The authors are among the founding members of WomenOfBearsEars.org., which supports restoration of Bears Ears National Monument.
April 25, 2021, 11:00 a.m. ET
We are among the Women of Bears Ears Indigenous women who support our families and communities in the protections of ancestral lands. We come from Diné, Nuche, Pueblo and other allied Native Nations. From these Southwestern lands, twin buttes rise; they are known as Bears Ears.
We have been birthed into these lands. The umbilical cords of our ancestors are buried here. Our genealogies are intertwined.
Image
Elouise Wilson.Credit.Rachael Cassells
Our clans are passed on through our mothers. We are matrilineal societies that carry the bloodlines of our people. The Clan Mothers have always tended to the landscapes that gave them birth for hundreds of generations. Our ancestors are rooted here. We are grounded here.
A Sacred Place Undone by Trump Must Be Saved by Biden
Bears Ears is one of the nation’s most compelling and mysterious landscapes and a place of worship for Native Americans.
By David Roberts
Mr. Roberts is the author of “The Bears Ears: A Human History of America’s Most Endangered Wilderness
,” published this week.
Feb. 26, 2021
Valley of the Gods at the Bears Ears National Monument, in Utah.Credit.Sumiko Scott/Moment, via Getty Images
The American West embraces more than its share of spectacular landscapes. But there’s nothing else quite like the vast swath of canyons, mesas, sandstone spires and arches that stretches some 80 miles from north to south in the southeast corner of Utah, ranging in altitude from sagebrush flats to pinyon-and-juniper forests and old growth stands of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir.
| Updated: 3:19 p.m.
With the stroke of a pen, President Joe Biden could return Utah’s two largest national monuments to their original sizes. Instead, he opted to open a 60-day review into how his predecessor shrunk the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by 2 million acres, leaving open a range of options for the new administration.
An executive order issued Wednesday instructs the Interior Secretary, a post likely to be filled by Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico, to submit findings and recommendations for moving forward on the future of these landscapes that have been ground zero in Utah’s public lands battles going back nearly a century.
Day 1 of the Joe Biden presidency: Actions affecting Indian Country
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Indianz.Com
After arriving at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, the new president will be revoking a permit for the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline that is opposed across Indian Country. The oil pipeline will not be able to cross tribal treaty and ancestral territory in Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota or South Dakota without the permit.
But the anticipated order is just the start, according to the incoming White House. From restoring the boundaries of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah to stopping energy development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, at least on a temporary basis, here are actions being taken on Day 1 of the Joe Bide administration that will impact tribes and their citizens.
A push to bring Wi-Fi to students on the Navajo Nation is made urgent by the pandemic
Crews are working hard to bring internet to 500 homes scattered across rough, mountainous terrain.
(Zak Podmore | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tower technicians Nathan Berry, above, and Jory Christiansen work to bring internet to students in the Navajo Nation community of Halchita on Dec. 8, 2020. The tower was installed this fall with CARES Act funds and will receive a signal from a larger tower on distant Raplee Ridge.
Monument Valley
• On a windswept hill atop a nondescript mesa in San Juan County, Aaron Brewer, education technology director for the San Juan School District, looked out over half of southern Utah.