Copyright © 2002 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

This article is directed to the University of Virginia School Officials, its students, and the citizens of the state of Virginia.

On behalf of Apaches for Cultural Preservation, I am saddened to write and have to explain our position concerning your University’s decision to support funding for the University of Arizona’s telescope project on the Holy Mountain named Mount Graham. We understand you may have already completed the deal with the University of Arizona and will be assisting with financial support for the telescope project. If this is true, your decision to automatically support a project that clearly violates human rights used to surprise us, but not anymore.

If you study history, this type of action has been quite common. To lie, take the land, cause disorder among the people, and use that to your advantage is what the University of Arizona has done.

Our question is: How can a higher institution of learning be so eager to feed into what is evil in this world? Is deception a common practice? This does not surprise us anymore. It has been a common practice against all Native Tribes. Usen (God) blessed the entire world with many beautiful gifts such as the land, water, animals, air and all of us as humans. Usen (God) gave each of us a spirit and a spiritual way to communicate. This was to assure there would be balance in the world.

Mt. Graham is this special place for all living spirits to communicate and to receive special blessings. A person may request blessings for him/herself or for the community or the world. It is here that the cries of our people can be heard and Usen can be heard through the wind. We fail to understand your way of living. Is it your theory not to understand those who exist here, to show no feelings? And disrespect what God blessed here in North America?

I believe there is still people in your culture that hold deep in their hearts the feeling of knowing when it is wrong and when it is right. This abusive way of treating people whom God has laid his hands on and blessed with the knowledge of mother earth needs to stop. I don’t need to travel to the east to teach you or convince you of what is right. You already have your spirit telling you that what’s happening on Mt. Graham is wrong.

Has America forgotten about the tragedy that took place when the Europeans traveled west, to remove us from the land and to end our way of live, so that they could prosper with their greed? The University of Arizona officials with their team of investors from Italy and Germany, as well as Notre Dame, and Ohio State are no different than the people who made treaties with Native Americans then broke them with no second thought of our children. We have lost many Native Americans and many things were taken away from us. Why now do you wish to take our religion away?

It is really sad that even today, not even the United States President, Congress, or our own state elected officials recognize that we are the foundation of this Country and that in America, Native American religion is the oldest religion. Tell me what do my children, my grandchildren and the ones I will not live to see, have to face in their lifetime? How will they be treated? Apparently, no different than myself, my father, his father before him and the generation before.

Respectfully,

Wendsler Nosie Sr.
Apaches for Cultural Preservation
P.O. Box 766 – San Carlos, AZ 85550
Phone: 928-475-2494
E-mail: apaches4cultural@theriver.com