(Updated Dec. 7)
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 mobilized Navajos to vote like never before.
However, the commission will now comprise all Republicans for the first time in decades, comprising an Anglo (Bruce Adams), a Navajo (Jamie Harvey) and a Latina immigrant (Silvia Stubbs). It will be a multi-lingual commission (Spanish, Dine’ Bizaa’d or Navajo and English) and could be the most diverse county commission in Utah – in what could be the most conservative county in Utah.
All three are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Republican candidates also won races for San Juan County clerk, sheriff and attorney.
What's the old saw? The more things change. The more they stay the same.
(Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office, Nov. 24. Silvia Stubbs was leading Willie Grayeyes by only 19 of 1,621 votes cast in the county commission District 2 race.)
Other candidates associated with pro-Bears Ears activism were defeated: Incumbent Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez lost to Nez Buu Nygren, who was born in Blanding, Utah, and lives in Red Mesa, Ariz.; longtime Bears Ears activist and board chair of the Native activist nonprofit Utah Diné Bikéyah Davis Filfred lost his race to represent Mexican Water, Red Mesa, TeecNosPos and Aneth chapters in the Navajo Nation Council of Delegates, the principle Navajo legislative body; and Hank Stevens, vice chair of Utah Diné Bikéyah, lost his bid to represent Naa’tsis’aán and Oljato.
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Maryboy and Grayeyes took over the commission at the beginning of 2019, and it wasn’t pretty.
Their competency and legitimacy to hold commission seats were continuously challenged. They responded defensively, resulting in a downward spiral of legal maneuvering, stonewalling of requests for transparency and lack of trust, pettiness, pique and peevishness.
Their time in office has ended with a politically, and possibly racially, charged audit by state lawmakers into potential violations of Utah’s Open and Public Meetings Act by the two Navajo commissioners and undue influence by outside individuals on how the commission was run. Representatives of the Utah Office of Legislative Auditor General, August Lehman, audit supervisor, and Jesse Martinson, audit manager, briefed commissioners on Dec. 6 at their regular meeting in Monticello, Utah. Grayeyes did not visibly respond and had no questions; Maryboy was not present.
Grayeyes and Maryboy prioritized environmental protections and support of their traditional culture and spiritual teachings rather than economic development. Issues related to dire problems on Utah’s strip of the Navajo Nation - for example, providing household water and electricity and improving health services to those living in what amounts to Third World America - seemed less urgent.
From the outset, the two chose to govern, in part, through non-binding, ideologically tinged resolutions written by their longtime private attorney and Native American rights activist, Steven Boos, working out of Cortez, Colo., and his paralegal in Moab, Utah, Liz Thomas. They were mostly approved over the objections of fellow commissioner Adams, a Republican, without advice or informed consent of virtually anyone in the county.
There was an immediate, bitter and continuing backlash:
“I have a background in history,” Shanon Brooks, president of Monticello (Utah) College, told commissioners in February 2019, “and this has happened many, many times where tyranny has come in and overridden the will of the people. This is textbook.”
“I’m into history. My ancestors were here. When did yours come?” said Grayeyes, replying with a confusing and provocative, if not exactly ahistorical, non sequitur.
Brooks told commissioners at their April 16 public meeting he was concerned about policy being influenced by a “proxy” government unaccountable to San Juan County residents and the motivations of politically partisan lawyers providing normally expensive services to Maryboy and Grayeyes for free.
Shanon Brooks addresses San Juan County commissioners in 2019. (Bill Keshlear)
Kim Henderson, a resident of Monticello who now sits on the City Council there, grilled Maryboy on whether any public forum had been held to discuss one of numerous resolutions introduced by him over the past two months. He said no. Any input from county residents? No. San Juan County staff consulted? No.
Her passion was withering. When Maryboy referred to those in attendance at the meeting as “the peanut gallery,” Henderson erupted, “Oh, now, we’re a peanut gallery? I take great offense to what you just said. You just called your constituents the peanut gallery.”
Henderson told San Juan County commissioners that if they continue to govern by passing resolutions written by Boos without public input, she’d petition for ballot referendums to overturn those resolutions.
And that’s what she did. To little effect.
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Results of the election that put Maryboy and Grayeyes on the county commission four years ago were celebrated by regional and national media as a historical breakthrough in a rural and racist backwater, upending what prominent Salt Lake Tribune columnists called the county’s “good-old-boys” network.
Fellow Democrats from on-the-ground volunteers to the state party's highest and most influential levels fully supported the two Navajo candidates — or at least what many of them believed they symbolized: a resurgent national movement to redress historical wrongs and expansion of Native American sovereignty.
They funneled much of their passion and money through RUP, the Salt Lake City-based nonprofit run by the state Democratic Party's former political director, TJ Ellerbeck. The organization also has staff in San Juan and Grand counties in Utah and northern Arizona.
According to the organization’s website at the time, its work “paved the way for the landmark election of Grayeyes and Maryboy.”
Before the 2020 general election, the Rural Utah Project, along with its sister program, the Rural Arizona Project, registered over 6,000 mostly Navajo voters in Utah and Arizona. TIME magazine and the New York Times credited efforts of the two organizations with helping swing the presidential election in Arizona to the Democratic ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
The day-in, day-out hustle and bustle at RUP, a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt nonprofit, leading up to the 2018 election closely resembled a political operation working to elect Maryboy and Grayeyes and dump incumbent commissioner and fellow Democrat Rebecca Benally, a critic of President Obama's version of Bears Ears National Monument.
According to the watchdog group Influence Watch, the Rural Utah Project spent $203,241 on “voter registration and county organizing efforts” that year. It donated $2,700 to the Utah Democratic Party and $7,500 to the San Juan County Democratic Party.
Maryboy defeated Benally by only a handful of votes. She could've easily won had Republicans crossed over to vote in the open Democratic primary. But they didn't, and Maryboy won the general election in an uncontested race.
It's worth noting, if transparency is important, that RUP failed to disclose that one of the new commissioners that it helped elect, Kenneth Maryboy, is the brother of Mark Maryboy, a RUP trustee. Mark Maryboy also is currently identified as an emeritus board member of SUWA.
Four years later, the Rural Utah Project is still in the politicking business, again endorsing both Kenneth Maryboy (despite extended absences from commission meetings and concerns related to his health) and Grayeyes, but with less success this time around:
"Kenneth Maryboy has worked with federal officials to re-establish the full Bears Ears National Monument. Kenneth Maryboy has safeguarded voting rights of all San Juan County residents. Kenneth Maryboy has revived the road maintenance agreement between San Juan County and Navajo Nation. Kenneth Maryboy will continue to make San Juan County services more accessible to all residents."
"Willie Grayeyes has dedicated his entire career to service – as a public school educator, a trained social worker, a community advocate, and a Delegate to the Navajo Nation Council – and applied that experience to his work at the San Juan County Commission."
The 5-year-old organization is a kind of SUWA spinoff. RUP received a total of $400,000 from SUWA in 2017 and 2018.
Many members of the SUWA board of trustees have served on the board of RUP. These members include Tom Kenworthy (chair of SUWA), Anne Milliken (chair of RUP), Mark Maryboy, Scott Groene, Richard Ingebretsen and Liz Thomas.
Emails reviewed by KUTV 2News, which led to the investigation by state auditors into "undo influence" exerted over the commissioners, came to light as a result of a public records request by Monte Wells, a right-wing-leaning investigative journalist living in San Juan County. Wells, writing in his online publication, The Petroglyph, believes the emails appear to show multiple examples of Boos and Thomas, the SUWA and RUP board member and Boos' paralegal, strategizing with the two commissioners and, in several cases, telling them exactly what to say and do – or not do – at public meetings.
Wells writes:
"Documents show that like Boos, Thomas has ghost-written at least twelve county resolutions from 2019 to the present. Many of these resolutions deal with policy changes and direct responses to the Bureau of Land Management. It appears that the resolutions secretly written by Thomas were put forth by Commissioner Maryboy and supported by Commissioner Grayeyes. Some of the documents related to the county agenda were emailed directly to the county administrator from Thomas with instructions to put them on the agenda."
Beyond the conflicts and secrecy of the alliance that propped up Maryboy and Grayeyes, darker politics were at play, according to a letter written by San Juan journalist Majorie Haun. No shrinking violet, Haun let loose a broadside intended for publication in the San Juan Record, a weekly newspaper published in Monticello, Utah. Her blunt commentary probably comes as close to explaining the political landscape (and election results) as anything.
"Throughout the emails runs a thread of religious bigotry. Liz Thomas and others openly express contempt for people belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in this and other Utah counties. There is clear disdain for the people of Monticello and Blanding. This bigotry seems to have inspired the Democrat Commissioners to draw political lines that determined who they work with, who they hire, who they favor, and who they ignore. ..."
"... the most disturbing aspect of all is that Thomas, Boos and others operate with the ultimately racist notion that the Navajo commissioners and the Navajo people of San Juan County are a conforming voting bloc with no political, religious or cultural diversity. The truth is, Native American families, Navajos, Utes and others who live in San Juan County consist of a rich cultural, political and religious mix."
The paper reportedly declined to publish Haun's letter as editorial content, but its substance is consistent with incendiary remarks in August 2019 of San Juan activist Mark Maryboy, a SUWA and RUP board member at the time, and others. The comments were published by the Canyon Country Zephyr.
Elected officials in Monticello and Blanding felt they needed to respond:
“Mr. Mark Maryboy, in a stunning and repeated display of bigotry, disparaged residents of Blanding and Monticello as “white racist redneck Mormons who are members of the Ku Klux Klan.” This statement is patently false and without basis, evidence, or merit. Blanding and Monticello Cities strongly condemn the false and disparaging comments of Mr. Maryboy towards the residents of San Juan County, Monticello, and Blanding City.
“San Juan County Commissioner Kenneth Maryboy was in attendance as a Commission member and sat at the helm of the meeting. We are dismayed that our County Commission Representative did not take action to stop Mark Maryboy’s defamatory comments or defend his constituents in San Juan County. Words expressed by public figures, such as those by Mr. Maryboy, in open public meetings, should not be allowed to cross the line of being indecent and vile. ..."
Perspectives similar to those of Wells, Haun and the elected officials, all of them Mormon, all of them conservative, are pretty much missing from recent book-length treatments of events and personalities involved in creation of Bears Ears National Monument and the dozens of accounts published in magazines and newspapers across the country then aggregated and re-published by the thousands across the internet. Nearly all of them skew toward environmentalist and traditional Native American perspectives.
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Grayeyes and Kenneth Maryboy played leading roles in a bitter multiyear, multimillion dollar political campaign to create Bears Ears National Monument.
For the two activists and for many other Navajos, Bears Ears protection seemed elusive until 2010 when U.S. Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, invited them to put together a proposal on managing federal land in the region. He offered them a seat at the policy-making table. They helped form a nonprofit called Utah Diné Bikéyah as a "grassroots" collaboration to get things rolling. The David and Lucille Packard Foundation provided seed money, and Round River Conservation Studies, based in Salt Lake City, and other nonprofits provided technical assistance.
In those early years, much of the organization's staff comprised non-Native graduate students, young lawyers-to-be, environmental activists and passionate volunteers. Under the leadership of Gavin Noyes, who left Round River to run UDB, the organization honed its messaging, fundraising and organizational prowess, paving the way for it to spearhead the campaign that eventually proved successful in creating Bears Ears National Monument.
The $64,000 question was always: Will the policies of the new pro-Bears Ears county commission begin to align — to varying degrees — with the goals of a grand alliance whose members include the foundation established by multibillionaire Hansjorg Wyss (SUWA trustee worth billions), Round River Conservation Studies, Friends of Cedar Mesa, the Conservation Lands Foundation, the Grand Canyon Trust, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Earth Justice, The Wilderness Society, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, Packard Foundation ($7 billion), William and Flora Hewlett Foundation ($9.8 billion), Wilburforce Foundation ($115 million), Pew Charitable Trusts, Leonardo Di Caprio Foundation and some of the nation’s most prominent and politically aggressive outdoor recreation companies, but to a lesser extent with their San Juan County constituents?
Those organizations poured tens of millions into creation and administration of a long-term national campaign with the precedent-setting goal — at least from a tribal perspective — of extending Indian Country sovereignty into non-tribal areas, the first being southeastern Utah. Natasha Hale, a staffer at Grand Canyon Trust, suggested as much in May 2015. “If the tribes are successful in the (monument) proposal with the coalition of conservancy groups, it will set the platform for other protection issues outside of reservation land.”
However, Maryboy and Grayeyes, as small-county officials who became celebrities of sorts in Indian Country and among non-Native liberals sympathetic to their years-long cause, did little that advanced their decade-long activism or cement and expand efforts of the grand alliance. If anything, their intransigence, snarky approach to governance and backroom benefactors only heightened suspicions locally and soured relationships they needed to cultivate.
Critics believed in 2015, when the monument was proposed by the newly formed Inter-tribal Coalition and offered for consideration to President Obama's Interior Department, that it would protect nothing. And nothing Maryboy and Grayeyes did as commissioners would change those minds. Tourists and other outdoor recreationists, who would never have known about Bears Ears without monument designation, now flock to southeast Utah by the tens of thousands and trash it, deface it and walk off with bits of centuries-old pottery shards.
Federal land managers seem hamstrung, buffeted between Democratic and Republican presidential administrations and unending litigation. In August, Utah filed suit against President Biden in an effort to scuttle the president's expansion of the monument's boundaries—a long-predicted tit-for-tat following lawsuits in 2017 that challenged Trump's ability to shrink Obama's original designation.
At the end of September, archeologists, federal and state land managers and representatives of Navajos (Council delegate Filfred), Pueblo of Zuni, Pueblo of Acoma and the Hopi Tribe met in Bluff, Utah, to discuss the future of Bears Ears. The series of panel discussions was organized by the nonprofit Friends of Cedar Mesa as part of its "rebranding" effort: Friends of Cedar Mesa, the only pro-monument group based in San Juan County, changed its name to Greater Bears Ears Partnership to reflect a broader mission.
One panel discussion focused on what Troy Honahnie, a FCM consultant, Kurt Riley, former governor of the Pueblo of Acoma, and Kenny Wintch, a FCM archeologist, tentatively called "The Lands Between" – the sprawling artifact-rich (and oil- and gas-rich) area between Bears Ears and Canyons of the Ancients National Monument in southwestern Colorado.
FCM's Honahnie is facilitating conversations with the tribes, mainly Pueblo of Acoma, west of Albuquerque, N.M., on possible preservation efforts. The consensus among archeologists is that ancestors of present-day Pueblo peoples built, inhabited then abandoned structures scattered across southeast Utah and migrated south into what is now New Mexico, possibly 200 years or more before Spanish colonists arrived. Who better to claim Bears Ears?
He candidly acknowledged, in an interview after his presentation, that monument creation using the Antiquities Act as a preservation tool was unlikely given the multiyear political and legal firestorm that followed Obama's Bears Ears proclamation at the end of his tenure in office and President Clinton's 1996 proclamation that created Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to the west. Few want to repeat those fiascos.
Jamie Harvey and Silvia Stubbs
The election of Jamie Harvey and Silvia Stubbs, both Republicans, to replace Maryboy and Grayeyes, respectively, amounts to a rejection of the kind of cynical, anti-democratic, no-holds-barred gutter tactics embraced by their predecessors and allies. Both have been leaders in their respective communities for much of their adult lives: Harvey through administration of the Aneth Chapter of the Navajo Nation and the Utah Navajo Health System; and Stubbs through her work at Utah State University Blanding.
It's a refresh, at least, without Bears Ears noise drowning out every policy decision the new commissioners make.
Jamie Harvey, 49, is Dine’ (Navajo), who speaks, reads, writes and understands Dine’ Bizaa’d.
"My experience working as a social worker with the state of Utah, as well as serving in various leadership roles in the community, has prepared me to represent the people of San Juan County, particularly those in District 3," he told the San Juan Record.
"Something I would like to change as the new commissioner would be to end divisions within our county," said the former state of Utah social worker. "Every citizen deserves to feel heard, regardless of where they reside. Those who live and work in San Juan County care for each other and share common concerns.
"We want to protect our heritage and enjoy our land. We want government to be transparent, accessible, and honest."
Harvey has served as an elected Secretary/Treasurer for the Aneth Chapter of the Navajo Nation, and as the Vice Chairman in the Navajo Utah Commission (NUC). He was on the Utah Navajo Health Systems, Inc. Health Board from 2001 to 2020, serving as UNHS Board Chairman for three years. He participated in negotiations secured funding for construct of new health facilities in Montezuma Creek and Blanding.
He currently serves on the Utah Navajo Trust Fund, Dineh Advisory Committee.
As a former educator, Silvia Stubbs, 73, has lived in San Juan County for over 45 years. She’s the first Latina and immigrant San Juan County commissioner. Inspired by President John Kennedy’s vision of American, she immigrated from Argentina decades ago and found a home in Blanding.
Stubbs worked at USU Blanding for 20 years, and was a force bridging the cultural divide and economic there: "When children were left in cars, for lack of child care, I created daycares. When college students did not have a place to study and socialize, I collaborated with others, and a place was built.
“I implemented or created programs to meet the needs of many students, programs such as High School Completion/GED, Job Literacy Training, Early Childhood Education and Pre-Elementary Associate. Many students from Monticello, Montezuma Creek, Navajo Mountain, Monument Valley, West Water, Montezuma Creek, and Blanding."
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For more:
- After Obama, after Trump, the Biden chapter of the Bears Ears saga begins. In City Weekly.
- Uncommon ground revisited: A seven-part overviewOn June 18, top officials of President Biden’s Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service together with leaders of tribes with ancestral ties to the Cedar Mesa region of southeastern Utah — the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation and the Pueblo of Zuni — ceremonially adopted an Inter-Governmental Cooperative Agreement.It was called “unprecedented,” a publicly prominent next step after Biden’s October 2021 restoration of President Obama's Bears Ears National Monument to solicit and incorporate tribal points of view into federal management plans.It was part of a larger initiative to reset the federal government’s historically dismal record in Indian Country.But here's the catch: The state of Utah and two counties plus a nonprofit have filed lawsuits against Biden and his top-level land managers to scuttle the president’s version of the monument.It exceeds the scope of the law used to create it, according to the lawsuit.