"The Bid For Bears Ears"

"The tribal push for a Bears Ears monument raises thorny questions of homeland and sovereignty."

"It’s already hot on a mid-July morning as I tuck into a plate of “Eggs Manuelito” and sip coffee at the Twin Rocks Cafe on the edge of the little town of Bluff, an untidy smattering of stately stone homes, gnarled old cottonwood trees and dust alongside the San Juan River in southeastern Utah. Normally, canyon country in July feels a bit like Babel, overrun by hordes of European tourists enamored of red rock, sage and big skies, but the depressed euro has thinned the herds significantly.

Bluff, population 400, is anything but quiet, however. Cars, including a silver sedan with #RuralLivesMatter soaped on the window, haphazardly line the dirt streets around the town’s little community center. Alongside a dusty, weed-choked ballpark is a row of shiny black SUVs with government plates. On the other side, hand-drawn signs jut from a chain-link fence like corn from a dryland field: “National Monument, Dooda, Dooda,” reads a yellow one, repeating the Navajo word for “no.” “PROTECT,” proclaims another, above a drawing of a bear’s head.

Over the next few hours, more than 1,000 folks trickle into the center’s grounds to give Interior Secretary Sally Jewell a piece of their minds. She’s here to gauge sentiment regarding five regional tribes’ proposal for a Bears Ears National Monument on 1.9 million acres of nearby federal land. As participants arrive, they’re offered color-coded T-shirts: Baby blue for monument supporters, brown for opponents. It’s a visual cue that demonstrates how the “Native Americans and environmentalists vs. white Mormon land-use militants” trope falls apart here. Local Utes and Navajos, as often as not, wear brown shirts, and many are also devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

Jonathan Thompson reports for High Country News October 16, 2016.