Shawnee Concerned about Serpent Mound

 

Serpent Mound may be hurt if US leaves UNESCO

Editorials

Jul 31, 2025 

Among the sites that could be negatively affected by the United States’ intention to leave the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is the Serpent Mound in Peebles, Ohio, in Adams County. The site was already on a tentative list for nominations to be designated World Heritage Sites, but that recognition may never come.

According to U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce, the U.S. withdrew from UNESCO because it “works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.”

One is forced to wonder whether Bruce or her bosses understand the United States is, in fact, part of the global community; and that the United Nations — an INTERNATIONAL organization founded in the wake of World War II — necessarily cannot have an agenda that is “America First.”  After all, it is the coordinator of 193 member states, saying it is “the one place on Earth where all the world’s nations can gather together, discuss common problems, and find shared solutions that benefit all of humanity.”

In recognizing World Heritage Sites, UNESCO highlights locations that have UNIVERSAL value.  To human beings, not necessarily individual countries. And what we have in Ohio is a treasure of exactly that magnitude.

The 1,300-foot long earthen Serpent Mound was built thousands of years ago and is the largest of its kind in the world. It is emblematic of an ancient culture of mound builders who built thousands of similar sites across Ohio, though now only a few remain.  Those native Ohioans flourished here millennia before European explorers made their way across the ocean, and some research now suggests modern Shawnee peoples are their direct descendants.

“It’s an expression of culture,” Chief of the Shawnee Tribe Ben Barnes told WYSO. “So when we find these sites around the globe, it’s important to designate them of cultural significance for the entire world so that we can continue to protect them throughout the generations.”

In fact, Ohio History Connection, which manages the Serpent Mound, says on its website “World Heritage status has the potential to elevate local and international awareness about the site’s value, further encourage communities to protect and invest in its preservation and increase potentially beneficial tourism to the site.”

At risk then, is tourist traffic (and revenue), some increased legal protection and acknowledgment that, a site in Ohio SHOULD “join the ranks of the Pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, Pompeii, Stonehenge and the Taj Mahal, all of which are World Heritage sites,” as the Ohio History Connection put it.  (The organization did not, however, comment when WYSO asked for its reaction to the withdrawal.)

Removing ourselves — and the history of ALL the people who have inhabited this part of the continent — from the effort to understand and appreciate global cultures is a mistake.  It doesn’t put America “first.”  It removes us from the conversation.