Utah Tribal Leaders Association asks BLM to halt planning for Bears Ears

Utah Tribal Leaders Association asks BLM to halt planning for Bears Ears

By Alastair Lee Bitsoi

Elected officials from the Utah Tribal Leaders Association have passed a resolution asking the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to halt the planning process for two units of the Bears Ears National Monument that were reduced in 2017 by President Trump.

The Utah Tribal Leaders Association called on the BLM and Forest Service to halt planning due to the fact that the reduction of Bears Ears National Monument is currently in litigation. Additionally, because the planning process has been expedited, tribes have asked for more time and deeper engagement of tribes and the public in the federal planning process for the Indian Creek and Shash Jaa’ units of Bears Ears National Monument. This resolution from the tribes precedes the scheduled Aug. 17 Draft Environmental Impact Statement and its 90-day comment period, which has been announced by the BLM.

“I am glad all the Utah Tribal Leaders are on board with this resolution, which opposes the expedited and illegal planning process for the Indian Creek and Shash Jaa’ Units of Bears Ears National Monument,” said Davis Filfred, who chairs the Utah Tribal Leaders Association and also serves as the Diné representative on the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. “This resolution shows how tribes in Utah stand in solidarity with each other in protecting our ancestral territories, particularly when it comes to public lands and the restoration of Bears Ears National Monument back to its original 1.35-million-acre size.”

There are eight tribes in Utah, all of which make up the Utah Tribal Leaders Association: the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, Skull Valley Band of Goshute, Northwest Band of Shoshone Nation, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, San Juan Southern Paiute, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

Most importantly, this call for action from the tribes seeks for the federal agencies to halt this planning process until the courts decide upon the legality of the Trump Proclamation. President Trump’s Proclamation (No. 9681) ignored prior Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition requests and the public comments of nearly 3 million Americans in reducing the monument by 1.1 million acres (85 percent) into the two smaller units, Indian Creek and Shash Jaa’.

Honor Keeler, assistant director for Utah Diné Bikéyah, added that the resolution from the Utah Tribal leaders shows how indigenous voices continue to speak for the ongoing protection of cultural and environmental resources within Bears Ears National Monument.

“It’s time that native voices, as the original peoples of the Bears Ears region, are heard and the sovereign rights of native nations to protect their sacred places are recognized,” said Keeler, who was recently appointed to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Review Committee. “These rights are affirmed through treaties, laws, legal precedent, and the government-to-government relationship native nations have with the federal government. In this country, we do not condone tearing down a church or temple with people in it and hand back in piecemeal the bricks and sacred items that have been destroyed. Likewise, the Bears Ears region is a sacred place that cannot be chopped up into pieces, for it is a sacred place in its entirety that has been used for thousands of years by the Indigenous Peoples of these lands.”

The resolution can be found under “News” at utahdinebikeyah.org.

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