Perils of Preservation: Indigenous Cultural Landscapes, Heritage, and Vandalism

By Jacob Richard

Imagine walking through the doors of the last large museum you visited.

What do you see? Colourful artwork hanging off the walls? Marble sculptures along voluminous hallways? Rare cultural artifacts in neatly packed display cases? If any of this sounds familiar, your memory has betrayed you.

You would have seen, first and foremost, the metal detector, the security guards, the plethora of ceiling and wall-mounted cameras, locked doors, and other deterrents like bulletproof glass. It sounds like a prison, but this is what it takes to protect art and objects in 2024. Even then, this security doesn’t do much for cultural items and landscapes located outside the museum. Specifically at risk are Indigenous cultural landscapes that are all too often targets of vandalism.

In Canada, this type of vandalism is somewhat common.

Just last year, CBC reported that vandals had “hastily” etched names and other symbols on pictographs at Bon Echo Provincial Park. Some of the pictographs were around 1,000 years old. Prof. Veldon Coburn told CBC:

“This kind of thing is like our Mona Lisa. There are things that you can’t duplicate.”

A similar incident involved vandalism of pictographs at Matinenda Provincial Park in 2017. This “non-operating park” only rarely has staff present at the site. Out of 100 pictographs, only five were left undamaged.

Chief Reg Niganobe of Mississauga First Nation told CBC he expected those responsible for Matinenda to “get away with it” and expressed concerns that “heightened attention to the problem may incite even more acts of vandalism.” The Anishinabek Nation called for “further protection efforts be examined to ensure that this type of vandalism does not happen again,” but no government action was taken at Bon Echo either. Those guilty for both acts of vandalism remain at large.

In the United States, the situation is much worse.

The Sonoran Desert National Monument in Arizona might be the most controversial example from recent news. Emily Guerin reported that a dispute started in 2011 when the site’s staff publicized their plans to close a legal loophole that made vandalism easy.

Due to the Monument’s status as “public land,” administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), target shooting at the Monument was legal by default. It was effectively open season all year, every year, on the Indigenous inscriptions and art at the Monument. The staff were trying to stop the destruction.

However, “Washington, D.C.-based hunting and shooting advocates” managed to convince the BLM to overrule their staff’s decision. A lawsuit followed in 2013, which after several setbacks, finally forced the BLM to make “recreational target shooting available on 5,295 acres of the monument and unavailable on the remaining 480,496 acres.” Advocate groups applauded the decision to protect the Monument but admitted it was “heartbreaking” to see the damage already done. Protecting these sites is hard enough without the public using them for target practice.

A year ago, another act of vandalism was discovered when a man was caught “digging away inside a two-foot wide and 15-foot long tunnel” near Fort Pearce in Utah. ABC4 reported that the man had been “digging for precious metals” without approval, labeling him a “treasure hunter.” He was later charged with “illegal activities” on Trust Land, but that doesn’t reflect the real damage done to the site. The tunnel irreversibly damaged parts of the Fort Pearce Historic Site, which contains over 100 petroglyphs. Utah’s lead archeologist told the Salt Lake Tribune that when the accused came across cultural artifacts and artwork, he simply “dug it up and threw it out.” While the cultural damage was “impossible to calculate,” Utah estimated the cost to exceed only $18,000. About the price of a used car. This is hardly comparable to the value assigned to pieces found in museums.

The vandalism of Indigenous landscapes and cultural objects is not likely to diminish. In 2022, CBC reported that Texas’ Big Bend National Park experienced around fifty separate vandalism incidents in just five years. On April 15^th, 2024, the National Park Service shut down sections of Petroglyphs National Park in New Mexico due to “countless incidents of damage and vandalism.”

So, what’s the solution?

At Petroglyph Provincial Park, you’ll have to enter a large building with multiple staff and at least one person guarding the door.

While these security measures seem adequate, Dagmara Zawadzka has convincingly argued that the opposite is true. Not only were the petroglyphs “damaged during the construction,” but the building itself “severs the complex relationship between the images … and the landscape.” Zawadzka is critical of how this security “fails to emphasize the continuous relationship and use of the site by Indigenous people.” By putting the petroglyphs behind glass, the cultural function of the petroglyphs is significantly diminished. That’s not the solution we’re looking for.

The protective building also takes for granted that the petroglyphs were doing just fine before the creation of the park. It was the park’s promotion of tourism that sparked fears of “vandalism and deterioration.” Had the petroglyphs remained insider knowledge, security wouldn’t be necessary.

People can’t vandalize what they can’t find.

Another approach, is protection through censorship.

On April 20^th, 2024, a report submitted to the Wyoming Select Committee by their State Archeologist revealed that 24% of documented Wyoming petroglyph sites were either vandalized or defaced. The archeologist also found that areas with the fewest petroglyphs experienced the highest vandalism rates (32%) due to their “greater accessibility.” The Committee debated possible protection measures during two high-profile meetings in May. These were the main takeaways:

• Petroglyphs must be better mapped, but their locations should remain insider knowledge.
• Photographs should be regularly taken of each petroglyph to document their condition.
• The public must be better educated about the importance of petroglyphs.
• Punishments for vandalism must be harsher.

The committee’s recommendation to restrict the public’s access to information parallels other calls from “advocates and Native Americans” to stop spreading the locations of pictographs and petroglyphs online. For example, hikers contribute to vandalism when they share “images and GPS co-ordinates” on social media. Yet, the hiking community seems apathetic. One trail guide argued that vandalism “will continue … whether I write hiking guides or not.” Even if one person stops spreading information, others will continue.

Canadians need to watch the Wyoming Select Committee closely. Not only is Wyoming actively combatting the vandalism of Indigenous cultural landscapes, but its close collaboration with Indigenous stakeholders demonstrates strong reciprocal relations. Deference to the land’s stewards, Wyoming’s Indigenous peoples, will go a long way to ensure that Wyoming’s pictographs and petroglyphs stand the test of time. Brian Beadles, the Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer, said during the recent October meeting that

“[these] historic inscriptions are tied to really important periods in the history of this country … that’s a lot different than somebody out on a weekend camping trip scrawling their name out.”

He’s right; it’s time we all start taking the issue more seriously.

Jacob Richard is a History Ph.D. student at Queen’s University. An Acadian from Thunder Bay, he researches nineteenth-century North America with a focus on Euro-Indigenous relations.

---

Suggested Reading

Vastokas, Joan M. “Pictographs and Petroglyphs.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada. Article published March 21, 2012; Last Edited October 24, 2023. www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/pictographs-and-petroglyphs.

Wyoming Legislature. “Select Committee on Tribal Relations, May 1, 2024.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/live/RVL67iZcfTE?si=QASOyC-XJTEL7cQi.

Wyoming Legislature. “Select Committee on Tribal Relations, May 2, 2024 – AM.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/live/VdsK89EZdNA?si=AkzLFjMkFWpzG-ZK.

Wyoming Legislature. “Select Committee on Tribal Relations, May 2, 2024 – PM.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/live/0o5jeC_Q9mY?si=8OjfK25L5sTYXgVN.

Zawadzka, Dagmara. “The Peterborough Petroglyphs/ Kinoomaagewaabkong: Confining the Spirit of Place.” Paper presented at 16th ICOMOS General Assembly and International Symposium: Finding the spirit of place – between the tangible and the intangible, Quebec, Canada, Sept-Oct 2008. https://openarchive.icomos.org/id/eprint/233/1/80-W9Fu-143.pdf.