Gold Butte is a homeland for the Paiutes

I read with interest Margo Bartlett Pesek’s travel column in Sunday’s Review-Journal. My interest was piqued because on Saturday, 19 members of the Southern Nevada Paiute Tribes spent the day in Gold Butte.

Gold Butte is a traditional byway for Southern Nevada Paiutes. It is an area from which we gather plant materials for everyday use, and it has many sacred sites that are important to our people. While most visitors may come for recreational purposes, it is our homeland. When we are there, we are at home.

Long ago, as a result of a treaty between Paiutes and the U.S. government, the area now known as Gold Butte belonged to Paiutes. Subsequent treaties removed it from our ownership. While the paperwork removed Gold Butte from tribal ownership, it could not remove it from our hearts and minds. It stands today as homeland for us and can never be considered any other way. Our history with this land goes back thousands of years. It continues today as we utilize it for our native ways.

Our homeland is being overrun with people who care nothing about the land there. They drive their vehicles off the designated roads and through sites that are important to us. They shoot holes in petroglyphs and scratch over them. While we may never in the eyes of the United States truly have ownership of Gold Butte, we ask that they begin the process to protect and preserve this place so special to us.

We urge our federal legislators to introduce and pass a bill to create the Gold Butte National Conservation Area with Wilderness.

Kenny Anderson

Las Vegas

The writer is cultural chair of the Southern Nevada Paiutes.

Down the drain

To the editor:

The city’s decision to spend $8.5 million to re-open F Street under Interstate 15 is nothing short of ludicrous. Two blocks to the east, D Street provides a nice, four-lane connection between downtown and West Las Vegas. Online mapping shows the distance from the affected neighborhood to the Symphony Park area at about 1.5 miles. Hardly an inconvenience or an attempt at segregation.

In addition, F Street is a residential street. Let me get this straight: Most neighborhoods go to great lengths to discourage increased traffic on residential streets, with street grids designed to move higher-density traffic over to major arterials (such as D Street). This will dump more traffic on a residential street.

Instead of dumping $8.5 million down the drain, a sum like this could have been used to build 40 to 60 homes in the inner West Las Vegas area and then sold at discount (with a mandatory owner-occupied period) to police officers and teachers. That would have weeded out the blight caused by numerous empty lots and increased the population and median income of the area, which would encourage more business development.

Even without any social engineering, the resurgence of downtown likely will cause development and gentrification of all the neighborhoods within a radius of a couple of miles. The current street alignments are no impediment to that.

Ted Newkirk

Las Vegas

Serve and protect

To the editor:

Being a senior of 80 years, I remember a police logo that read, “To Serve and to Protect.” Apparently, our local police have forgotten this.

I find it extremely troubling that newly appointed District Attorney Steve Wolfson will not pursue charges against the Henderson officer who was captured on video repeatedly kicking Adam Greene in the head while Mr. Greene was suffering a diabetic seizure (Tuesday Review-Journal). The video indicates a complete lack of professionalism on the part of the Henderson Police Department, and we can only depend on the Review-Journal to alert citizens to the dangers created by these thugs posing as enforcement officers.

The officer should be fired, and Mr. Wolfson obviously is not suited to his new position as a district attorney.

Geret N. Kritzer

Las Vegas

Too late

To the editor:

I do not know Lew Roberts, but I do know a little about law enforcement after a nearly 30-year career in a large California agency (“Facing shooting facts: Retired homicide lieutenant says investigation ‘needs to happen,’ ” Sunday Review-Journal).

You take an oath. For six years as head of Metro homicide, Lt. Roberts states he was unable to make it known to his superiors his concerns about some shootings occurring in his department. Now that he has retired, he has asked for a federal civil rights intervention.

The oath is no longer relevant, Lt. Roberts. Any opportunity to uphold your obligation to your country, state and the citizens you protected is gone. You provide no documentation to support your position, and no one you mention supports your recollections. Documentation is the only proof of what has occurred. As a cop, you know that — or should. You failed to uphold your oath.

I am always amazed at those who fail to act because they fear for their career or position, but once retired, profess to be crusader of the just. If Lt. Roberts was truly concerned about the issues he asks federal officials to investigate now, I would have heard him scream of injustice years ago.

I understand Lt. Roberts was a good cop. But good cops are good all the time. Sometimes that puts them in the line of fire, but that’s what they’re paid for.

John Stites

Henderson