Indiana Jones aside, archaeologists are usually retiring types, more comfortable among the relics of the past than living humans.
That certainly described Jason Nez until about five years ago when developers started eyeing the Confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado Rivers, a sacred place in Navajo cosmology not far from his home on Coalmine Mesa, for a tramway and resort.
At a debate on the project hosted by a local high school, Nez spoke up against it, detailing the importance of the site to Diné history and the spiritual life of the traditional people who still live there.
The audience was visibly moved by the young archaeologist’s passion and eloquence, but possibly no one was as surprised as Nez himself. That was the moment, he said, that he realized “we have to speak up for resources that don’t have a voice of their own; otherwise we can lose those resources.”