Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Roca Honda Mine

Chapter 3. Affected Environment and Environmental Consequences
in isolation from one another, is an alien concept. To understand the one resource, the viewer
must take into account where one is, what resources are located in that area, what is adjacent, or
down the valley, or on the slopes of the mountain, in order to fully understand the resource’s
place within the whole. The tribes have described this concept repeatedly during the consultation
conducted for the proposed project and for uranium mining in general, and it is expressed
throughout the State listed TCP nomination and their ethnographic assessments conducted for this
EIS. Some ideas expressed by the involved tribes regarding the concept of landscape are
presented here.
The Hopi believe that Mt. Taylor comprises a living landscape, and that it is part of the sacred,
ancestral landscape of the Hopi people. As a way of demonstrating this, the Hopi point out that
throughout the region surrounding Mt. Taylor, “Hopi place names serve to situate Mt. Taylor in a
regional geographic context” (Koyiyumptewa, 2012:6).
The concept of landscape is demonstrated throughout traditional Navajo history. The Holy People
made the landscape and designated it with mountains, including Mt. Taylor (Chestnut Law
Offices, 2009: Continuation Sheet, Section 12, page 82). The Holy People travel throughout the
landscape between Mt. Taylor and the other sacred mountains that bound the Navajo traditional
homeland to the east, west, and north (Benedict and Hudson 2008). Many traditional stories
reference specific landscape features in the area surrounding Mt. Taylor that can be pointed to
today.
The Pueblo of Acoma perceives its aboriginal homeland, which includes Mt. Taylor and the
proposed project area, as a living, traditional cultural landscape. “The cultural landscape is as
much a living thing as the people themselves” (Anschuetz, 2012:22). Cultural resources on Mt.
Taylor derive significance from their relationship with the mountain, and like Acoma’s people,
are inseparable from it. Acoma’s past is considered an intrinsic part of this landscape.
Archaeological traces “are material representations of that which the people of Acoma know to be
true of their culture, history and becoming” (Anschuetz, 2012:8).
The Pueblo of Laguna considers the project area and the surrounding landscape together as a holy
land. All of the facets of Mt. Taylor are interconnected to create a whole sacred landscape, with
Mt. Taylor as the anchor. “The project area is an integral part of a much larger cultural landscape
surrounding Mt. Taylor” (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and Ferguson 2012a:15). Cultural sites in the
proposed project area are considered to be vitally important parts of the environment as a whole.
One Laguna man expressed the following during the ethnographic fieldwork conducted for this
EIS: “No one has studied the relationship between this site and others in the area, how they are all
related. But you can’t just look at one of these sites in isolation. One here could be related to a
site miles away. This creates pathways and relationships between sites” (Colwell-Chanthaphonh
and Ferguson, 2012a:15).
Mt. Taylor has been described by the Pueblo of Zuni as a sacred landscape, viewed as a whole
that is comprised of interconnected cultural and natural resources (Colwell-Chanthaphonh and
Ferguson, 2012b). The surrounding cultural and natural resources and environment are important
to the maintenance of that sacredness. The Zuni people regard the landscape as an array of
inextricable elements, as a single, complete whole. Some parts of the whole, such as Mt. Taylor,
bear special meaning. This meaning then extends out to the other parts that make up the whole,
such as water, plants, animals, soil, and minerals.
320 DEIS for Roca Honda Mine, Cibola National Forest