Under Former Interior Under Secretary Ryan Zinke, Trump reduced the Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah from 1.35 million acres to 201,876, a reduction of 85%. It had been the second largest national monument in the lower 48 continental United States and contains human remains, ancient roads, petroglyphs, kivas, and woven cloth, making up 9,000 archeological sites.
President Obama signed a proclamation protecting the 1.35 million acres in December 2016, saying,
“The land is profoundly sacred to many Native American tribes.”
Bears Ears was the first national monument that Native American tribes had proposed and fought for.
Native Americans had lived there until the 1860s when the U.S. government marched them to Fort Sumner, N.M., a forced journey known as the Long Walk
Unprotected now are the cliff ruins and rock art of the Cedar Mesa and Grand Gulch, with its significant ancestral pueblo ruin sites, which the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, The Zuni Pueblo, and the Ute Indians had urged President Barack Obama to protect by creating the monument.
Now, where nature and history once reigned, there will be cell phone towers, ATV trails, and utility lines.
Federal law requires our government to consult with Native American tribes about the Bears Ears monument, but Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s advisory committee doesn’t include anyone who supported creating the monument.
To the contrary, while the move would open the land to Utah ranchers for clearing land for cattle grazing, Gail Johnson, who holds a razing allotment that had been entirely within the original monument is on the advisory group.
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Johnson also had opposed the lawsuits challenging Trump’s shrinking Bears Ears because the larger monument would put her out of business.
San Juan County, the poorest county in Utah, had laid out $485,600 first to oppose Bears Ears being named a national monument, and then to lobby for reducing it.
Since the monument’s reduction, two of the three county commissioners who supported the reduction have been replaced by Navajo candidates who now hold a majority on the commission, but, ignoring them, Commissioner Bruce Adams and the son of a former commissioner, Ryan Benlly, were chosen for Bernhardt’s advisory committee.
Energy Fuels Resources (USA) Inc, the nation’s sole uranium-processing mill, had urged the Trump administration to reduce the size of the monument to make it easier for the company to access radioactive ore there, although Republican Congressman John Curtis who represents Utah’s San Juan County and had oppose President Obama’s establishing the monument as a federal land grab, a misuse of the Antiquities Act, and an infringement on Utah’s rights claimed,
“There is nothing there to mine.”
Interesting how restoring land for Native Americans from whom it has been taken is a wrongful land grab, but taking it away to be handed over to ranchers and corporations isn’t.
He may have introduced a bill to codify Trump’s cuts to the monument, but it also included a ban on further drilling or mining within the original boundaries.
Some Native Americans and activists see the scaling back of Bears Ears as part of a larger attack on indigenous communities which has included Trump’s decision to override the protests of tribal members and advance the Dakota Access Pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in the Dakotas especially since seven people had been recommended by Rupert Steele, the chairman of the Utah Tribal Leaders Association to serve on the commission, but none were appointed.