facebook-pixel

Letter: Calling tribal beliefs ‘ancient yarns’ is offensive; just try saying that about Mormon beliefs

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The two buttes that make up the namesake for the Bears Ears National Monument reveal the vast landscape surrounding them as part of the 1.35 million acres in southeastern Utah protected by President Barack Obama on Dec. 28, 2016. Utah Republicans in Congress are advocating for Trump to jettison UtahÕs national monument designation.

“Ancient yarns?,” Bob Mims’ article on the creation stories of the various tribes, was shockingly dismissive of the tribes’ religious beliefs with his labels of “imaginative narratives” and “ancient yarns.”

These characterizations of the creation stories are patronizing and offensive and served to diminish in the readers’ minds the sacred importance of the Bears Ears area to the five tribes fighting to keep it from development.

How many Utahns would be up in arms if the story of a prophet receiving golden plates from an angel and getting translations from inside a hat was described as a yarn or an imaginative narrative?

Kathleen Kelly, Moab