[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[January 17, 2001]
[Pages 2930-2933]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Remarks on the Designation of New National Monuments
January 17, 2001
Thank you very much, and good morning. I want to welcome you all
here, but especially I would like to acknowledge Secretary
Mineta; Senator Conrad Burns of Montana; all the descendants of Lewis and Clark;
representatives of Sacagawea and York; Stephen Ambrose, from whom you will hear in a moment. And I also want to
recognize my friends Ken Burns and Dayton
Duncan, who did such a wonderful job on the
Lewis and Clark film; and members of the Millennium Council who have
supported this project with the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial and Trails
groups. I thank you all for coming here.
And I would like to especially acknowledge and thank our
administration's environmental team, including Secretary
Babbitt; EPA Administrator Carol
Browner, who is here; Chief of Staff John
Podesta; George Frampton, the head of the Council for Environmental Quality;
and Bob Stanton, who has led our Park
Service so ably. Thank you all for your good work.
I am especially grateful to these people today, obviously, but
every day because, thanks to their work, our air and water are cleaner;
our food is safer; we've cleaned up twice as many toxic waste sites in
these 8 years as in the previous 12. We've protected more land in the
lower 48 States than any administration since that of Theodore
Roosevelt, and have supported research, development, and deployment of
energy conservation, technologies, and clean energy sources,
demonstrating, I believe convincingly, that we can have environmental
protection and economic growth hand in hand.
We believe that our future and our land, air, and water are one;
that we must preserve not only our historical treasures but our natural
treasures, as well.
Today's ceremony is the last I will host as President here in the
historic East Room, where First Lady Abigail Adams hung up the laundry
to dry--[laughter]--where Union soldiers lived during the early days of
the Civil War, and where a young idealist named Meriwether Lewis,
summoned by President Jefferson to serve as his secretary, first
unpacked his traveler's trunk and set up quarters in 1801.
The room looked quite different back then--no chandeliers, no
parquet floors, no silk drapes, just the rough siding of walls awaiting
plaster,
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and two stone hearths to ward off the winter chill.
But what the East Room then lacked in grandeur was more than atoned
for by the ideas that filled it. For it was here that Jefferson and
Lewis first unfurled an unfinished map of a great continent and planned
a bold expedition of discovery.
So it is fitting that we meet once more in this room, at the dawn
of a new century and a new age of discovery, where a few months ago we
announced the very first complete mapping of the human genome. We gather
here to honor pathfinders of our past and protect their precious legacy.
Most of the landscape Lewis and Clark traversed nearly two
centuries ago is changed beyond recognition--forests cut, prairies
plowed, rivers dammed, cities built. That is the march of time. But
still there are a few wild places left, rugged reminders of our rich
history and nature's enduring majesty. Because they are more important
than ever, after careful review and extensive public input, we protect
them today by establishing them as national monuments.
The first of these monuments covers a remote stretch of the
Missouri River in central Montana, now known as the Upper Missouri River
Breaks. If you canoe these magical waters or hike their weathered
cliffs, you may still encounter elk or bear, wolves, mountain lions,
even bighorn sheep, just as Lewis and Clark did in 1805.
The second monument we designate is also in Montana. It is Pompeys
Pillar, the sandstone outcrop named after the newborn son of Sacagawea,
the expedition's Shoshone guide. Archeologists say this monolith has
been a religious site and natural lookout for nearly 12,000 years. It
bears the markings of many ancient travelers. Clark, himself, carved his
name into the rock, and it's still there today.
Some years ago, Wallace Stegner observed that America has a
fundamental interest in preserving wilderness because the challenge of
wilderness forged our national character. He wrote that the wild places
give us a ``geography of hope'' that sustains us in our busy lives, even
in the largest cities.
Today we protect this geography of hope not just along the Lewis
and Clark Trail but across our Nation in six other national monuments
which Secretary Babbitt will discuss shortly.
We have another purpose here today, as well, righting some wrongs that
have lingered about Lewis and Clark for 200 years now.
The first concerns William Clark. When Lewis recruited Clark to
help lead the Corps of Discovery, he promised him the rank of captain.
Unfortunately, issues of budget and bureaucracy intervened--some things
never change--[laughter]--and Clark never received his commission. A
natural leader, great frontiersman, Lieutenant Clark risked his life
across a continent and back, all for the good of this Nation. Today we
honor his service by presenting his great-great-great-grandsons,
Bud and John Clark, with
the late William Clark Certificate of Appointment to the rank of captain
in the United States Army.
[At this point, the President presented the certificate.]
We also have descendants of Meriwether Lewis here today, Jane
Henley and Elizabeth Henley Label. I'd like to ask them to stand, as well.
Thank you, and welcome.
The journals of Lewis and Clark record that the expedition's
success also hinged on the courage and commitment of Sacagawea, an
extraordinary 15-year-old Shoshone guide who made most of the trip with
a baby on her back. Time and again her language skills, geographic
knowledge, and tribal connections saved Lewis and Clark from disaster,
even death. Despite her quite heroics, Sacagawea received no formal
recognition after the expedition ended.
Last year we put her likeness on our new dollar coin. Today I am
proud to announce her honorary promotion to the rank of sergeant in the
United States Army, so that all Americans might recognize her critical
role in Lewis and Clark's journey to the sea. Accepting her citation is
Amy Mossett, a leader of the Mandan Hidatsa
Arikara Nation, and Rose Ann Abrahamson,
a leader of the Shoshone Nation. I'd like to ask them to come up.
[The President presented the citation.]
Finally, I want to recognize York, the slave who accompanied Lewis
and Clark to the Pacific and back. Like Sacagawea, he shared all the
risks but none of the reward. And while the rigors of the wilderness
fostered a certain equality, camaraderie, and respect among York and his
fellow explorers, that did not translate into freedom upon his return.
Only years later did
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he finally gain his liberty before fading into history.
Today, in recognition of York's selfless contributions to the Corps
of Discovery and to his service to our country, he also receives an
honorary promotion to the rank of sergeant in the United States Army.
Accepting the citation on his behalf are York scholar Jim
Holmberg and York sculptor Ed
Hamilton. I'd like to ask them to come up and
receive the citation.
[The President presented the citation.]
As we finally right these wrongs and celebrate the legacy of Lewis
and Clark, we recognize the irony inherent in their expedition. Their
historic journey of discovery opened up the American West, a mythic
frontier that even today endures in the American mind as a symbol of
freedom. But York was anything but free, and Sacagawea's people, like
her neighbors, would eventually be swept away by a flood of American
settlers determined to claim the Great Plains and the land beyond.
These hard truths do not fit comfortably within the narrow
rhetorical boundaries of Manifest Destiny or square with modern notions
of democracy and diversity. But as our Nation has grown physically, so
we have grown as a people, and I believe the capacity for growth as a
people, for deepening the bonds of community and broadening our vision
of liberty and equality, has been just as important a voyage of
discovery as the physical one Lewis and Clark took so long ago.
Nearly two centuries ago, Lewis and Clark used this compass--this
very one--to navigate a continent of possibility. Now America is setting
out to navigate a century of possibility, determined to explore the far
frontiers of space, the ocean depths, the tiniest of genetic structures.
But we must not forget our obligations to live in harmony with the
Earth.
In the years to come, more areas will doubtless require our common
protection. I'd like to mention just two, for example. First, the Owyhee
Canyonlands in Idaho. This fractured maze of ancient canyons is a rugged
paradise of leaping bighorn sheep and soaring birds of prey.
Second, we must continue, I believe, to safeguard the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge, one of the last truly wild places on Earth--
the Serengeti of the Americas. Some of you and others around the country
have urged that I declare this a monument as well. I have declined
because current law actually provides legislative protection for this
refuge, identical to that which an Executive order would provide. But I
still believe that those who propose, and who would now have to get
legislative authorization to do so, to drill in the refuge are in error.
In 1995 I vetoed a bill that would have permitted such drilling, and I
believe we should continue to work together to meet the Nation's energy
needs while we protect this environmental Eden.
I hope in the years ahead we can reach agreement on a policy of
environmental protection and sustainable development appropriate to this
new age in which we live and to the real condition of our natural
resources. I hope it will unite Republicans and Democrats. Even more
difficult, perhaps, I hope it will unite Westerners and Easterners--
[laughter]--people who live in the North and the South, people who make
a living from the land and those who feel more alive when they're on it.
Senator Burns, I'm glad to see you here
today in support of this. We are making some progress. After years of
squabbles, this year by a huge bipartisan majority, the Congress for the
first time set aside a committed, dedicated stream of funding, year-in
and year-out, to preserve the natural legacy of America, from vast open
spaces to small urban green spaces. It is a very hopeful beginning and
perhaps the most important congressional conservation move in many
decades.
So I hope, as I leave, that we will be able to continue to build on
this and return to the point where the environment is not a point of
either partisan or geographic explosion but a point of shared values and
shared vision.
For 8 years I have done my best to prepare America for the 21st
century. I have been, critics and supporters alike have acknowledged,
virtually obsessed with all things modern, with trying to make sure
America was at the center of all new trading networks, trying to
modernize our economic and social policies, trying to alter the
framework of global financial institutions so that everyone had a chance
to participate in the best of what the future holds, trying to make sure
that we stayed on the cutting edge in all areas of science and
technology. This has occupied much of my time and attention.
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But I grew up in a national park, and I have never forgotten that
progress uprooted from harmony with nature is a fool's errand. The more
perfect Union of our Founders' dreams will always include the Earth that
sustains us in body and spirit. Today we have honored three who made it
so. Thank you very much.
Now I would like to ask Stephen Ambrose to come to the podium. But as I do, I would like to thank
him for many things: for teaching America about World War II; for, most
recently, making sure we know how the railroad was built across the
country; and for all the works in between. But I rather suspect, having
heard him talk about it, that nothing has quite captured his personal
passion and the story of his family life like the odyssey of Lewis and
Clark and the beauties that they found--that he and his family later
discovered for themselves.
Steve.
Note: The President spoke at 10:15 a.m. in the East Room at the White
House. In his remarks, he referred to historian and author Stephen E.
Ambrose; Ken Burns and Dayton Duncan, who wrote and produced the
documentary ``Lewis and Clark: The Journey of the Corps of Discovery'';
and Amy Mossett and James J. Holmberg, board members, National Lewis and
Clark Bicentennial Council. The proclamations on the Buck Island Reef
National Monument, Carrizo Plain National Monument, Kasha-Katuwe Tent
Rocks National Monument, Minidoka Internment National Monument, Pompeys
Pillar National Monument, Sonoran Desert National Monument, Upper
Missouri River Breaks National Monument, and Virgin Islands Coral Reef
National Monument are listed in Appendix D at the end of this volume.