What remains of Bears Ears
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
For the last 13,000 years, humans have inhabited this part of the southwest.
They carved arrowheads from stone and hunted giant sloths. They learned to farm corn and created communities on the mesa tops.
They scratched and painted images onto rocks and reused and remixed what was left by earlier generations.
For 11 months, the rich legacy of this region was federally protected. It’s not clear who will be its steward now.
The stories of these earlier peoples are still here, told by the places and things they left behind. And for a century, the region has been at the heart of an unresolved American argument over public lands, and what should be done with them.
In 2016, President Barack Obama created the Bears Ears National Monument, named for a pair of tall buttes that resemble the top of a bear’s head peeking over a ridge. His proclamation recognized the area’s “extraordinary archeological and cultural record” and the land’s “profoundly sacred” meaning to many Native American tribes.
Eleven months later, in early December of 2017, President Trump reduced Bears Ears by 85 percent, an action that Utah officials and some local residents wanted. His rollback also followed a uranium firm’s concerted lobbying, an effort led by Andrew Wheeler, who now heads the Environmental Protection Agency.
The region, northwest of the much-visited Four Corners, includes a stunning variety of topography — flat-topped mesas and expansive valleys, sloping igneous mountains and towering sandstone cliffs.
The Obama monument protected 1.35 million acres of federally-owned land and covered much of San Juan County, which has about 15,000 residents.
The designation prevented energy development and mining and allowed for restricting where vehicles could go. Republicans accused Obama of presidential overreach and said the new monument was a late-term, large “federal land grab.”
Trump, in reducing the size of the monument, said “important objects of scientific or historic interest can instead be protected by a smaller and more appropriate reservation” of two disconnected parts, Shash Jaa and Indian Creek.
Bears Ears is the first national monument created at the request of and with input from Native American governments. A coalition of the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes initially sought protection for an area covering 1.9 million acres, bounded to the west and south by the Colorado and San Juan rivers.
“We knew exactly what was within that geographical boundary,” said Shaun Chapoose, a tribal councilman for the Uncompahgre band of the Ute Tribe. “We knew the gravesites, we knew where the artifacts were, we knew where certain plants and herbs grew.”
“By reducing it, you actually once again start leaving things out of that boundary,” he said. “And the way our cultures are designed is, it’s not like you can have one part of it and abandon the other part of it and be whole. You need all of it to fulfill the practices of the rituals that go on.”
Over hundreds of generations, the region has seen multiple periods of huge population and rapid depopulation. Today, what’s left behind is a dense assemblage of artifacts and dwellings from different eras and groups. A 21st-century visitor can span thousands of years in a single stride.
Abajo
Mts.
Hidden in the Abajo Mountains
The Hopi and Zuni tribes trace their ancestry to the Pueblo people, who created much of what remains in Bears Ears today. (To show this cliff dwelling in clear detail, this 3D model was created from drone footage.)
A thousand years ago, the Abajo Mountains harbored human life in every ravine and gully. Its inhabitants slept and stored food in caves like these , tucked away in alcoves. Warfare was common around 1200 AD, and cliff dwellings provided safety and security to Puebloans.
To Hopi, whose ancestors lived here, the walls are tangible evidence of their cultural history.
“There’s a lot of metaphorical analogy that we attach to artifacts and what they mean. But just in the general sense we would call those the footprints of our ancestors,” said Lyle Balenquah, an archaeologist and a member of the Hopi tribe. “And that’s the physical proof that shows to us and to the rest of the world that our oral histories aren’t myths.”
This upper cave was also walled off, but the structure collapsed at some point in the past thousand years. The people who built these walls used ropes or ladders to reach the caves. In the lower cave , a wooden beam may have been a place to attach climbing devices.
Zuni people, who also descended from Pueblo, periodically visit Pueblo homes to connect with their ancestors from another millennium.
“The homes that we build, we believe that they become living beings, and that nobody really leaves them,” said Carleton Bowekaty, lieutenant governor of the Zuni tribe. “That if you resided there then you will return there.”
The concentration of humanity over a few thousand years left behind artifacts that give us insight into the past, including tools, buildings and even food.
“If you go into a dry cave around these parts, and you get into deposits that are 2,000 years old, maybe even 3,000 years old, you will find corn,” said Jonathan Till, curator of the Edge of the Cedars State Park Museum in the nearby town of Blanding. “Corn on the cob, corn off the cob, corn cobs without the corn on it.”
By 1290, Puebloans had moved away from the Bears Ears area, migrating south to establish new communities. The region has never been as densely populated since. Blanding, founded by Mormon settlers in the early 1900s, is the biggest town in San Juan County. It has 3,500 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 20 percent of whom are Navajo.
850-900 A.D. the end of this era the region was almost completely depopulated.
1000-1150 A.D. were dispersed throughout, with small settlements as centers.
1250-1290 A.D. declined rapidly, with limited farming on mesas and in valleys.
Now new people are tramping across the landscape, already a target for artifact hunters.
The Bureau of Land Management estimated that visitation to the area rose 56 percent in fiscal year 2016, as public attention grew when the Obama administration weighed establishing the monument. With the monument’s status in limbo, more visitors could mean more trouble for the thousands of archaeological sites in the area.
“Once it started to get some of the attention it did, now you’ve got everybody who knows about it,” Chapoose said. “So it’s opened up some of the sensitive areas to disturbances, it’s opened them up to possibilities of development, which could undermine or destroy sacred sites or cultural sites or just natural landscapes.1250-1290 A.D.
“It’s like opening Pandora’s box, right? … You get it protected and all of a sudden you take all the protection off.”
Officials at the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service did not respond to multiple requests for interviews on their management plan for archeological and cultural sites both within and without the revised monument boundaries.
It’s common to see entire scenes sketched out on the rocks, but Balenquah, the Hopi archeologist, warns that inferring a narrative can lead you to the wrong impression.
“I always tell people on my river trips that I don’t interpret rock art. I can’t necessarily always say with certainty that I know what is being portrayed,” he said. “You know, there’s some folks out there that claim to be able to look at a rock art panel and be able to decipher this long, kind of romanticized version of a story that’s being told, and I think that’s kind of doing a disservice to what it could be trying to portray to us.”
San Juan
River
Along the San Juan River
This extensively etched cliff wall near the San Juan River is representative of many in the area. It lies outside the new boundaries of the monument. The oldest drawings on this wall could date to 4000 BC, according to Sally Cole, an archaeologist who lives in Bluff, Utah. They help identify how society developed, from groups of hunter-gatherers to agrarian communities.
Assigning an exact date to a petroglyph is difficult, and archaeologists instead group styles into larger eras. Artistic style is one indicator of when a drawing may have been created.
This 12- to 14-inch human figure , shown wearing a headdress, Cole said, is an example of art created in the early Basketmaker period, before 500 AD, known for societal use of woven baskets.
When that drawing was etched into the rock, there were already ancient pictures on it. This animal, probably a bighorn sheep , was drawn in Archaic times and could be as old as 4000 BC, Cole said.
This sheep has lighter-colored spots around its feet and mouth, something often repeated on this panel. The lighter etchings were probably added later.
“Things that are older, they tend to take on that patina … the color of the background,” said Till of the Edge of the Cedars museum. “So if something is totally repatinated, than we know it’s pretty darn old as opposed to something that is a lot lighter.”
Artists created compositions that told stories. These two twinlike figures are probably part of a traditional narrative, Cole said, and similar pairs of figures can be seen across the region.
The rows of dots that stretch across the panel are understood to be narrative tools, representing physical or temporal movement of people. They also connect pieces of stories together.
A hundred feet away and a few hundred years later, Pueblo people etched these drawings into the same cliff. The broad-shouldered, legless human figures are similar to examples in and around Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, Cole said. The hunting scenes are also consistent with Pueblo style.
The large, Archaic-style quadruped is positioned amid Basketmaker drawings of humans and animals and even appears to have something, maybe footprints, Till said, etched on top of it.
Although these drawings were made at different times by different peoples, they share the common purpose of communication.
“When these things were first made, they were singing out to everybody,” Till said. “These rock art panels that we have here were meant to be seen by everybody. They’re very public.”
Explore the panel on your own and discover more information about many of the drawings from archaeologists Sally Cole and Jonathan Till.
Federal government management of the land surrounding Blanding was a contentious topic long before the Bears Ears designation. In 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Interior Department developed a proposal that would have included much of the 2016 Bears Ears monument as well as what is now the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.
President Bill Clinton established the latter protections in 1996, over the objections of Utah’s congressional delegation, which escalated the long-simmering disputes in the West over federal land management. In 2017, Trump also reduced the Grand Staircase-Escalante monument, carving out some 800,000 acres.
In much of the West, the federal government is the largest landowner. Its control of those public lands has led to what critics say is a byzantine and unfair system of issuing permits and leases for mining, energy and lumber industries, and grazing rights to ranchers.
And many local and state officials in western states resent what they see as Washington’s interference in their affairs.
Trump asked former interior secretary Ryan Zinke to reassess the boundaries of more than two dozen monuments that had been created, since 1996, under the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gave presidents unilateral power to protect lands perceived to be under threat. In the case of Utah, the new boundaries that Trump established for Bears Ears will allow energy companies access to uranium, oil and gas deposits that had been off-limits under the Obama proclamation.
There have been other conflicts over who should profit from the public lands. Tensions between the Bureau of Land Management and locals erupted in Utah in 2009 after BLM agents raided eight homes in an operation to shut down the trade of illegally acquired artifacts.
“The biggest threat to Bears Ears was first looting of cultural sites by locals, so there’s a lot of animosity toward the federal government for actually cracking down on operations to systematically loot Native American sites throughout that region — millions of dollars made in illegally harvesting and selling artifacts,” said Sally Jewell, who was interior secretary from 2013 to 2017.
During her tenure, she saw a repository of items reclaimed from families in the region who had been involved in illegal pot hunting, she said.
“I mean, they call it pot hunting, but it was grave robbery really. You had one egregious example of a cradle board with a child that had died buried in the cradle board,” Jewell said, “and the child’s bones had been dumped on the ground and the cradle board sold.”
The BLM’s tactics led to a civil suit after one of the suspects arrested in the raid committed suicide. The lawsuit was thrown out, but animosity toward the federal government remains strong.
“The federal government, at least for the last 20 years that I’ve been really cognizant of, has been nothing but bullies. They’re arrogant, they’re criminal. They lie, they cheat. They mislead.” said Phil Lyman, who was a San Juan County commissioner starting in 2010 before his election to the Utah House of Representatives last year.
Lyman also has a personal history with the BLM. After the agency closed a road to protect archaeological sites in Recapture Canyon in 2014, Lyman led protesters riding ATVs through the canyon. A jury found him guilty of trespassing and conspiracy, and he was sentenced to 10 days in jail, fined $1,000 and was ordered to pay $96,000 in restitution along with a co-defendant who helped organize the protest.
“Back [50 years ago] the park rangers used to give these tours, and they would always say, ‘We know that these people occupied this area in one time or another, but we don’t know what happened to them. We don’t know where they went.’ Well, today we’re changing history by telling them our side of our history. Our story, that we’re still here. We never disappeared,” he said.
One solution put forward by monument proponents is a management plan that would direct people to “hardened” sites, where visitors wouldn’t be as likely to damage artifacts.
“Right now this monument is not being managed. This area is not being managed by the BLM or the Forest Service or anybody else, except for Google,” said Josh Ewing, the executive director of Friends of Cedar Mesa, a local nonprofit advocacy group that is a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits. “Google is the main manager of this monument, because it’s sending people all over the place. And so if you don’t have a proactive plan of how to intercept people, where to send them, then you’re just leaving it to the Internet to manage the area.”
Friends of Cedar Mesa runs a visitors center in Bluff, that provides some of that management — including reminding visitors that the photos they share online may have detailed geographic information attached, which can lead others to vulnerable sites.
“A strategy to protect this area for many decades was just keep it a secret,” Ewing said. “Now, if you think that’s a good strategy, just tell me how to put Google out of business.”
Valley of
the Gods
In the Valley of the Gods
Some of the earliest residents of this continent were the Clovis, a prehistoric people who hunted megafauna such as giant sloths and mammoths. Agriculture was not yet prevalent in 11000 BC, so the Clovis were able to live in arid places such as the Valley of the Gods.
A smaller cousin just northeast of the more famous Monument Valley, this desert valley is dotted with stone pillars that jut vertically out of the valley floor and rise straight upward for hundreds of feet.
The valley is full of “very unique places” for local Diné, or Navajo, people, said Jonah Yellowman, a spiritual adviser for Utah Diné Bikéyah, a nonprofit group that works to protect ancestral lands.
“There’s a place where holy people, they come together and they do things, they talk about things, and they go on their way again. There are sacred places, sacred areas here,” he said, and “people don’t really see … what we see, the stories that we have.”
It took millions of years of wind and rain to carve these outcroppings from solid stone. Unlike the archaeological mélange of artifacts on Cedar Mesa, the eons of sandstone in Valley of the Gods are clearly separated in contrasting layers of red and orange.
The sun sets over Bears Ears National Monument. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
A similar separation helped Clovis artifacts survive for millennia. Elsewhere in the region, successive cultures obscure the history of those who came before. Farmers farm, people build communities, earlier artifacts are buried, destroyed or mixed with later work.
“That arid, desiccate landscape … it’s not burdened by the profound history of farmers,” Till said. The Valley of the Gods is relatively dry and has little soil depth compared with Cedar Mesa.
“Clawing back 13,000 years ago, those places, those archaeological contexts survive to some extent because of the fact that they don’t have farmers living on top of them,” he said.
Today, visitors can walk the same paths as the continent’s first people did and see the same seemingly unchanging stones. Yellowman says if people do so, they should come with respect — the same way they would anywhere.
“Go there just to look around and to see the beauty around,” he said. “That’s what we want to protect too. Those areas. Because if we damage them, then the force of that — the power source — is not there anymore.”
The rich trove of fossils is in an unprotected area of Bears Ears and has been looted before.
Analysis | Areas cut out of Utah monuments are rich in oil, coal, uranium
President Trump drastically reduced the size of two national monuments in Utah, potentially opening about 2 million acres of public land to mineral extraction and other activities in a state in which about 65 percent of all land is federally owned.
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Unfortunately, this may be a little long - but, IMO, well worth it.
To get a GREAT video with the story, go to:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/bears-ears/?utm_term=.534e42cc9d83
It's hard to imagine how disheartening it must be to have worked so hard for so long to achieve a goal and have it wiped away by the stoke of a pen for corporate profit.
The beauty, culture and much of the history of America lies here.
Too bad that part of American don't understand nor recognize it. The dollars are much more important.
Perhaps we can have a photo of Andrew Jackson as a monument to Zinke and Trump hung at the opening of the first uranium mine to open in Bears Ears.
That photo is stunning!
The really sad part/thing to me is how Utah cares more about the "religious/corporate" groups/organizations than it does about the peoples who have protected these lands way before Joseph Smith and his "Indian" angels arrived.
The Native tribes/nations have always been and will always be the caretakers of Mother Earth 'cause, for some reason, the non-Native population just can't grasp her significance and importance.
Beautiful pic Kavika - beautiful.
Certain non-Natives are worse - Obama increased protections for places like this, while Trump is doing everything he can to let his buddies get rich by exploiting them. Not to mention the off-shore drilling and the damage he wants to do to the Arctic.
Keep that in mind during the next election!
The really shitty thing is that 71% of the Utah citizens wanted Bears Ears protected and left as is. I guess what the people of Utah wanted didn't matter to Zinke and the Administration.
The pockets of folks like "Cash CaChing CEO" and his brothers who are buying and directing the politicians of Utah.
Money talks louder than people's voices. Especially, when the greedy and ignorant are the main ones listening.
That's an unfounded sweeping generalization 1st.
One of the sad parts of this the Bear's ears doonboggle that trump did is people believe statements like you made. From that statement I doubt you have very little knowledge of the tribes around the Bear's ears
How so?
Though I have read quite a bit about Bear Ears and the tribes filings to protect their land, that has nothing to do with my comment.
I KNOW for a FACT that there are THOUSANDS of non Native people who are doing everything they can to protect Mother Earth. Denigrating their contributions merely because they aren't Native is counterproductive.
Not even hardly Dulay. The Natives were on this continent for 'bout 23,000 years before the non-Natives got lost and landed in our vicinity. During that 23,000 years, the Natives cared for the lands, animals, waters, forests and other people to the extent that, upon arrival on the East Coast, one upper class gentleman, looking over the forest from a hill, stated that he had never seen such a pristine scene. And, no Dulay, I don't have a copy of that quote, I don't know which hill it was, I don't know what year it was, I don't know who he was talking too, I don't know how much pocket change he had or what color his ascot was (if he was wearing one). But, it did occur, and it has been reference by numerous authors such as Vine DeLoria, James Wilkes, Jack Weatherford and others.
Then, in the past 400 plus years, when the non-Natives arrived on this continent, they have slowly but surely started tearing down the lands, killing the animals, polluting the waters, cutting down the trees, killing their fellow man and turning this continent/world into an environmental/ecological mess - in just over 400 years.
And, that is not a generalization - that is a fact.
Denigrating the contributions of others merely because they aren't Native is counterproductive. But hey, you be you 1st.
I hope you don't mind but I have a few words to say to both of you, 1st and Dulay.
I've never been know as a go between or peace maker, more of a militant Indian and probably well deserved but let me say this.
1st you are correct in your comment and Dulay you are correct in your comment. Please take a minute to think about that.
America was very pristine when the first white men arrived and they have done much over the centuries to destroy much of this beauty. That is a fact, plain and simple.
Now, as many were doing the destroying there were other (non Indians of all colors) that have fought for the environment. That is also a fact, plain and simple.
Sit, reflect and for a moment and perhaps you'll see that both of you have valid points. You may not totally agree with the other, but there is an old Ojibwe saying.
''No tree has branches so foolish as to fight among themselves.''
Trying to debate/argue with mishomis (grandfather) is futile. In the words of the Edward Benton-Banai, Mide and member of the highest order of the ''Grand Medicine Society''....Don't piss me off!!!
Great comment!
As are all of Mishomis' comments - and, yes, I listen and learn much from him.
Which is my point, though said much more eloquently.
My maternal ancestor's lands and people have been abused and decimated by colonization. Even after being assimilated, my grandparents and especially my grand uncles were disrespected and unrecognized for their actions as warriors in WWII.
Though not a Native American, I have had Native friends since the 70's and have been 'enlightened' by their friendship and what they shared about the plight of their peoples. Two young Lakota men that I met in HS taught me much, including how to gracefully take an ass kicking in chess. They made clear to me the folly and arrogance of the white Christian privilege that was 'Manifest Destiny'.
Though I have never been there, over the last decades, I have done what I could to support the People of Pine Ridge long before the XL Pipeline abomination, especially with winter funding of firewood. One year in the 80's, when I was flush with cash I sent a couple of wood stoves.
One of my oldest friends [30 years+] is a Ojibwa Water Walker and a Professor of Geography who specializes in the Sacred lands of Indigenous Peoples. I challenge anyone who meets her to come away without a fire burning inside them to protect Mother Earth.
In the 80's when I lived I CA, we had a epiphany, got together and bought hunting tags for some hunting buddies for Mountain Lions. We had a potluck and burned them in the firepit.
For me, it's not just about Mother Earth herself but also about the People who worship her.
Denigrating the contributions of others merely because they aren't Native is counterproductive AND disrespectful.
I'm aware of your relationship with native people and respect that very much Dulay.
If I may, and I know this is off topic, but it seems to me to fit into what I said about branches of a tree.
The US promised the people of the Philippines that if they fought the Japanese with us that they would be considered US vet's. What happened was, IMO, a travesty when the US congress reneged on that promise.
Let me add this. In WWII, ''The Great Raid'' in which 120 Army Rangers, Army Alamo Scouts (with a large number of Indians) and Philippine guerrillas rescued over 500 POW's of the Japanese in the raid.
Raid at Cabanatuan
It only took another 40+ years for the US to pay 'reparations' and by that time my one remaining granduncle [out of 3 who fought] was long dead...
Nothing really new there, is there Kavika? The US has reneged on more promises than they have kept over the many years, and Native Americans have had to bear the brunt of many of them.
So to screw over the Philippine Vets who laid their lives on the line to fight along side the US is sadly just one more deliberately unkept promise.
JMOO
As the author/seeder of this thread, I'm going "partially" off-topic - and I am not going to report myself to a moderator.
Attacking me on any/all threads is not conducive to any discussion with me Dulay.
Did I say ALL non-Natives? No. Did you want to read ALL non-Natives??? Yes, simply because I placed a general statement without tons and tons and tons of specifics.
There are good and bad on both sides of the coin - Native and non-Natives - both are beneficial and harmful.
To make it simple for you - Natives (for the MOST part) care for the environment much better than non-Natives (for the MOST part) do. Why?? 'Cause the Natives have that inbred sense to care for others/environment/Mother Earth - it is an ingrained trait - some would say it's in their DNA.
Non-Natives (for the MOST part) do not have that inbred sense because they are, foremost, into growth, technology, advancement, climbing the ladder of success, being important, getting recognition for their work, grooming their environment into two car garages, with two cars, big house, good paying job, nice retirements, good insurance coverages, couple of kids and grandkids to carry on their legacies.
I have many non-Native friends/associates/acquaintances who are called "Tree Huggers" because of their sense and actions of caring/giving to the environment/Mother Earth. Hell, I worked for 33 years in the environmental world performing Natural/Cultural Resource duties with lots of non-Natives - folks who would make anyone proud in their care/understanding/actions in the preservation/conservation of Mother Earth. But, we had to butt heads constantly with the "upper echelon" to ensure that the preservation/conservation we were attempting to establish/maintain needed to be accomplished to maintain beneficial balance. Why?? Because it went against the "echelon's" plans for advancement/technology/personal recognition.
However, there are far more Natives attempting to preserve/conserve what Mother Earth has given us than there are non-Natives making those same efforts.
Yes, there are non-Natives making contributions - BUT - not to the scale/level of the Natives - and those non-Natives are/and will be respected and honored for their contributions/accomplishments.
I didn't attack YOU 1st. I made an observation about your comment. That's how this shit works.
Did you want to read my observation as an attack?
You're always quick to take umbrage at every comment I make. Perhaps you should make use of the new ignore function.
No 1st. It was simply because your comment WAS an unfounded sweeping generalization and your above comment seems to acknowledge that fact.
You seem to be the only one that doesn't recognize it BF.
You could have done that instead of posting that drivel. You chose not to.
So that 'without saying what about me' went away right quick I see...
WTF is your issue BF? Save the snark and spite it out.
No need. That's what my clients hire me for. Instead of dumping chemicals on their properties, we find ways of creating a beautiful landscape using organics with indigenous and deer resistant plants. I've even managed to convince every one of them to save a wild part of their gardens for milkweed and other fauna friendly plants to grow.
BTW, I use your fertilizer every chance I get...
I agree. Native Americans are not the only ones who value Mother Earth and do what they can to protect her. However, there are not sufficient numbers of them to to outnumber those who only value what they can take from her without putting anything back.
Which makes the abomination of what they are trying to do @ Bear Ears so abhorrent. There is no 'putting anything back' after they drill and mine @ Bears Ears...
Sad that the trump administration would do this. All so corporations can destroy the land.
I think it is a mix of corporate greed the the idea trump has of wiping away anything Obama achieved.
It is truly beautiful. It should have remained protected. As a non-Native American, but a Wiccan I too value Mother Earth and all she has to offer and am saddened by the daily destruction of her beauty.
Something that needs to be preserved for future generations, not just for native people, but for all mankind. This is part of our countries past and a huge amount of information about America's early people.
I am so sick of these rollbacks on protected lands. It is backward and ignorant.