The New York City sculptor Sabin Howard gave himself away. He had a grandiose idea for a 60-foot-long sculpture and wanted to avoid the East Coast “bureaucracy” and build where the local rubes would let him do whatever he wanted.

Sen. Mike Lee told him to come to Utah. Gov. Spencer Cox endorsed the plan. After first being turned down by This is the Place State Park, Howard’s “Grand Liberty Arch” would rise nearly 40 feet above a beloved green space embedded in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, west of the Utah Capitol Grounds.

Legislative leaders Mike Schultz and Stuart Adams rammed the project through the Capitol Preservation Board without fully disclosing details to members. When neighborhood Capitol Hill residents finally heard about the sculpture, we were horrified by its scale and content and appalled that we had no chance to comment.

Utah just endured a similar scenario with Kevin O’Leary and the Stratos Data Center. The people of Box Elder County rallied bipartisan support statewide and sent the politicians who approved the project — Adams and two county commissioners — packing.

Neither O’Leary nor Howard have any connection to Utah. They cozied up to the state’s insular circles of power but made no effort at community engagement or transparency. They deign to speak for others, claiming support they don’t have. They challenge citizens who ask questions. And both are paying the consequences.

The triangle of open space proposed for the arch lies west of Columbus Street, a major thoroughfare for commuters who live north of the city. Placing this sculpture across a busy street from the Capitol would create both a dangerous crossing for pedestrians and an unwanted glitch in already congested traffic.

When Howard presented his work to a May 20 Capitol Hill Community Council meeting, his response to neighbors was abrasive and arrogant. The subtext was clear: We should be grateful he was gracing our neighborhood with his art. Decisions had been made. The patriarchy had spoken. The plan was in place.

Just as Box Elder County residents responded to dismissive tone-deaf entitlement from Kevin O’Leary, Capitol Hill neighbors reacted — civil but stunned by the complete absence of community participation with a once-in-a-century project.

Howard has encountered pushback before. When the accomplished figurative sculptor won the competition for the World War I memorial in Washington D.C., Charles A. Birnbaum, president of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, asked the crucial questions we need to ask here: “Did the memorial leverage the power of place in which it now resides?” Did it succeed in integrating itself in a place that serves both tourists and residents?

In Salt Lake City, I think the answer to both questions is clearly no.

And then there’s the content.

His model for “Grand Liberty Arch” has multiple figures posed in dynamic struggle to tell “the story of America’s journey through freedom,” according to Howard’s website.

The section called “Emancipation and Encounter Between Native and Settler” features a single Native man wielding a tomahawk while he shields his son. Howard told the neighborhood gathering that he hired an Iroquois man to pose for the figure. That was the sum total of input from tribal nations.

Iroquois — an outdated term for members of the Haudenosaunee Confederation — have nothing to do with Utah history. Howard’s website says, “The Native Warrior and son block the portal to the West … a violent fight is imminent as cultures collide.”

Utah does have its own Indigenous Trail of Tears, from the Mountain Meadows Massacre to the Diné Long Walk to the termination of the Paiute Tribe of Utah to the Ute Indian Tribe’s loss of millions of acres of reservation land to allotment. Nonetheless, contemporary Native leaders continue to speak strongly, reminding us of tribal sovereignty and rights as well as traditional ecological knowledge.

Listen to Autumn Gillard speak of her spiritual connection to her Paiute homeland in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Listen to Brad and Darren Parry bring us to tears with stories of the restoration of the Bear River Massacre site by the Northwestern Band of Shoshone. Listen to any member of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition share their tender co-stewardship of the land we share in southeast Utah.

The Native people of Utah have every right to be offended by Sabin Howard’s tomahawk-wielding figure.

“Art is a bigger thing than people understand,” Howard told the Tribune.

But we do understand. Do not condescend to us.

Sabin Howard is not creating a monument for the people of Utah. He is creating a narrowly conceived work entirely unrelated to our community. He wants it here because he perceives Utah offering the path of least resistance.

The Legislature has ruled that only one monument can be added to the Capitol grounds each century. Such a momentous decision demands community conversations across the full diversity of Utahns, who know more about ourselves and our history than Sabin Howard.

The Grand Liberty Arch is not the right choice.

Stephen Trimble lives in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Salt Lake City.

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