Jessica Hill
A rock formation is seen Nov. 12, 2021, in the Spirit Mountain Wilderness area in Clark County, where Avi Kwa Ame, also known as Spirit Mountain, is located. Avi Kwa Ame is a mountain and region that Native American tribes and conservation leaders are trying to protect and turn into a national monument.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023 | 2 a.m.
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With stomach-churning predictability, a well-known character flaw of Gov. Joe Lombardo arose again this week, sullying what should have been a joyous and unified celebration of Nevada’s newest national monument with a shabby culture war that sought to divide people into political camps.
On Tuesday, while tribal communities, historians and outdoor enthusiasts were celebrating President Joe Biden’s official declaration of the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Southern Nevada, Lombardo was throwing a tantrum.
Tribal and conservation leaders have spent decades advocating to protect the sacred land surrounding Spirit Mountain, the ancestral home of Nevada’s Fort Mojave Indian Tribe and a sacred site for more than a dozen tribes. In the process they’ve earned overwhelming support from members of Nevada’s congressional delegation, the Nevada Legislature and residents of Searchlight, Boulder City and Laughlin — whose communities will soon be surrounded by the national monument. They also earned the unanimous support of the Clark County Commission, a notable accomplishment given that the national monument lies entirely within Clark County.
Yet that wasn’t enough for Lombardo, who is pouting that Biden didn’t personally consult the governor on the decision.
Lombardo was so upset that he declined to join in the celebration of Nevada’s newest outdoor recreation and tourism destination or share the joy of Nevada’s Indigenous people in knowing their sacred land will be protected. Instead, the governor issued a disrespectful statement that ignored the long history of the project and can be interpreted as questioning the legitimacy of Nevada voters.
In the statement, Lombardo whines about not being personally consulted about the monument designation. Never mind that while the official designation didn’t occur until this week, Biden announced the designation in October 2022 — three months before Lombardo took office.
Lombardo then accused Biden of taking “unilateral action.” While it is technically true that Biden is unilaterally declaring Avi Kwa Ame a national monument, Lombardo’s statement ignores the decades of organizing and broad coalition of support for the designation. It also ignores the legal and historical reality that Congress specifically gave the president the authority to designate national monuments in the Antiquities Act of 1906 and that almost every national monument in the United States was created by this same “unilateral” authority.
His foot-stomping aside, Lombardo’s statement also contained several deeply disturbing accusations that illuminate his view of government and of Nevadans.
His statement said that in designating the site a national monument, Biden was bowing to “unaccountable special interests.” That implies that members of the Fort Mojave and other Nevada tribes aren’t Nevadans, that their elected leaders are illegitimate and that Indigenous people are instead just “special interests.”
It also implies that elected officials who supported the national monument, such as the Clark County Commission and U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev. — who authored the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument Establishment Act — are also illegitimate special interests whose voters don’t or shouldn’t count.
In a statement he has had months to prepare, on a topic whose outcome he has known since before he took office, Lombardo effectively declared that anyone in Nevada who votes for a candidate or a project he doesn’t like is an illegitimate “special interest” that he will ignore and dismiss because they’re “unaccountable” to him personally.
Lombardo then doubled down on the notion that anyone and anything he disagrees with is illegitimate by accusing the Biden administration and the federal government of “confiscating” 506,814 acres of Nevada land.
Is he really arguing that already federally owned land is not under the control or jurisdiction of the federal government? Or that protecting the ancestral homeland of a tribe that has lived on the land we now call Southern Nevada since before the discovery of the United States is somehow an illegal, disrespectful or unjustified “confiscation” of property?
We offered cautious praise for Lombardo’s first proposed budget for being moderate, rational and putting the needs of Nevadans first, but his history of lying to the people of Nevada and targeting those he doesn’t like with bogus accusations isn’t accidental. It appears to be a character trait.
Lombardo owes first Nevada’s tribes, then the rest of the state, then Biden an apology for his deliberate manipulations of fact and history. The governor also owes the people of Nevada an apology for sullying a day that should be a cause of celebration in the state and long overdue recognition of a tribal holy site.
