Five Native American tribes have joined
to file what they are calling an historic lawsuit against President Donald
Trump, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and several other members of the
administration. The move came just hours after Trump visited Utah Monday, where
he announced his plan to open up protected federal lands to mining, logging,
drilling and other forms of extraction. The plan calls for shrinking the 1.3
million-acre Bears Ears National Monument by more than 80 percent and splitting
it into two separate areas. Trump would slash the state’s 1.9 million-acre
Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument by 50 percent. Bears Ears National
Monument was created in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama. President Bill
Clinton created the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. The
national monuments were designated under the century-old Antiquities Act, a law
meant to protect sacred sites, artifacts and historical objects. We speak with
Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and former
co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, and with Bob Deans, director
of strategic engagement at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
AMY GOODMAN: “You
Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones, the song that was played
at President Trump’s Utah announcement yesterday. This is Democracy
Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report.
I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well,
five Native American tribes have joined to file what they are calling an
historic lawsuit against Donald Trump, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and
several other members of the Trump administration. The move came just hours
after the president visited Utah Monday, where he came to unveil his plan to
open up protected federal lands to mining, logging, drilling and other forms of
extraction. The plan calls for shrinking the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears
Monument by more than 80 percent and splitting it into two separate areas.
Trump would slash the state’s 1.9 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monument by 50 percent. Bears Ears National Monument was created in
2016 by then-President Barack Obama. President Bill Clinton created the Grand
Staircase-Escalante National Monument in 1996. The national monuments were
designated under the century-old Antiquities Act, a law meant to protect sacred
sites, artifacts and historical objects. Trump criticized the law on Monday.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Your
timeless bond with the outdoors should not be replaced with the whims of
regulators thousands and thousands of miles away. They don’t know your land.
And truly, they don’t care for your land like you do. But from now on, that
won’t matter. I’ve come to Utah to take a very historic action to reverse
federal overreach and restore the rights of this land to your citizens. …
Therefore, today, on the recommendation of Secretary Zinke, and with the wise
counsel of Senator Hatch, Senator Lee and the many others, I will sign two
presidential proclamations. These actions will modify the national monuments
designations of both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
AMY GOODMAN: President
Trump’s announcement follows a months-long review by the Interior Department to
identify which of 27 monuments designated by past presidents should be
rescinded or resized. The Native American Rights Fund filed the lawsuit on
behalf of the Navajo Nation, Pueblo of Zuni and the Hopi, Ute Indian and Ute
Mountain Ute Tribes. The five tribes pushed for the creation of and co-managed
the Bears Ears Monument, which they consider sacred. Conservation groups, including
the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Wilderness Society and the Sierra
Club, also filed a legal challenge, arguing Trump did not have the authority to
dramatically shrink the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
For more, we go to two guests. Bob Deans is with us in Washington,
D.C., director of strategic engagement at the Natural Resources Defense
Council, author of Reckless: The Political Assault on the
American Environment and co-author of The
World We Create: A Message of Hope for a Planet in Peril. And on
the phone from Montrose, Colorado, Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, a member of the Ute
Mountain Ute Tribe and former co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal
Coalition.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! We’re
going to begin right now with Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk. Can you talk about the
significance of this announcement that President Trump made yesterday, in
actually making history, announcing the largest rollback of federal land
protection in U.S. history?
REGINA LOPEZ-WHITESKUNK: Yes.
Thank you for having me on the show this morning.
And it’s rather disturbing, considering that this is the first time
that a president has rolled back a significant amount. And what the landscape
means to Native Americans—and all citizens—is it’s a representation of public
land, which means the public should have access. Whether it’s Native Americans,
whether it’s the rock climbers, whether it’s the archaeologists or the
paleontologists, it doesn’t matter. It’s public land. It has the story of our
people. It has a story of time. It has much more than just the extraction
industry would like to take from it.
And the five tribes that came together, we came together in a sense of
healing. We healed our own relationships from within. And as soon as we were
able to reach that point of being able to move on in a common goal to seek
protection and preservation for our future, then we can move on to try to heal
other relationships, such as with the federal government. And that’s what we
did. We achieved so much more than just the land and the protection. We
achieved a sense of healing from within, from a very humanistic side of
everything. It isn’t just about seeking that almighty dollar or being able to
fuel the homes with such energy resources out there. It’s about taking care of
one another and being good neighbors, being good stewards of the land, because
that’s what our ancestors have told us through the stories that have been left
on the walls of the canyons.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well,
Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk, I wanted to ask you about President Trump’s claim that
this is actually an act to open up the lands for use by the public and the
people of Utah, when, in reality, those lands can be visited by any American
right now, right?
REGINA LOPEZ-WHITESKUNK: They
can. But here’s the reality of that. By opening up—and although he’s saying
that in words, when we open up to industry, the extractive industry, they
acquire leases, they acquire their permits. Once these companies come out, we
don’t have access to those. Plus the lands become contaminated. Then there’s
other environmental threats, threats to something as basic as water. Out here
in the West, we don’t have a lot of water. But these are questions, these are
concerns and threats, that nobody is talking about, because everybody’s focused
on the extractive industry and opening up for economic development. They’re
forgetting about those basic elements in life: water, air, the animals, the
people.
AMY GOODMAN: Let’s
bring Bob Deans into this discussion, Natural Resources Defense Council in
Washington, D.C. Can you talk about why President Trump has chosen these two
protected areas and what this means for parks and protected areas all over the
country? Start with Bears Ears, Bob.
BOB DEANS: Sure,
Amy. Thank you so much.
Well, if you look at Bears Ears, this is land that the oil, gas and
coal industry wants access to. And if you take a look at the map, you see that
millions of—that a huge amount of this property that Trump has stripped
protections away from is exactly where those resources lie. So that’s what this
is about. This is about taking nearly 2 million acres of public lands, lands
that belong to you and me, Amy, and handing it over for toxic pollution and
industrial ruin, for the sake of profits, for coal, oil, uranium and natural
gas.
It’s wrong. It’s illegal. We are going to take him to court. We are
going to hold him to account. We’re going to stand up for these lands. We’re
going to stand with these indigenous peoples, like Regina. And we’re going to
stand up for the rule of law.
Please
continue this interview, or to watch the full video program, please go
here: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/12/5/native_american_tribes_join_to_file
No comments:
Post a Comment