The question is how, when and to what degree.
If confirmed by the Senate, Rep. Deb Haaland (D-N.M.) would be the first Native American Cabinet secretary.
By Bill Keshlear
Four years ago today, Dec. 28, 2016, President Obama dodged a 1.9 million acre proposal of the Bears Ears Inter-tribal Coalition to create Bears Ears National Monument. Their proposal would've included full management of the monument by a tribal-appointed body, the Bears Ears Management Commission, to "set policy within the boundary of the proclamation, the management plan, and MOUs or MOAs ..." according to the proposal.
It would've been precedent-setting, possibly beyond the legal scope of the monument's enabling act, the Antiquities Act. Obama, ever the moderate, shrunk the tribal proposal to 1.35 million acres - redrawing its boundary, scuttling the management-commission idea and adding an energy-development zone.
It was not a clear win for Bears Ears National Monument advocates, although that’s the way many framed it. The new monument closely mirrored a plan hammered out by San Juan County locals and inserted into Republican Rep. Rob Bishop's grand Public Lands Initiative in 2015 and introduced into Congress. It went nowhere.
Then adding insult to injury, President Trump shrunk it even more by using the law Obama used to create it a year or so before, and that spawned lawsuits. Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, offered up a compromise of sorts in 2018 when he introduced HR 4532. It would've created tribal management of Trump's monument (membership vetted by the feds) and beefed up a law enforcement presence. He even offered to ban mining and oil and gas development inside Obama's version of the monument. Environmentalists and tribes vigorously opposed it because it would've codified Trump's monument. It went nowhere.
We might never know whether Trump's actions were legal because President-elect Joe Biden has pledged:
"... to take immediate steps to reverse the Trump administration’s assaults on America’s natural treasures, including by reversing Trump’s attacks on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Bears Ears, and Grand Staircase-Escalante. On Day 1, Biden will also begin building on the Obama-Biden Administration’s historic conservation efforts by issuing an executive order to conserve 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030, focusing on the most ecologically important lands and waters. His administration will work with tribal governments and Congress to protect sacred sites and public lands and waters with high conservation and cultural values. And, he will provide tribes with a greater role in the care and management of public lands that are of cultural significance to Tribal Nations."
If confirmed by the Senate, Deb Haaland will take over a department mired in controversy. She will oversee plans to restore Bears Ears National Monument and also be responsible for implementing Biden’s promise to end oil and gas leasing on land controlled by the federal government — a move certain to face backlash from the fossil-fuel industry and Western states that depend on oil to fuel their rural economies.
Last year, Democrats, including Haaland, introduced sweeping legislation to mitigate the consequences of climate change, HR 5435, the American Public Lands and Waters Climate Solution Act. It directs the Department of Interior and the Forest Service to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from public lands and waters by 2040.
The bill would temporarily pause new fossil fuel leases while the agencies develop a plan to reach the 2040 goal. Interior and the Forest Service would be required to meet climate pollution reduction targets at specific intervals starting in 2025 and publish strategic plans every four years that detail how the agencies will meet the pollution reduction targets established by the legislation.
The bill also would increase royalties on fossil fuel extraction by oil, gas and coal corporations and use the proceeds to support workers and communities impacted by a transition away from dirty energy development.
It was introduced in December then heard in committee two months later. Although it went no further, it provided a legislative template for the incoming Biden administration.
Haaland has served on the House Natural Resources Committee, which oversees Interior, for two years. But some Biden advisers worry that she doesn’t have enough experience to lead the agency that controls roughly 500 million acres of land across United States — about one-fifth of the nation.
Other Democrats were worried about appointing a current Democratic member of Congress, narrowing the party’s slim majority in the chamber, which was reduced significantly by election losses last month.
Although Haaland's advocacy of Native American issues has generally been enthusiastically received in Indian Country, especially after lending her voice to protests in 2016 on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota, restoration of Obama's monument has not been unanimously endorsed.
Darren Parry was vice chairman of northern Utah's Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation in 2018, when he wrote this letter to the Subcommittee on Federal Lands of the House Committee on Natural Resources outlining his criticism of the monument:
It saddens my heart to see the all or nothing attitudes from everyone involved. The BENM movement has been in the works for a long time. This was discussed long ago by Conservation groups that wanted to protect the lands that we know and love.
They were hesitant at first to get tribes involved, according to their minutes. After all, working with a variety of tribal sovereign governments can be tricky. When their lobbying efforts in Washington, DC stalled, a strategic decision was made to include the Navajo Nation, but not without concerns.
This was a brilliant move on their part. For President Obama to support a National Monument, the local tribes needed to be involved. Tribal governments with the help of conservation groups came together and started the Inter-tribal Coalition.
Since the tribes have gotten involved, they have been at the forefront of this movement. But this was never their idea.
The conservationists have done a wonderful job of pushing the tribal nations to the front to speak for their cause. The fact that the President of the Navajo Nation had not heard of or could even tell you where Bears Ears was located speaks volumes.
This land in San Juan County is sacred to our native people. There is no question that those sacred Native sites need protection. What most people don't understand is that the Native American cultural sites within the monument were already protected under federal law.
Inviting the world to visit these pristine areas does not protect them any better, but it will exploit them. Increasing popularity does not increase protection. ...
The NW Band of Shoshone does not support the Bears Ears National Monument. I disagree with environmental group's decision to utilize the tribes inside the Inter-tribal Coalition.
This monument was inducted and accomplished without official consultation and significant participation of the NW Band of Shoshone. We believe this takes away the rights and freedoms of many to express their beliefs and views.
Laws currently on the books to safeguard southeast Utah's Cedar Mesa, aka Bears Ears, include:
- 1935 Historic Sites Preservation Act
1960/1974 Reservoir Act - 1964 Wilderness Act
1966 National History Preservation Act - 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
- 1974 Archaeological & Historic Preservation Act
- 1976 Federal Lands Policy and Management Act
- 1978 American Indian Religious Freedom Act
- 1979 Archaeological Resources Protection Act
- 1980 Amendment-Executive Order Protection & Enhancement of Cultural Environment
- 1990 Native American Graves Protection & Repatriation Act
- 1996 Indian Sacred Site Protection Act
- 2000 Consultation & Coordination with Indian Tribal Government Act
- 2003 Preserve American Act
Haaland is a citizen of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico. The 20-member-nation All-Pueblo Council of Governors, of which Laguna is a member, has endorsed restoration of the monument. However, out of that 20, only Pueblo of Zuni is a member of the Bears Ears Inter-tribal Coalition.
Many, if not most, of the artifacts in dire need of preservation within the monument's boundary and even across the Four Corners region are of Ancestral Puebloan origin. They’re not Navajo or Ute, whose disparate bands migrated to the area much later. All of the region's tribes share a sense of Bears Ears as a sacred place.
Despite Biden's pledge to get crackin' on Day 1, he has an opportunity to demonstrate his vaunted
ability to cross party and ideological lines to solve problems. Why not
start in Utah with one of the country’s most intractable and
politically perilous? He could encourage civil, even democratic,
dialogue to bridge long-simmering disputes.
Another
unilateral proclamation – this time coming from a president who lost the
election in San Juan County by about six percentage points (Biden lost
in Utah by just over 20 points) to restore Obama's monument (Obama also
lost decisively in Utah, but designated the monument anyway) –
would only harden existing anti-federal government sentiment in San Juan
County and across Utah and stymie attempts to expand tribal management
roles beyond what's currently only advisory under both versions of the
monument. Forget about serious conservation efforts, possibly for years.
Without
concrete plans more or less accepted across the political spectrum and
funds to aggressively enforce regulations derived from those plans,
Biden's legacy on Bears Ears will mirror Obama’s monumental mistake: an
administration whose policies and politics, even with the best of
intentions, accelerated environmental and cultural damage.