The Bears Ears National Monument, whose red rock landscape spans more than 1.3 million acres in southeastern Utah, will be managed jointly by the federal government and Native American tribes in what administration officials said was “one of the most important.” a kind of model of cooperation.
The agreement to preserve the national monument was ratified in an agreement signed on Saturday, marking the opening of a new Bears Ears welcome sign, which includes the five tribes’ insignia that will help manage the monument, the interior ministry said. in a declaration.
“Today, instead of being removed from the landscape to make way for a public park, we are invited to return to our native ancestors to help repair them,” said Carlton Bowiecati, vice governor of the Zuni Pueblo tribe.
Mr Bowekaty is co-chair of the Bears Ears Commission, a group that includes representatives of four other tribes that were expelled from the land at one point: the Hopi, the Navajo, the Ute Mountain Ute and the Ute Indian Tribe from the Wint and Urai Reserve.
“This type of real governance will serve as a model,” said Tracy Stone-Manning, director of the Bureau of Land Management, which is part of the internal affairs department.
Homer Wilkes, deputy minister for natural resources and the environment, said in a statement that the pact was a “one-of-a-kind co-operation agreement” outlining a common vision for the management and protection of the land.
The agreement requires the Land Management Bureau to “consciously engage” with the committee in areas including land planning, management and conservation, while working to protect traditions “that are part of the way of life of tribal nations in these lands”. .
The tribes and the government will also work together to develop public programs at Bears Ears and to “explore opportunities” to repatriate sites that have been removed from the land.
The purpose of the agreement, according to the agreement, is to ensure that “management decisions affecting the monument reflect the experience and traditional and historical knowledge of the tribal nations and peoples concerned.”
Bears Ears is named after two adjacent holes that rise above the landscape in an ear-like manner. Tourists appreciate its beauty and emptiness, while Native American tribes see the land as the center of a number of traditions, including hunting and storytelling, referring to stories told in ancient carvings on the sandstone walls of the monument.
National monuments are protected from construction by law. They are similar to national parks, but monuments are created by presidents through the Antiquities Act of 1906, while national parks are created by Congress.
Bears Ears first became public land in December 2016 as part of President Barack Obama’s efforts to support his environmental heritage before Donald J. Trump to succeed him. A year later, Mr. Trump is shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent, seeking to use the land for economic development, especially through oil and gas exploration.
President Biden overturned the decision last year on the advice of Deb Haaland, the interior minister and India’s first cabinet secretary. Ms. Haaland visited Bears Ears in 2018 while campaigning for a seat representing New Mexico in the House of Representatives.
“There are a lot of amazing ruins there and, you know, I don’t even like to call them ruins,” Ms. Haaland told The Guardian in 2019. “The spirit of the people never leaves.”
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