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Sonny Weahkee, a young Navajo with long flowing hair and a very gentle manner, pointed to the faint, painted image of a dancing man in the volcanic rock of West Mesa, in a quiet national monument that seemed worlds away from the bustle of nearby Albuquerque. The images, which dot the mesa for miles around, are petroglyphs, rock paintings done by the Navajos' ancient ancestors at this sacred site beginning in 1000 B.C.
Navajo legend compares the 17-mile, curving mesa to the spine of a writhing reptile, but this snake will have a broken back if the proposed Paseo del Norte highway extension, being pushed by wealthy real estate developers and Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM)--the same man who helped create the national monument--is finally realized.
If Paseo del Norte is built right through the Petroglyph National Monument, claim the Navajo, it will open up a 6,700-acre real estate development named Black Ranch to ready buyers on the expanding west side of Albuquerque. Black Ranch, the jewel in the crown of influential Albuquerque businessman John Black, would have 19,000 homes and 40,000 residents. It is, of course, illegal to build commercial roads through national monuments, but Domenici fixed that by pushing through a Senate bill that transferred that part of the monument to the city of Albuquerque.
"You guys say everything is sacred," Sonny Weahkee (a leading light of the Petroglyph Monument Protection Coalition) says he is frequently told by local critics who think the Navajo are getting in the way of progress. Despite...