EXCERPT: For decades we’ve seen special interest groups like Sierra Club and SUWA lobby for the full extinguishment of our rights to public lands using false narratives. These narratives pushed by special-interest groups have been quite discouraging for Native Americans like myself who actually go to Bears Ears itself and understand the area and see how much a national monument does more harm than good…
…Another disingenuous narrative that speaks to the heart of the issue would be “tribal co-management.” The initial reasons for a Bears Ears National Monument have always been about “tribal co-management,” yet the end results are far from ringing true. If you believed the rhetoric coming from special-interest groups, you’d actually think the Bears Ears Commission actually has the same level of authority as the United States Department of Interior in managing the Bears Ears National Monument.
Upon reading pages seven and eight of the Bears Ears National Monument proclamation, lo and behold you’d actually find that, “Bears Ears Commission is hereby established to provide Guidance and Recommendations.” Wait a second, Recommendations? Guidance? That doesn’t sound like co-management at all. The term “tribal co-management” isn’t even stated in the actual monument proclamation at all. In fact the very language for the proclamation simply implies that the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service would give a Native American voice on land management within Bears Ears National Monument a rather monotonous, “dully noted.”
0 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.