GILA BEND Before committing to the motion, Zion White cautiously checks where he plans to place his hand, trying to avoid the Native American petroglyphs he’s there to document.
“When I see these petroglyphs, I think about how someone spent the time to peck out that image, put it on this rock and tell our history,” said White, a member of the Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe. “Now, I’m here doing the exact same thing to preserve our history.”
With his hand carefully positioned, White steadies himself and silently shimmies down the side of a boulder.
“Try not to wake the bees,” he whispers, pointing at a pile of honeycombs littering a crack in the cliff face. “Last time, we couldn’t finish documenting this site because of them.”