Tag: native american rights
Trump Officials Exclude Native Tribes In Bears Ears Monument Debate

Trump Officials Exclude Native Tribes In Bears Ears Monument Debate

Reprinted with permission from DCReport

Federal law requires our government to consult with Native American tribes about the Bears Ears monument in southern Utah. But Donald Trump is only giving lip service at best to attempts to consult the NavajoHopi, and others about what was once the second-largest national monument in the lower 48 states before Trump shrunk it by 85 percent.

Now, the public has less than a week to file public comments on Interior Secretary David Bernhardt’s plan that could turn could add more ATV trails and approve cell phone towers and utility lines to what are now two smaller monuments. Bernhardt has appointed an advisory committee that doesn’t include anyone who supported creating the monument in the first place.

“The BLM and the Forest Service are asking people who don’t think the monument should exist for advice on how to manage it,” said Josh Ewing, executive director of Friends of Cedar Mesa.

Bears Ears, named after twin peaks that look like the ears of a bear, has about 9,000 recorded archaeological sites, including petroglyphs, woven cloth, human remains, and ancient roads.

Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke trimmed Bears Ears from 1.35 million acres to 201,876 acres, eliminating Cedar Mesa with its cliff ruins and rock art. He also took out Grand Gulch, a canyon, and other places that five native American tribes wanted protected when they urged former President Barack Obama to create the monument.

The management plan would allow “chaining,” a practice favored by Utah ranchers to clear land for cattle grazing.

“Bears Ears is not the kind of place for chaining thousands of acres of forest or stringing up utility lines,” said Heidi McIntosh of Earthjustice, one of the parties involved in the Indian tribes’ federal lawsuit against the Trump administration over shrinking Bears Ears.

Bernhardt appointed rancher Gail Johnson who holds a grazing allotment that was entirely within the original monument to a Bears Ears advisory group. Johnson and her husband, Sandy, have intervened in the lawsuits challenging Trump’s shrinking Bears Ears, arguing that a larger monument would put them out of business.

Bernhardt also appointed San Juan County Commissioner Bruce Adams and Ryan Benally, the son of former County Commissioner Rebecca Benally to the panel. San Juan County, the poorest county in Utah, paid $485,600 to a Louisiana law firm to oppose Bears Ears being named a national monument and then to lobby for reducing it.

Bernhardt did not appoint any of the seven people recommended by Rupert Steele, the chairman of the Utah Tribal Leaders Association. Steele’s picks included Navajo medicine man Jonah Yellowman and Kevin Madalena, a paleontologist from the Pueblo of Jemez, N.M.

New Rules Might Recognize More Tribes, Create New Casinos

New Rules Might Recognize More Tribes, Create New Casinos

By Rob Hotakainen, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — As a proud Chinook Indian, Gary Johnson rejects the claim that his tribe in southwestern Washington state is extinct, even though that’s what the Bureau of Indian Affairs declared more than 12 years ago.

“They couldn’t be more wrong,” said Johnson, a former chairman of the tribe that helped Lewis and Clark navigate the Pacific Northwest in the early 1800s.

Rob Jacobs of North Carolina’s Lumbee Tribe said it was silly that he couldn’t legally wear his eagle feathers because his tribe wasn’t among the 566 federally recognized tribes.

“We have to ask for permission to be Indian,” said Jacobs. “Think about it. It’s so sad.”

While no one bothers to count the tribes that have long gone unrecognized by the U.S. government, experts estimate the number at well over 200.

That might change, under new rules proposed by the Obama administration. They would give more tribes a faster track at joining the ranks of the recognized by making it easier for them to prove their legitimacy.

“This opens the door of opportunity,” said Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, the director of the Indian legal program and a professor at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.

It also opens the door to money. Winning such recognition makes a tribe eligible for more federal benefits and is a prerequisite to apply for the biggest prize of all: the right to run a casino.

While the rules have won backing from large tribal groups, they’re generating lots of controversy. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has set a deadline of Sept. 30 for the public to weigh in and will then decide whether to adopt the rules.

Gambling opponents say the rules are too lenient and should be scrapped. Some smaller tribes say the rules are too onerous, fearing they’ll still be denied the recognition they’ve sought for decades.

Under the new rules, tribes would be required to document political influence or authority only since 1934, rather than as early as 1789. And they’d no longer be required to demonstrate that third parties have identified them as tribes since 1900.

The National Congress of American Indians, the nation’s largest organization of tribal governments, passed a resolution endorsing the new rules “as a matter of long-overdue justice and fairness.” The group said the current rules, adopted in 1978, had “severely deteriorated,” causing decades long delays and containing “irrational documentation requirements.”

When the Obama administration published the new rules in May, Kevin Washburn, the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, called the changes “long overdue.”

Even if they’re approved, the bureau says it’s uncertain how many more tribes might get recognized, how much it might cost taxpayers, or whether any of the newly sanctioned tribes would get to open casinos.

“Whether to grant federal recognition and whether a tribe is eligible for Indian gaming are two wholly separate questions, governed by wholly separate standards and evaluated under wholly different processes,” said Nedra Darling, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Photo: MCT/Rob Jacobs

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