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Our Democratic governor may often disagree with our Republican legislature, but the spirit of bi-partisan cooperation is wonderful to behold when he works with our Republican attorney general.
Roy Romer and Gale Norton raid communes together, and now they've joined to preserve the Ten Commandments.
At issue is a stone monument which displays the Decalogue in Denver's Lincoln Park. Some affronted atheists sued. The first court held that the tablets did not promote a specific religion, and thus could sit in a public park without violating the constitutional separation of church and state.
Upon appeal, the next court held found a violation. Now Romer and Norton will appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court in hopes of keeping the commandments in the park.
(Based on what I read lately, though, there are other
Denver parks more in need of a reminder that Thou shalt
not kill.
)
Now look about 50 miles northwest to Arkansas Mountain
in the foothills above Boulder. There the federal
government has sold 3.1 acres to a private party, and
Native American activists say the land should not have been
sold because it's always been used as a place of Native
American spirituality
for the Lakota, Cheyenne and
Arapahoe.
Always? The Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapahoe once dwelt in upper Minnesota; they did not arrive in this part of the world until the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
By that time, this sacred region was known even to white folks -- Juan de Urrirbarri in 1706, Pedro de Villasur in 1720, Pierre and Paul Mallet in 1740, Jean Baptiste la Lande and Lt. Zebulon Pike in 1806.
Further, history since then offers many Front Range battles wherein the Utes, the traditional inhabitants, fought against the Arapahoe and Cheyenne newcomers who were trying to displace the Nuche.
If Arkansas Mountain is a place where any tribe worshipped for centuries, that tribe would have to be the Utes, and they haven't issued any claims.
But this ruckus suggests a good legal strategy for Romer and Norton. Instead of conceding that the Ten Commandments were placed in the park in 1956 by the Fraternal Order of the Eagles as part of a promotional gimmick for a Cecille B. DeMille spectacular, they should find a Jack Mormon historian who might produce an account along these lines:
In 521 B.C., a Nephite prophet named Galeroy despaired that his people were falling into sin. So he incised the Ten Commandments upon a polished stone which he raised upon the Hill of Capitol in the City of Mammon, eastward of the Shining Mountains. Some millenia later, in 1956, the old tablets were discovered and remain in their traditional sacred place.
Granted, this may not be quite accurate, but it's as good as any claim that the Arapahoe and Cheyenne, let alone the Lakota, had been worshipping above Boulder for centuries before white people arrived.
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