Will Bears Ears Remain a National Monument?

Bears Ears National Monument, Utah.

Bears Ears National Monument, Utah. Nagel Photography

 

Connecting state and local government leaders

If Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke decides to revoke its status, it would be the latest example of the federal government setting aside land in conjunction with tribes, only to break the agreement.

Jonah Yellowman lives in the north end of the Navajo Nation, between Monument Valley, the famous backdrop of many Western movies, and Mexican Hat, Utah, named for a nearby red-rock formation that looks like a sombrero. Yellowman is one of about 70,000 Navajo who live in homes without running water. His house also lacks electricity. Trees are sparse on the Navajo reservation, so to gather wood for cooking and heating, Yellowman goes to the woods in Bears Ears National Monument, about 50 miles north of his home. 

“We survive off that land,” Yellowman said of Bears Ears, a 1.35 million-acre expanse of high-desert plateaus in southeast Utah. “Where I live, we don’t have any trees. Also, we use different kinds of plants and herbs for basket weaving—people survive on that. People use it for hunting.”

Yellowman is a board member of Utah Diné Bikéyah, a Native American-led organization that in 2011 called for the federally owned Bears Ears region to be protected from mineral extraction, commercial forestry, and most vehicle use. Numerous Southwest tribes lived in Bears Ears and consider it sacred, and Utah Diné Bikéyah’s proposal sought to preserve traditional uses of the land while giving tribes a role in managing the area. When legislative efforts to conserve the area failed, leaders from the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, and Ute tribes joined Diné Bikéyah in lobbying former President Barack Obama to designate Bears Ears a national monument. The monument, announced last December, was a watershed moment in U.S.-tribal relations: Obama’s proclamation took the unprecedented step of designating a commission of tribal leaders to consult on management of the monument.

That diplomacy is now in jeopardy. In late April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the Department of the Interior to review national monuments created under previous administrations, dating back to 1996. The deadline for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s review of the monument is June 10.

The 1906 Antiquities Act grants the president the power to create national monuments. During his time in office, Obama designated more national monuments than any other president. In response, Trump has taken a cue from Utah political leaders and criticized his predecessor. Announcing the monument review in April, with Utah Governor Gary Herbert and much of the state’s congressional delegation by his side, Trump chided Obama’s use of the Antiquities Act. “It’s gotten worse and worse and worse, and now we’re going to free it up,” he said. “This should never have happened.”

Should the Bears Ears review result in a downsizing, or outright revocation of the monument status, it would be the latest example of the federal government setting aside land in conjunction with tribes, only to break the agreement.

“Take the example of the Ute tribes,” said Monte Mills, an assistant professor of American Indian law at the University of Montana. Prior to European-American settlement, the Ute territory stretched across much of Colorado and Utah—Bears Ears included—and as far south as New Mexico. “As non-Indian settlers moved in, the federal government negotiated a treaty in 1868 that recognized their reservation boundaries essentially as the western third of Colorado. Within five years, there was a portion cut out because of the discovery of gold and silver.” A Ute attack on an Indian agency led the government to evict northern Utes from Colorado; their reservation is now in Utah’s oil and gas country. The Southern and Ute Mountain Ute reservations are in Southwest Colorado, south of the mineral-rich San Juan Mountains.

Similar scenarios have unfolded in other parts of the United States, as well. An 1855 treaty granted many Washington state tribes the “right of taking fish at usual and accustomed grounds,” but Native American fishing was nonetheless regulated by the state. Immigrants with larger commercial fishing vessels quickly displaced tribal fishing operations, and Indians were required to purchase recreational fishing licenses. Tribes responded with the  “Fish War” protests in the 1960s and 1970s, and in 1974, a district court ruling granted tribes half of Washington’s fish harvest.

In 1868, the federal government promised the Sioux tribes the western part of South Dakota; nine years later, it would seize the Black Hills region after gold was discovered there. The Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that the land was illegally taken and that the Sioux should be compensated. The tribe refused to take the federal money, saying the land was never for sale.

Since the 19th century, nearly every Native American reservation has shrunk in size. In 1881, tribes held claim to 156 million acres; today, Indian reservations take up 56.2 million acres.

Bonnie Duran, the director of the Center for Indigenous Health Research at the University of Washington, said the constriction of tribal lands, among other factors, constitutes historical trauma that affects Indians through generations. “All of these systems of life were taken away from tribal people,” Duran said. She recently surveyed collaborators at more than 20 tribal colleges to develop a mental-health assessment tailored to Indian culture. Those surveyed made it clear that land access has a direct link to Native American mental health. “They said, ‘The biggest impact on our mental health is a lack of access to our traditional homelands for ceremonies, for traditional forms of exercise, for access to fish or wildlife.”

Bears Ears opponents also see their land access curtailed. Land management has long been a contentious issue in Utah, where 63 percent of land is federally owned. The state’s Republican lawmakers were incensed when former President Bill Clinton designated the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996, and they saw Obama’s Bears Ears proclamation as yet another example of federal overreach. “These colossal abuses have soured the appetite for national monument designations, making the Antiquities Act synonymous with overreach rather than a tool to be celebrated for protecting our national heritage,” Utah’s congressional delegation wrote in a letter to Zinke in May.

Lawmakers in Utah and some residents of San Juan County, where the monument is located, argue the monument designation is an unjust restriction on resource development, ranching, and motorized access to trails. But Native Americans who petitioned for the monument seek to protect sacred sites, artifacts from ancient dwellings (theft is rampant in the area), and their traditional uses of the land. Gathering herbs, they argue, is impossible on an oil derrick.

Furthering the divide between the two groups is the prescriptive language used by politicians, and the racial undertones that sometimes appear to accompany it. “The Indians, they don’t fully understand that a lot of the things that they currently take for granted on those lands, they won't be able to do if it's made clearly into a monument or a wilderness,” Senator Orrin Hatch said last month, though the Bears Ears monument designation explicitly preserves traditional Native uses of the land. The Utah League of Native American Voters condemned Hatch’s remarks, calling on him to apologize for his “blatantly racist, misinformed and condescending tone and words.”

On a tour of the region last month, Zinke spent one hour with the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. He was there four days; the rest of the visit included meetings with Utah federal, state, and county leaders opposed to the monument.

During a press event in Washington, D.C. last month, tribal leaders pledged to challenge any changes to the monument in court. Arguments, Mills said, would likely center on presidential authority to change monuments—the Antiquities Act mentions only monument creation, not alteration. Furthermore, the Obama administration’s engagement with tribes could help preserve Bears Ears by showing the administration exercised due diligence in crafting the smallest appropriate monument, as the Antiquities Act requires. Indeed, the monument as designated is nearly 600,000 acres smaller than the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition’s proposal.

“The effort that went into the original proclamation and the development of those boundaries are going to be pretty hard to overcome,” Mills said. “Given the fact that [the review] is going to be done in 45 days makes it seem somewhat arbitrary no matter what.”

Not all Native Americans in the region support Bears Ears National Monument. San Juan County Commissioner Rebecca Benally has been the strongest Navajo voice in opposition to the monument. “Trusting the federal government has historically resulted in broken promises for Native Americans,” she wrote in an op-ed in the local newspaper. While tribal leaders in the area see Bears Ears as a chance for the government and tribes to collaborate, Benally sees it as a chance for the U.S. to renege on a promise.

The review process is another frustrating example of federal questioning of Indian sentiment. “They make you feel like you don’t even know how to use the land,” Yellowman said. “My people got driven off these lands and put on the reservations, and now they are asking us, ‘How are you connected to this land?’ My ancestors lived up there. Our home structures are sitting up there.

“It’s like somebody chases you out of your home and tells you to sleep on the porch.”

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.