Dear HCN,
Paul Larmer’s story on
the president’s new monument (HCN, 4/14/97) is a pretty unfortunate
piece of work, reprinting the same tired and unsupported
information that has been circulating around the Intermountain West
for the past few months. Most of this folklore is, of course, lies
created by the extractive industries and swallowed by ignorant
members of impoverished county commissions and town councils. The
real story is in this creation of misinformation by corporations
and the willingness of small towns to swallow
it.
One hears about millions of dollars almost
coming into Kanab and other towns, but where are the figures? And
what would the costs have been like? Interviews with people like
Roger Holland who were Andalex contract employees and who owned
leases, without disclosing those relevant matters, are
unconscionable.
How can HCN print Louise Liston’s
sentimental stuff about cowboys without a serious assessment of
what damage cattle and cowboys have done to the region? Her most
passionate concern seems to be that backpackers have sex and take
drugs in those canyons.
Everyone wasn’t hopping
mad when Clinton proclaimed the monument. Indeed, a great many
people living in southern Utah didn’t want to be living in coalhaul
city USA, and are tired of the perfectly ridiculous notion that
cowboy culture is the indigenous culture of the
region.
This monument is and has been the site of
a cultural war. It has been fought on one side by people, who
because of their ignorance and hard-line anti-environmental views,
were guaranteed to lose. Those losers, from Orrin Hatch in the
Senate, to Rep. Jim Hansen, to the county commissioners like
Liston, down to the mayor of Big Water, have said and done
reprehensible things. I pity the federal land managers who have to
deal with the prejudice and ignorance of these people, under the
rubric of showing a new sensitivity.
Michael
Cohen
Cedar City,
Utah
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Utah’s culture war continues.
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