What Does It Mean to Restore Bears Ears, in Words and in Spirit?
The Biden administration can improve upon our most unprecedented monument
Bears Ears National Monument—the 1.35 million acres of rugged and beautiful land in southeast Utah declared by President Obama in 2016 and reduced by 85 percent a year later by President Trump in US history’s largest public lands protection downsizing—has been called many names over the years, including Hoon’Naqvut, Shash Jaa’, Kwiyagatu Nukavachi, and Ansh An Lashokdiwe.
The words are different for various tribal nations, but the meaning is the same: Bears Ears. Two distinctive orange buttes that really do look like ears rise up above a meadow where Indigenous people from far and near have come to meet and trade for centuries.
As the only national monument to grow out of the thinking, planning, and advocacy of Native Americans, Bears Ears National Monument was unprecedented.
The redemptive nomination of Deb Haaland as the first Indigenous secretary of the interior, and the first Native American to hold any cabinet-level position, comes at a crucial moment in our nation’s relationship with its more than 450 million acres of public lands.
What’s more, on the very first night of his presidency, Joe Biden ordered federal agencies to reverse any of Trump’s executive actions considered “harmful to public health, damaging to the environment, unsupported by the best available science, or otherwise not in the national interest.” Bears Ears was specifically mentioned under that order, and early signals point to its full restoration. My hope is that its good name, too, will be restored...
Read more: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/what-does-it-mean-restore-bears-ears-words-and-spirit
