A MONUMENTAL DIVIDE

Last February, I asked “Who’s the Boss in Utah’s Bears Ears Country?”   The following  six-part essay, which I’ll post in installments over the next few days, is an attempt to partially answer that question after a year of watching events unfold there.   The election of Kenneth Maryboy and Willie Grayeyes to the San Juan County Commission sparked an interest in the way the county is run. (Bill Keshlear) In 2019, longtime   tribal activists Kenneth Maryboy, left, chairman of the San Juan County Commission, and Willie Grayeyes, District 2 commissioner, faced cultural and political fault lines in governing the county. (Bill Keshlear) Today Part 1: Rule by resolution.   Kenneth Maryboy and Willie Grayeyes took their oaths of office as commissioners a little under a year ago after what was described as a “historic” election. They immediately staked their claim to power by choosing to govern primarily through resolutions written by their longtime ...

Next time you see Heidi horsin' around on the Dugout or the rez or having coffee in Monticello say, "Good on you, girl." She's not only been good for girls. Through her 50 or so years on the ranch, she's helped more than a few local boys learn the value of long, hard work in the summer. She has a deep respect for the land and the people who live there now and those who lived there before. She says she "walks with the ancients."   This article written in 1998 by Anne Wilson, daughter of former Canyonlands National Park superintendent Bates Wilson, was published by Jim Stiles in his Zephyr. EXCERPT: "She is well-spoken about her beliefs and she is polished, but her passion belies any feeling that her words are simply rhetorical. "Lest you think she is a closet 'tree hugger', read on. During her 31 years in red rock country, Heidi has seen a change in the visitors who come by this place that is the gateway to Canyonlands N...

Almost every day Anna Tom, a Navajo who lives on McCracken Mesa, near Blanding, Utah, sends friends (including Facebook "friends") and relatives blessings from a sacred place. This is something she recently wrote: "Hello good morning rush rush have a good splendid day from all direction from our creator from Mother Earth the center of the Earth and the holy people." The photos accompanying the messages sometimes seem like Navajo versions of Hallmark greeting cards delivered digitally – an uplifting way to greet the day. Her mother, Betty Jones, is a medicine woman. Betty and Anna use the greater Bears Ears area of southeastern San Juan County to collect herbs, perform sacred ceremonies, and gather wood from cottonwoods, oaks, and cedars. Betty Jones and her daughter, Anna  _____________ Nearly 150,000 Navajos speak their native language today, making it the most-spoken Native American language in the United States.  ____...

By Bill Keshlear San Juan County's elections administrator should be scrupulously neutral. LET ME REPEAT. San Juan County's elections administrator should be scrupulously neutral. In distributing this letter to the editor at early voting locations, John David Nielson, county clerk, was not scrupulously neutral . It was written by Blanding Mayor Joe B. Lyman, one of the sponsors of a ballot question up for a countywide vote on November 5, as a rebuttal to misinformation about the election from chair of the county commission, Kenneth Maryboy. The letter appeared in the San Juan Record. The Utah ACLU performed a public service in raising objections about possible illegal electioneering: “The presence of such material at a polling location raises serious questions about electioneering, defined as a deliberate attempt inside or nearby a polling location to influence voters to vote for a particular candidate or issue.”  The Salt Lake Tribune's writer Zak P...

At the U.N. conference: Eric Descheenie, former Arizona state House representative, Cynthia Wilson, traditional foods program director for Utah Dine Bikeyah, Angelo Baca, cultural resources coordinator for Utah Dine Bikeyah, and Kate Kopischke, moderator and social and environmental safeguard specialist for Green Climate Fund (Kopischke is married to former Salt Lake City mayor Ralph Becker, whose former chief of staff, David Everitt, was hired as interim San Juan County administrator by commissioners Willie Grayeyes and Kenneth Maryboy, both former board members of Utah Dine Bikeyah). By Bill Keshlear The public relations tactics of the pro-monument activist group Utah Diné Bikéyah and its allies seem limitless. They’ve organized massive rallies, arts and cultural events, academic seminars, and upscale fund-raisers - mostly staged hundreds of miles from Bears Ears National Monument, the Navajo reservation, and the people whose culture they believe is under attack. T...

What happens when people of different cultural backgrounds and political beliefs but a passion for public lands sit down face-to-face and interview each other? This summer, Utah Public Radio has been recording interviews from across the state – including Monticello, Moab, St. George, Cache Valley and Vernal – to find out. They're worth a listen. These conversations were recorded in partnership with  StoryCorps  as a part of its One Small Step project . ____________ Clayton Long and Liz Ballenger Clayton Long lives in Blanding; Liz Ballenger lives in Moab. They met halfway in Monticello, finding common ground for their love of nature and juggling the different cultures introduced to them throughout their lives. Listen to their story. _________ Cindy Perkins and Jeremy Lynch  Cindy Perkins and her family have lived for five generations near Blanding, a community upset by the designation of the Bears Ears National Monument in 2016. Jerem...

Friends of Cedar Mesa provides visitors its version of what needs to happen in Bears Ears country at the renovated Silver Dollar Bar in Bluff, Utah. (Field Studio/University of Utah) ( Portions of this have been submitted for publication in the October edition of the Canyon Country Zephyr .) By Bill Keshlear On the road home from Monument Valley recently I stopped in at Friends of Cedar Mesa’s Bears Ears Education Center in Bluff, Utah, its home base. It’s housed in a nondescript former bar renovated by the nonprofit on the main drag through town, between the upscale Desert Rose Resort, Recapture Lodge, a smattering of restaurants and gas stations, and a re-creation for tourists of historical Fort Bluff. I wanted to find out what kind of information people get when they just walk in off the street. Does it align with information from other visitor’s centers in the area? Is the information presented as one viewpoint among many on how to preserve sacred archeological arti...

Jon Jarvis was director of the National Park Service during President Obama's tenure. ( Some of this has appeared in the Canyon Country Zephyr .) ( UPDATE September 1: On the road back from Monument Valley I stopped in at Friends of Cedar Mesa's Bears Ears Education Center in Bluff, home base of the nonprofit. Its mission, at least overtly,  is to tell people looting and vandalism of archeological artifacts is a bad thing. But I came away with a clearer sense of how difficult it will be to bring together opposing sides in the monument hoo-haw. I asked one of the volunteers there why the facility was not closer to places people have to drive through to get to Bears Ears country – like Monticello or Blanding. It’s about 100 miles out of the way en route from the north to a popular rock climbing site within the monument, Indian Creek. She said the Mormons would just burn down the building if located in either town. Really? Bigotry  sometimes bubbles up in strange place...

  Kedric “Ked” Somerville an d Boden “Bode” Carpenter (Photos: Brooke Pehrson, Brooke Pehrson Photography ) From photographer Brooke Pehrson: I took these this past June. They were taken out on Ked's property by his barns in Monticello, but they cowboy all over the place.  My own thoughts and feeling behind them? I value the old cowboys. They know how to work.  They know what real struggle is. They’ve stuck to something hard and tiring. These traits are things this generation is losing. Look at the old cowboys' hands, the life they’ve led, the hard work they’ve seen. Not everyone can do this kind of work. I love that Ked is passing these things onto Boden. If we had more "Keds" in this world to patiently teach and show their way of life. The '"stick to it and work hard" type of life, how much better off would we be? ______________ EXCERPTS from "The Horseman's Protege" by Marjorie Haun . Published in the fall 2019 edition...