Sierra Club Our Wild America Organizer, Christian Gerlach, with his father, Siegfried Gerlach,
in the Wee Thump Joshua Tree Wilderness Area April 22nd 2018
Sign the petition to protect the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument.
By Christian Gerlach
Many of us are blessed to have learned from the generations that came before us. Knowledge, language, cultural traditions, world views, oral histories, natural resources, and special places connect us and provide us intergenerational bonds.
I was raised by a wise and kind man who taught me the lessons of our place in time and on this planet, and our role in it all. I am privileged to now get to enjoy and protect the magnificence of our public lands in my career-- the same places my father Siegfried Gerlach showed me growing up. This has been a way, since I lost my father in 2019, to honor his life lessons and memory. I learned from a young age that we borrow resources from future generations, and for that reason, we need to act as stewards of the land so that future generations of not only our species, but all species, will exist into perpetuity.
One recent trip I got to enjoy with my dad before he passed away was on Earth Day in 2018. My father and I had heard about a potential wind project being considered near Searchlight, Nevada and we wanted to see the area before any sort of development happened.
My family and I packed up the car and drove out late Sunday afternoon after a family meal, a Sunday tradition of ours. We headed off to drive the loop around the Wee Thump Joshua Tree Wilderness Area near Searchlight. Along the drive, we reminisced about all the times my mom and dad took us on road trips to view the ancient Joshua Tree Forest. The permanence of those Joshua Trees will forever be as beautiful to me as the memories of my family’s times soaking in breathtaking places across Nevada.
Those fond times largely inspired my current career as a public lands organizer at Sierra Club. Advocating for the conservation of public lands, like the proposed Avi Kwa Ame National Monument in Nevada, is a point of pride and how I know to honor my father, his memory, and the lessons he imparted to me.
Just as I hope to hold onto the memories of trips with my father to the Joshua Tree forest in Wee Thump, I hope to see the Avi Kwa Ame area preserved as a national monument There are several places that will always be near and dear to our hearts from the memories we have of them and the people we shared those places with. Many of those places which are also not yet recognized and protected. We must urge our leaders to act to preserve our natural world so that future generations may continue to explore, enjoy, and protect places like Avi Kwa Ame one day too.
This is especially true for the original people of this country who wish to save what is left of their ancestral lands, protect cultural knowledge and traditions, and honor mother earth. The Indigenous Peoples that have living cultural connections and their own memories of the land in the proposed Avi Kwa Ame National Monument are leading the effort to try to preserve the area.
Proposed Avi Kwa Ame National Monument at night, courtesy of Justin McAffee.
Avi Kwa Ame is the traditional and ancestral lands of the Southern Paiutes and Fort Mohave Tribe, or Pipa Aha Macav (People by the River) as they refer to themselves. Even more, Spirit Mountain, the Dead Mountains, and the surrounding area within the proposed monument are closely tied to the creation stories, cosmology, and well-being of the 10 groups of Yuman-speaking peoples.
The area also has cultural importance to the Mohave People, Chemehuevi Paiute, Moapa Paiute, Las Vegas Paiute, and Hopi people. There are prehistoric mining sites of turquoise used by Native Americans like the Southern Paiutes, Western Shoshone, and Mohave peoples going back hundreds of years, and sections of the historic Mojave Trail, originally used by Indigenous Peoples to transport goods from the southwest to trade with coastal tribes.
Land and cultural conservation work was always deeply embedded in the lessons my father taught me as a boy. Preserving natural resources that have been stewarded for us by past generations is pivotal to our future. That traditional knowledge many of us have received from our ancestors is now what scientists and national governments across the globe are calling for-- to preserve the natural world and the systems that provide us and all species on this planet clean air, water, and life itself.
Today, the Sierra Club is heeding this call by prioritizing the effort to protect 30 percent of lands, waters, oceans and green spaces between now and the year 2030. It is a critical effort to preserve our planet for those who come after us.
Designating the Avi Kwa Ame/Spirit Mountain National Monument would not only be a great step toward achieving these goals, it would help us protect irreplaceable culture, traditional knowledge and history.