"Santa Fe Indian Market -- A History of Native Arts and the Marketplace."

Santa Fe Indian Market debuted in 1922. Back then it bore the official name of Southwest Indian Fair and Arts and Crafts Exhibition and it was presented as part of the Santa Fe Fiestas. The fair was held inside the National Guard Armory on Washington Avenue behind the Palace of the Governors. That background is from the first chapter of Bruce Bernstein's new book, "Santa Fe Indian Market -- A History of Native Arts and the Marketplace." Bernstein will discuss and sign copies of the book at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 14, at Collected Works, 202 Galisteo, Santa Fe. Edgar L. Hewett, the director of the Museum of New Mexico, opened that first Indian Fair on Sept. 4, 1922. The book's introduction says that years before, at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition, Hewett had "conceived of a 'Santa Fe style' of architecture and envisioned using Santa Fe Fiesta ... to promote Santa Fe's appeal as a tourist center." Chapter Two goes back further in time. It states that by the late 1880s, several forces had brought the state's Native peoples to the awareness of the general public. The most important force, Bernstein writes, was the railroad. The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway had arrived in New Mexico in 1878; it reached to within 18 miles of Santa Fe two years later. A spur line was constructed from Lamy to Santa Fe. Bernstein is executive director of the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts, which sponsors Santa Fe Indian Market. The Museum of New Mexico Press is the publisher...more

‘The Sheep Are Like Our Parents’

Irene, a 55-year-old Navajo herder and weaver, led from behind, making sure none of the animals on the right side of the flock straggled or strayed. She wore sweat pants, a long-sleeve T-shirt and a wide-brimmed hat. Following her instructions — “Keep them together but don’t rush them” — I did the same on the left. A motley crew of dogs, though good at keeping predators away once we were in the mountains, were useless as herding animals. I was here to get a taste of the traditional-contemporary life of Navajo pastoralists. My plan was to join Irene as she moved her sheep up to the Chuskas — a strenuous eight-hour trip — then stay for a few days on the ancestral land where generations of her family have spent summers. For centuries, Navajo shepherds living between Shiprock and Gallup, N.M., have practiced this seasonal migration with their flocks. Most of the few who do it today are women who weave the rugs for which the region is famous, tend to their animals and live far off the grid from June to October. Navajos can be guarded about how deep they let outsiders into their world, but some shepherds and weavers are beginning to embrace the idea of cultural tourism, both as a new source of income and out of a desire to share this part of their heritage before it disappears. Guests can help herd sheep and learn skills like weaving, natural plant dyeing, Navajo cooking, storytelling and more. It’s like going to a spartan Navajo dude ranch, where visitors can have an authentic experience of a fading American Indian way of life...more

Uranium Mines Dot Navajo Land, Neglected and Still Perilous

In the summer of 2010, a Navajo cattle rancher named Larry Gordy stumbled upon an abandoned uranium mine in the middle of his grazing land and figured he had better call in the feds. Engineers from the Environmental Protection Agency arrived a few months later, Geiger counters in hand, and found radioactivity levels that buried the needles on their equipment. The abandoned mine here, about 60 miles east of the Grand Canyon, joins the list of hundreds of such sites identified across the 27,000 square miles of Navajo territory in Arizona, Utah and New Mexico that are the legacy of shoddy mining practices and federal neglect. From the 1940s through the 1980s, the mines supplied critical materials to the nation’s nuclear weapons program. For years, unsuspecting Navajos inhaled radioactive dust and drank contaminated well water. Many of them became sick with cancer and other diseases. The radioactivity at the former mine is said to measure one million counts per minute, translating to a human dose that scientists say can lead directly to malignant tumors and other serious health damage, according to Lee Greer, a biologist at La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif. Two days of exposure at the Cameron site would expose a person to more external radiation than the Nuclear Regulatory Commission considers safe for an entire year. The E.P.A. filed a report on the rancher’s find early last year and pledged to continue its environmental review. But there are still no warning signs or fencing around the secluded and decaying site. Crushed beer cans and spent shell casings dot the ground, revealing that the old mine has become a sort of toxic playground...more

Kids have been out there drinking beer and shooting guns and the rancher just now found it?  I don't know about that. 

Pearce rally backs local forestry in Otero County

Rep. Steve Pearce

Surrounded by supporters, U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce cut down a tree during a ceremonial event Saturday near Cloudcroft intended to pressure the U.S. Forest Service to change management practices on the Lincoln National Forest. Pearce said he believes the event was stunning. "When people decide they're going to stand up and take a stand on principle, it's always magnificent," he said. "It's about safety of the community, jobs and the Constitution. We've been having a discussion back and forth with the county, the state and federal government for the last three or four weeks. It finally came to a head last week. The Forest Service decided they didn't want to pursue it. They didn't want the fight or injunctions." At the actual tree-cutting site, Pearce cut down a Douglas fir tree on a one-quarter acre parcel of land near the Sleepy Grass Campground in the Lincoln National Forest. (Commission Chairman) Rardin said he is hopeful the Forest Service will embrace the county's management plan. Cloudcroft Mayor Dave Venable said he wanted to thank county commissioners, Pearce and the crowd of supporters in attendance for coming to the event. "This is a beginning," Venable said. "This is really the beginning."...more

Deal legalizes tree-cutting event

Otero County Commissioners and U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce will be allowed to legally conduct their emergency tree cutting ceremony Saturday in the Lincoln National Forest. It puts to rest any fears that commissioners or Pearce may be arrested for illegal logging on federal lands. Commissioners have been negotiating with federal attorneys in Albuquerque about cutting down trees on the Lincoln National Forest since Monday morning. Commissioners and the U.S. Forest Service, through the U.S. Attorney's office, have signed an agreement that allows logging on one parcel of land in the forest. The agreement also allows the tree cutting to be done on a parcel of land in Sleepy Grass, located within the forest, at noon Saturday. The event will begin at Zenith Park in Cloudcroft. Commissioners are working on making arrangements for participants and observers to travel by bus to Sleepy Grass for the ceremonial tree cutting because of safety conditions. County Commission chairman Ronnie Rardin said he is pleased that commissioners and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Albuquerque reached an agreement. "Working with the U.S. Attorney's Office has been a privilege and a pleasure," Rardin said. "I am pleasantly surprised. They're really professional at what they do. Michael Hoses, Elizabeth Martinez and U.S. Attorney Ken Gonzales handled it with professionalism. This agreement is good for both sides -- the county and the Forest Service. In the end, the Forest Service and the county will work together for one goal."...more

The Albuquerque Journal also reported:

As recently as Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Albuquerque threatened to seek an injunction in federal court to halt the tree-thinning event that Otero County officials have billed as the start of a campaign to restore the Lincoln National Forest to healthy and safe conditions. Ronny Rardin, chairman of the Otero County Commission, said he was pleased that the county and Forest Service are working together, rather than fighting. “This is a milestone in American history – the Forest Service and the county trying to work together, finally, to get our forest back in control to protect the health, safety and welfare of the people up there,” Rardin said during the commission meeting in Boles Acres south of Alamogordo...Otero County officials have contended that, under a state law passed in 2001 in the aftermath of the Cerro Grande Fire that devastated Los Alamos, they did not need Forest Service approval to thin the forest and reduce extreme fire hazards around Cloudcroft...“The work that will take place on Sept. 17 is consistent with the mutually shared goal of reducing the risk of wildfire affecting local communities,” Justin DeJong, a Washington, D.C.-based spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which includes the Forest Service, said in a prepared statement late Wednesday. County attorney Dan Bryant said county and federal officials have agreed to continue talking about the county’s broader plans to thin 69,000 acres of forest around Cloudcroft...

Enviros aren't happy

The Center For Biological Diversity released a statement titled Congressman Steve Pearce Sharpens Call for Renegade Logging:

...“Congressman Pearce’s imagination knows no bounds when it comes to asserting local authority over federal public lands and environmental laws,” said Taylor McKinnon, public-lands campaigns director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s both preposterous and ethically bankrupt for a U.S. congressman to encourage and participate in vigilantism against America’s public lands.” Incidents of vigilantes destroying public lands and endangered species habitat are on the rise in New Mexico following similar calls by Pearce for counties to seize control of federal public land. Field visits by Center for Biological Diversity staff and a letter to Catron County from the Forest Service confirm that Catron County officials in August trespassed across private land to bulldoze 13.5 miles of the San Francisco River on the Gila National Forest. The river is designated critical habitat for the endangered loach minnow; the bulldozed section includes an inventoried roadless area downstream from Reserve. In a press release dated Aug. 3, 2011, seven days before the bulldozing incident, Pearce highlighted the fact that sheriffs in counties that patrol the Gila will not enforce roadless rules or the Forest Service’s “travel management plan,” which manages off-road vehicle use. The only federal response from the Obama administration has been a multiagency tour of the area and a letter from the Forest Service to the county...

And in Sagebrush rebellion flares up in New Mexico the Summit Voice has this:

A New Mexico congressman is inciting residents of his district and state to violate federal laws by ignoring Forest Service regulations on motorized travel and encouraging local communities to cut trees on federal land without required permits and environmental studies. Additionally, Sierra County Sheriff Joe Baca, Jr., publicly (on a Facebook page) threatened to arrest federal employees if they try to close national forest roads pursuant to Forest Service regulations (see the Facebook thread at the end of the story). U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) is leading yet another version of a sagebrush rebellion against the federal government, resulting what is being described by environmental groups as vigilante destruction of public lands...

At the end of this piece they show posts from Mike Skidmore and Sheriff Joe Baca from the Keep Our Forests Open Facebook page.

They really didn't like this post from Sheriff Baca:

Sorry I could not make it last night. Just know that I will not let them close any roads and if they so choose to do so I will arrest them for unlawfully closing a county road. They have no jurisdiction in Sierra County without me and I will not give them any. You have my support 100% and we will keeps the forest open!

The Alamogordo Daily News has this:

Bryan Bird, Wild Places program director for WildEarth Guardians, said the U.S. Forest Service is bending over backwards to accommodate county officials and Pearce for the event. "It still doesn't make it right," Bird said. "There are processes in place to normally access our national forests for commercial and other activities. I feel the county should have gone through the process like anyone else. The other factor is I don't know what all the fuss is about in the first place." He said he believes the Forest Service has continuing programs of timber and thinning projects to control fuel. "I don't know what the county and Pearce have themselves upset about," Bird said. "The (Lincoln) forest's website has all kinds of information about this situation to sort of calm people's tempers. This is political theater. It's not based on any reality in the real world. If these people would look at the facts, they would realize the Lincoln National Forest is treating its hazardous fuels. They're also conducting timber sales."

The Otero County Commission and their plan is "preposterous", "ethically bankrupt", "not based on any reality" and they are guilty of "vigilantism" and "vigilante destruction of public lands".

Yes, I'd say the enviros are a might upset.

Sheriff seeks safety at tree event

With a number of events happening Saturday, Otero County Sheriff Benny House and County Commission Chairman Ronnie Rardin caution people attending the emergency tree-cutting ceremony in Cloudcroft to think about safety first. The first part of the emergency tree-cutting ceremony will begin at noon at Zenith Park in Cloudcroft. U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, local officials and other guest speakers will address citizens attending the event. Commissioners have made arrangements for participants and observers to travel by bus to Sleepy Grass for the ceremonial tree cutting because of safety conditions. An observation area will be cordoned off for observers to watch. Zia Transportation will provide three buses to shuttle people to the site. One van will be provided by the Sacramento Senior Center to help transport people to the site. Rardin said the county has John Brazil's logging company providing equipment and supervision on the tree-cutting site. Cloudcroft is also hosting its annual Lumberjack Day, as well as the Mountain Top Invitational, an all-day high school volleyball tournament, at the Cloudcroft schools. Ruidoso will host its annual Golden Aspen Motorcycle Rally on Saturday, as well. House said he wants the public to be aware of the increased traffic in the area on Saturday...more

Compromise on forest use will benefit everyone

I have lived and worked as a builder, land developer and real estate broker in the Sacramento Mountains for about 30 years. I have had the opportunity to view the conditions of the forest in this area daily. When we first moved here in 1982, there were multiple family-run logging enterprises on the mountain and a large mill in Alamogordo. There was harmony between recreational use and the logging industry. The Forest Service was viewed in a more positive light as an asset in protecting a public treasure -- the Lincoln National Forest. The public was being served, ranchers grazed their cattle and loggers were consistently working, harvesting valuable timber and reducing the threat of fire. Recreational users enjoyed a road system paid for at the loggers' expense. There was room for all these diverse uses of the public treasure. The current situation in the Lincoln has made large scale, profitable logging very difficult to achieve. It has resulted in small single-use logging areas, interrupted for weeks and months for endangered species. The logging operators are nervous, small and have uncertain futures. The areas thinned are inconsequential in preserving the safety of the forest. The reduced size of available areas and increased stop work conditions have squeezed sawmills out of Otero County. This is a complex issue, but the facts support our forest is very thick and overgrown. A catastrophic fire is imminent...more