[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 37, Number 3 (Monday, January 22, 2001)]
[Pages 138-141]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
 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

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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, 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.

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     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 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.

[[Page 141]]

 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.
     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.