“Rising from the center of the southeastern Utah landscape and visible from every direction are twin buttes so distinctive that in each of the native languages of the region their name is the same: Hoon’Naqvut, Shash Jaa, Kwiyagatu Nukavachi, Ansh An Lashokdiwe, or ‘Bears Ears.’ For hundreds of generations, native peoples lived in the surrounding deep sandstone canyons, desert mesas...one of the densest and most significant cultural landscapes in the United States.”
That was from President Obama’s proclamation establishing Bears Ears National Monument, Dec. 28, 2016.
Obama did not pull this out of the air. It came after years of organizing by the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition, made up of Hopi, Navajo, Uintah and Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni nations.
Now President Trump, listening to people like Orrin Hatch and Rep. Jason Chaffetz, both friends of the oil and gas industry and other commercial developments, has ordered his Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review President Obama’s proclamation.
We already knew President Trump cares little for Indians when he reversed Obama’s policy on the pipeline cutting through Standing Rock Sioux lands. Trump is also a great admirer of Andrew Jackson, who ordered the Cherokee removal with its “Trail of Tears.” Once again Native Americans are under attack.
Information fro this post came from Terry Tempest Williams, “The Next Standing Rock?” New York Times, (May 7, 2017), p. 8(sr).
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