Bears Ears and the White House’s New Commitments to Tribal Nations

 by Tim Peterson, Cultural Landscapes Director

As we continue to celebrate President Biden’s October proclamations that restored Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, our eyes are on the future. 

If you have not yet had a chance, will you take a minute to thank President Biden for restoring protections for Utah’s national monuments?

As we now wait for land managers to kick off management planning processes for both monuments, the Biden administration is taking real, bold, and genuine steps to honor tribal sovereignty and support the priorities of tribal nations. These principles were included in the proclamations restoring Utah’s monuments, but the Biden administration isn’t stopping there. 

Restoring monuments, restoring respect for tribal nations

TIM PETERSON

After a 4-year hiatus during the Trump administration, this November, the White House renewed its commitment to tribes by resuming the annual Tribal Nations Summit. Bringing together federal officials and tribal leaders from across the United States, the summit served as a platform to announce new initiatives to protect treaty rights, to increase protection for and access to sacred sites, and to enhance transparency and engagement while strengthening the nation-to-nation relationship between the federal government and tribes. 

In a bold step demonstrating the president’s commitment to fulfill a campaign promise to “…provide tribes with a greater role in the care and management of public lands that are of cultural significance to Tribal Nations,” a new Tribal Homelands Initiative was announced on the first day of the summit. 

The initiative will advance shared governance between Native nations and the federal government around the management of public lands. A new joint secretarial order that’s part of the initiative requires that land management agencies (including the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the Forest Service) “make agreements with Indian Tribes to collaborate in the co-stewardship of Federal lands and waters…” 

The order also requires that when considering management actions, land managers must engage tribes “at the earliest phases of planning,” ending years of inadequate “check the box” tribal consultation.

The secretarial order seems to speak directly to Bears Ears, saying “for landscape- or watershed-scale restoration and conservation planning, [federal land managers] will … incorporate Tribal … land management plans into Federal land management planning efforts.” This is a strong indicator that the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition’s management plan for Bears Ears will receive the deference and respect that it deserves. 

Check out what’s at stake: seven irreplaceable places at Bears Ears whose protections have been restored ›

An all-of-government approach to Indigenous traditional knowledge 

TIM PETERSON

The initiative also created an interagency working group that will release government-wide guidance in 2022 on using Indigenous traditional knowledge to inform decision-making.   

According to the memo establishing the working group, Indigenous traditional knowledge is “is a body of observations, oral and written knowledge, practices, and beliefs that promote environmental sustainability and the responsible stewardship of natural resources through relationships between humans and environmental systems.” 

The memo goes on to explain that Indigenous traditional knowledge “has evolved over millennia, continues to evolve, and includes insights based on evidence acquired through direct contact with the environment and long-term experiences, as well as extensive observations, lessons, and skills passed from generation to generation.”

Opposition from the state of Utah

Through we’re excited to get to work supporting land managers and tribal nations in implementing the Tribal Homelands Initiative, the future is not all smooth sailing for Utah’s monuments. The state of Utah is considering hiring a law firm to sue the federal government over the restorations. But a coalition of Utah counties and an anti-monument interest group already sued on Grand Staircase in 1997, and lost. The interest group appealed and lost again. 

When dismissing the original suit, a federal judge wrote that, “[w]hen the President is given such a broad grant of discretion as in the Antiquities Act, the courts have no authority to determine whether the President abused his discretion.”   Nothing has changed since then, but that likely won’t stop Utah officials from suing again this time, and we’ll engage on their litigation as appropriate.

While some in Utah’s political machine continue to charge at windmills like the man of La Mancha, we recognize that this is a watershed moment for Indigenous rights, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland says it best: “Our voices have been given a new platform, and I am just one of those who have taken this historic opportunity to move past the days of inaction and apathy.” After years of abject disrespect for tribal nations, the tide is turning, at Bears Ears and beyond.