Finding God in the High Desert

Richard Silversmith recently made a trip to Bears Ears National Monument in Utah to take in its beauty, to go jogging, and to pray for the right words to say when he would attend meetings in Washington, D.C.
Being there in the high desert amid the mesas, buttes, and deep canyons, he said, inspired him to speak what he thought and felt when he and other Indigenous leaders went to Washington on June 2.

Silversmith is Navajo and is an elder at the CRC’s Christian Indian Center in Denver, Colo. He went to Washington with a contingent of Christian leaders from Indigenous communities in Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado.

“We were there,” said Silversmith, “to strengthen the voice of advocacy for Bears Ears National Monument and the Inter-Tribal Coalition of Utah,” of which he is a member.

Other leaders representing more than 20 states and the District of Columbia also joined the effort, hoping to make their position clear before the Department of Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, makes an announcement later this month about whether or not Bears Ears will be stripped of its monument status.

After praying on June 2, said Silversmith, they attended round table meetings to explain why protecting and preserving Bears Ears as a monument is so important to native peoples.

“Bears Ears is sacred ground rich in cultural and historical significance. Native Americans depend on this land not only for spiritual nourishment but also for their very survival,” said Silversmith.

While the area is a physical desert, said Silverman in an interview, it also represents a spiritual desert that is rich in sacred possibilities.

“A spiritual desert can be a metaphor for a time or season in the life of area tribes when people feel spiritually dry and that God has deserted them. When we journey through a spiritual desert, we need to have a survivalist’s mentality and understand the experience as an opportunity for our faith to develop.”

President Barack Obama designated Bears Ears a national monument at the end of his second term in office. This decision comes with a range of rules and protections to which some farmers and others in the area are opposed.

With a change in administration at the White House, the decision to keep Bears Ears as a national monument is now up for debate. President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order to reconsider the designation.

In a letter to the White House and to Congress, the CRC’s Office of Social Justice joined with more than 30 other faith-based groups to call on President Trump and Congress to spend time listening to more native people and others for whom this is an important issue.

“We strongly urge your administration to extend the comment period, host public stakeholder hearings, spend much more significant time meeting with the Bears Ears Commission (representing the native tribes) on site, and follow the commission’s original recommendation to uphold the existing boundaries of the Bears Ears Monument,” the coalition of faith groups wrote.

Bear's Ears is home to over 100,000 Native American archaeological and cultural sites. In light of the amount of Native life that was destroyed throughout U.S. history, it is only right that we take care to enshrine what remains, said Kris Van Engen of OSJ.

“To this day, Bear's Ear remains an important site for ceremonies and foraging for herbs and food…. The CRC family is blessed to have advocates like Richard Silversmith to take the lead in speaking out for indigenous justice and we are thankful Washington is taking time to consider his testimony."

Silversmith says a theme that he tried to express while in Washington, D.C. was based on the CRC’s Creation Care statement, saying, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it … and just as God placed human beings ‘in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it’ (Gen. 2:15), so the Lord calls us, the crown of his creation (Ps. 8:5), to be stewards of his natural world.”

“I urged our nation’s leaders as stewards of creation and reminded them of the danger of reducing or rescinding the protections monument status, such as Bears Ears,” said Silversmith.

More is involved in this issue than a national monument designation, although that is important because of the protection it provides.

What needs to be said, and what overrides everything, said Silversmith, is that Bears Ears is a place where the Creator can meet his people. It is in this geological desert that native people and others can learn to follow God completely, and, in doing so, survive as people connected to and nourished by God..

“Through the burning crucible of the desert, trauma survivors, medicine people, pilgrims, and all sinners and saints” can find healing and be “cleansed and purged for the Creator’s great purpose,” he said.