness of Native American history, he
has had to reconcile his own passion for outdoor recreation with what he
initially perceived as restrictions surrounding how indigenous sacred
sites “should” be respected. “The first time I went to climb Blanca, I
was pretty nervous,” Necefer says. “I was worried about how I would be
perceived in my community and in my family. But after chatting it over
with them, it wasn’t a problem—they just told me to be reverent of the
place, and to behave myself.” Ultimately, he has come to the conclusion
that outdoor recreation in sacred places is appropriate as long as a
spirit of reverence accompanies it. “Some, but not all, native peoples
think [these peaks] are too sacred to go to the top,” he says. “But I
think it’s really important [to go to the top] because a lot of Navajo
folks don’t have the means to come and access these mountains and
experiences, and it’s great to share what it looks like up top, and get
to know it, and impart that knowledge on others and share how
fantastically beautiful [these places] are, to inspire others—and not
just natives—to protect these places. For Necefer, a visceral, intimate
appreciation for place is the common ground on which all other
appreciations are built.

Necefer points to the fraught history of
Wyoming’s Devils Tower National Monument as an example of how adventure
can coexist with reverence. The monolith of stone is a sacred site for
Northern Plains Indians, including the Lakota, Dakota, and Cheyenne, who
call the place “Bear’s Lodge.” In the 1990s, a coalition of native
nations asked for a voluntary ban on climbing the tower’s renowned
cracks in June, out of respect for the tribal ceremonies that take place
at its base in mid-summer. Afterward, the number of climbers attempting
the tower’s routes fell from a monthly average of 1,200 to less than
200. “Provided the information, the majority of people will make
appropriate decisions,” Necefer says. (There is currently an effort
under way to formally rename the tower Bear’s Lodge, though it has met resistance from state and local politicians worried about the impact on tourism.)

The years-long campaign to establish Bears Ears National Monument in
southern Utah offers another example of how Western ideas about
conservation can combine with Native American traditions about sacred
sites and land management. The effort to establish Bears Ears brought
together five Native American nations that didn’t always see eye-to-eye,
and at the same time created new alliances between those nations and
the outdoor recreation industry and conservation groups like the Sierra
Club. These sometimes insular communities teamed up to advocate for the
national monument’s establishment for both its cultural and outdoor
recreational values. That alliance succeeded in avoiding the flawed
conservation view of the area as a pristine “wilderness” free of
people—an idea that can do great harm to indigenous communities by
negating their history and connection to the land, along with their
generations-long sustainable management of landscapes.

Native American Climber Works to Restore Indigenous Names to Peaks