Thursday, December 7, 2017

Native American Tribes Join to File Lawsuit Against Trump Attack on Bears Ears National Monument

Excellent, disturbing, hopeful, and deeply important interview. ― Molly

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: