The president signed two proclamations to shrink Bears Ears from 1.35 million to 120,000 acres and Grand Staircase Escalante from 1.9 million to 181,000 acres.
It’s the second time Trump has sliced up the monuments. He reduced their size in 2017 during his first term. The boundaries were later restored by President Joe Biden.
The new executive order also shuttered the Bears Ears Commission, an inter-tribal collaboration between the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Zuni Tribe and the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation.
The decision was made without tribal consultation or public input, said Scott Braden, executive director of Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA).
He says his nonprofit plans to take the decision to court.
“The scale and the outrage President Trump’s action, combined with the fact that he was doing it at the behest of Governor Cox, Senator Mike Lee, and the rest of the Utah delegation, really grounds our opposition because it completely cut out the public from the process, it cut out input from the tribes,” Braden said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour.” “And we just think it's a complete outrage.”
He called the exclusion of tribal voices callous.
The Bears Ears Commission was created to care for and manage the monument alongside the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. The collaboration was meant to acknowledge tribal sovereignty and incorporated Traditional Indigenous Knowledge.
“Bears Ears really broke new ground in that regard in a way that was profoundly meaningful to the tribes and that I think is a bit of reconciliation and justice in a really important way,” Braden said. “The way the Utah delegation and President Trump thumbed their nose at that I think is deeply shameful.”
The decision came as a surprise, said Davina Smith-Idjesa, the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition cochair and member of the Navajo Nation.
“It was complete shock. It was a punch in the gut,” Smith-Idjesa told KPCW.
Smith-Idjesa said the Utah delegates not only disregarded tribal input but also as state residents.
“I live in Utah. I’m a citizen of Utah, so that was a clear reminder again that tribes can be easily erased.”
Although the commission was disbanded, the tribes will continue to move forward as a coalition Smith-Idjesa said.
“Although this erasure happened, although this reduction happened, we still will remain a unified front,” she said. “This area is still our homeland. It still is a living cultural landscape, an ancestral home.”
The coalition’s structure has yet to be determined, but that they will focus on native community members she said.
SUWA will hold rallies across the state on Monday, July 20, to protest the decision.
