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Bears Ears is known as for a pair of towering buttes that dominate a lot of the panorama of southeast Utah, and it’s the web site of historic Native cliff dwellings and sacred burial grounds. It’s the ancestral homeland of 5 tribal nations — the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Pueblo of Zuni.
Conservation teams welcomed the information. “Thanks, President Biden — you will have listened to Indigenous tribes and the American individuals and ensured these landscapes will likely be protected for generations to return,” stated Jennifer Rokala, director of the Middle for Western Priorities, an advocacy group. “The cultural and paleontological assets inside the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase landscapes are too essential to depart in danger.”
Ms. Haaland, the nation’s first Native American cupboard secretary, is a member of the Laguna Pueblo. She now leads the federal company that for a lot of the nation’s historical past performed a central function within the dislocation and abuse of Indigenous communities from coast to coast, and she or he has made Native American points a high precedence.
In a 2019 interview with The Guardian, Ms. Haaland described a current tenting journey she had taken to Bears Ears. “There are some fairly wonderful ruins there, and, you already know, I don’t even prefer to name them ruins, as a result of in our tradition, in Pueblo tradition, if you happen to acknowledge our ancestors, they’re there,” she stated. “The spirit of the individuals by no means leaves.”
However in a joint assertion, Utah’s congressional delegation referred to as the president’s resolution a “devastating blow” to its efforts to discover a lasting resolution that would not be modified with every administration.
“Moderately than take the chance to construct unity in a divided area and convey assets and lasting protections to sacred antiquities by looking for a mutually helpful and everlasting legislative resolution, President Biden fanned the flames of controversy and ignored enter from the communities closest to those monuments,” stated the assertion, which was signed by Utah’s two senators and three representatives, all Republicans.
The brand new boundary of Bears Ears will really incorporate one factor of the Trump-era boundaries. When the Trump administration decreased the general dimension of the monument by practically a million acres, it additionally added 11,200 acres that had not been beforehand protected. The brand new boundaries will restore the unique Obama-era boundary and can embrace the extra 11,200 Trump-era acres.
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