TOWARD RECOGNITION OF OUR SHARED HUMANITY

TOWARD RECOGNITION OF OUR SHARED HUMANITY | By Bill Keshlear

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.

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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.

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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. Jeremy Lynch moved to Moab to work with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, one of several organizations lobbyting to create the monument. They met halfway in Monticello. Listen to their story.

ACTIVISTS LOSE BIDS FOR RE-ELECTION | Analysis by Bill Keshlear

(Updated Dec. 7) The Nov. 8 election closes a chapter in the four-year saga of Bears Ears activists Willie Grayeyes and Kenneth Maryboy as the first Native Americans in Utah to govern as a majority on a county commission. Kenneth Maryboy and Willie Grayeyes (Bill Keshlear) The two Democrats lost bids to keep their San Juan County (Utah) Commission seats – tenures enabled in large part by a federal judge who in 2017 declared that the districts in San Juan County disenfranchised Native American voters and ordered them redrawn. The new lines were drawn to ensure Navajo majorities on the commission - or at least a fair chance at electing majorities. In addition, Maryboy and Grayeyes got a boost from the powerful Navajo Nation Human Rights Council. And Salt Lake City-based Democrats poured in thousands of dollars, even creating and funding a nonprofit called Rural Utah Project, or RUP. It successfully ran what, in effect, was the candidates' 2018 campaign and was successful. It mo

SUBMITTED FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION: A BEARS EARS MANAGEMENT PLAN | Background and analysis by Bill Keshlear

Roughly two and a half years after President Biden resurrected and even expanded President Obama's original Bears Ears National Monument, the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service unveiled on Friday (March 8) their joint Draft Resource Management Plan and Environmental Impact Stateme nt, Volume 1 , a blueprint that would guide the agencies' land-use decisions for the next 20 or so years. Volume 2 lists citations, a glossary and appendices. Bears Ears buttes on Cedar Mesa dominate the horizon of southeastern Utah and northeastern Arizona. They are visible from much of the northern part of the Navajo Nation, a spiritual beacon for Indigenous peoples for hundreds of years. Creation of Bears Ears National Monument was intended to protect archaeological, paleontological and geological objects. (BLM photos) ( This was updated April 22, 2024, to include additional information and clarifications of earlier versions. ) The draft plan is an important benchmark ; Presi

INCENDIARY PROVOCATIONS CLOSE THE DOOR TO COLLABORATION | By Bill Keshlear

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 places

UNCOMMON GROUND REVISITED | Perspective by Bill Keshlear

First Obama, then Trump, now Biden’s chapter of the Bears Ears saga Part 1, A new day? Biden administration trumpets its commitment to re-framing policy initiatives surrounding the government's fraught relationship with Native Americans. Part 2, C’mon down: Federal land management agencies have been unable to contain the damage that tourism and outdoor recreation has inflicted on once-pristine public land. What’s changed? Part 3, Co-management vs. cooperative management: The differences are substantial, but tend to be conflated in service of political agendas. Part 4, Toward true “co-management" in Montana: Pitfalls and possibilities (Blackfeet attempt to re-claim Badger-Two Medicine south of Glacier National Park and Salish-Kootenai purchase Kerr Dam on the Flathead River). Part 5, Tribal perspectives at the forefront: An acknowledgment of the Biden administration rooted in the fact that Bears Ears coalition tribes consider the area sacred. Part 6, Priorities: The BLM a

Dems vs Benally: Party purity over civic-mindedness

EXCERPT from "Despicable Behavior Revisited." Rebecca Benally is a Navajo deeply engaged in developing a more prosperous San Juan County, Utah, and preserving her heritage independent of powerful forces beyond the county that, in her opinion, would permanently damage that heritage. However, her civic-mindedness was not enough to muffle the mean-spirited rhetoric adopted in the months leading up to the June 2018 Democratic primary in San Juan County by some pro-Bears Ears National Monument activists — surrogates of Native American tribes. They were supported by San Juan County Democratic Party leadership, many Salt Lake City-based Democrats, and a well-funded coalition of environmentalists and tourist- and outdoor-recreation businesses from across the country. Benally, one of only a handful of female county commissioners in Utah, was systematically defamed in the run-up to the primary. She ran afoul of an insular, male-dominated county Democratic Part

A NEW FOCUS IN BEARS EARS COUNTRY | Analysis by Bill Keshlear

A Navajo social worker and an immigrant from Argentina - inspired by President John F. Kennedy's vision of America – took the oath of office on Jan. 3 to formally become San Juan County commissioners, governing a little less than 15,000 residents of a vast and spectacular swath of desert snowscape, canyons and towering pinnacles that is southeastern Utah's Colorado Plateau. (Above: One focus of Greater Bears Ears Partnership (formerly Friends of Cedar Mesa), based in Bluff, Utah, is a field program "to reimagine cultural preservation as an opportunity to reconnect Indigenous communities to cultural sites within the Bears Ears region." (Greater Bears Ears Partnership) Both have been community leaders for much of their adult lives: Jamie Harvey through administration of the Aneth Chapter of the Navajo Nation and the Utah Navajo Health System; and Silvia Stubbs through her longtime work at Utah State University Blanding. They are not single-agenda-driven

A MONUMENTAL DIVIDE

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