Biden Admin-5 Native American Tribes to Co-Manage Bears Ears Nat'l Monument

[kpete]

… The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service signed the cooperative agreement on Saturday with five tribes that have inhabited the region surrounding Bears Ears National Monument for centuries: the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and the Pueblo of Zuni.

“Today, instead of being removed from a landscape to make way for a public park, we are being invited back to our ancestral homelands to help repair them and plan for a resilient future,” Carleton Bowekaty, co-chair of the Bears Ears Commission and lieutenant governor of the Pueblo of Zuni, said in a statement.

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The move comes as Interior Secretary Deb Haaland — the first Native American to serve as a Cabinet secretary — works to repair the federal government’s relationship with tribes, which has been tarnished by instances of federal officials removing Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands…

In October, President Biden used executive orders to protect 1.36 million acres in Bears Ears — slightly larger than the original boundary that Obama established. The orders also reversed Trump’s cuts to the 1.87 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante monument. And they reestablished the Bears Ears Commission, which comprises one elected officer from each of the five tribes.

https://balloon-juice.com/tuesday-morning-open-thread-sweet-summer/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/20/bears-ears-national-monument-tribes/

[secondwind]

1. This is great news!

[blm]

2. Something to celebrate

[mopinko]

3. representation matters.

ya know, i have a son who is a, shall we say, sceptic. thinks govt is all kabuki.
this is in no small part because he has spent a lot of time w native american friends.
every time deb haaland accomplishes something like this, i admit, i rub his nose in it.

[niyad]

4. Excellent!

[leftyladyfrommo]

5. This is good news. nt