I understand that, as an official state magazine, they're trying to drive tourism to the state. I still don't have to accept pseudoscience used to promote The State Different (riffing on Fanta Se as The City Different, capital of The Land of Disenchantment).
They had two new entries in the "service" of pseudoscience, in their March issue.
First, in the story "Ancient Enigmas," about pueblitos (of which I'd already read plenty by David Roberts), there's:
“We emerged as one people,” says (Timothy C. Begay, cultural specialist with the Navajo Nation Heritage and Historic Preservation Department) of all the tribes that occupied the Four Corners. “We were one culture until Chaco fell. It was one voice, one people, one belief. We have sacred places that we still visit all over this area. If we came across the Bering Strait, why don’t we have sacred places in Canada and Asia?”
OK, I know any traditionalist Indian is going to say that. No need for the author to abet with this:
The story melds with the tribe’s longer-lived sense of its history in the area, a history centuries older than archaeologists can prove. The scientific research points to Athabaskan people (Diné and N’dé, or Apache) traveling across the Bering Strait and working their way down to the Southwest around the 1400s. The Diné say they were here far earlier, emerging near a lake in southwestern Colorado, and that First Man and First Woman settled at Gobernador Knob, a sacred mountain south of Navajo Lake. Begay says his people have always been here, something that future archaeology may yet confirm.
Oy.
Begay is wrong in two ways. First, the Diné have not always been there, and as far as sacred sites, I'm sure your "cousins" in northern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia have them in plenty. He's also wrong in that, no, the Navajos didn't emerge with other peoples. This, to go woke on the woke, is just another installment in Navajo cultural appropriation of Pueblo traditions and religion.
Then, in the piece "Abiquiu State of Mind," we have the tagline of author Molly Boyle:
Molly Boyle thinks even the truest atheist can have a spiritual encounter in Abiquiu ...
Tied to the end of the third-to-last paragraph of the body copy:
I’ve had metaphysical experiences during fireside suppers in campgrounds that line the Río Chama along Forest Road 151, and while winding through the wooden Stations of the Cross on an alternate path toward the Monastery of Christ in the Desert.
Kind of like the "To the Atheist" chapter in the AA book, eh?
Ms. Boyle may be an atheist in the narrow sense, like countless millions of Theravada Buddhists. But, as it's usually used in the modern West, to imply rejection of metaphyiscal entities? She isn't, if she's claiming to be one, and if she thinks a "spiritual encounter" should include metaphysics, even for atheists, like the AA chapter, she's patronizing as hell.
And, years back, there was Roswell. In reality, from the best we can piece it together, it doesn't appear Mack Brazel ever called it a flying saucer. And, there's no indication the military forced a cover story on him of a weather balloon. That said, the story more than redeemed itself by interviewing Ben Radford.
Having grown up at the edge of the Big Rez, having read a lot about the Anasazi and a fair amount about the Navajo, and having been to Roswell as an adult more than once, including one free trip (no way I'd pay) to the UFO museum, I know this is marketing. And blech marketing when it engages in the perpetuation of pseudoscience.
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The copyediting fail? I was belatedly looking at my March issue yesterday. It's a standard 8 1/2 x 11 size magazine. Knock off 1/2 inch or so on both sides and that's 7 1/2 inches wide on the horizontal, maybe a bit more..
Who the hell had the bright idea of flowing that as 6-column text, as was done in parts of the feature story on Carlsbad Caverns? And worse, and probably necessitated by that, running rules that look to be a full 1-point wide between the columns. That and gutters knock out another full inch or so in total. So, we've got 6 1-inch and change wide columns. It's distracting reading, but most people will still gush over it.
The special travel guide advertising pages, at 5 columns, no rules, aren't horrible. But, even that's pushing it.
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