Utah Voters Back Restoring Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Protections as Mining Claims Loom
Mining claims are set to open Friday, Sept. 11, on lands cut from two Utah national monuments, even as a new poll shows that most Utah voters want full protections restored for Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante.
The poll by New Bridge Strategy, commissioned by the Grand Canyon Trust, comes amid an ongoing fight over President Trump’s July 13 proclamation reducing the two monuments by 90%. The move opened lands stripped of monument protections to mining and other commercial interests and ended a coalition of tribal leaders that had guided management of the lands for four years. It drew outcry from tribes, advocates and the public.
Bears Ears was designated in 2016 and Grand Staircase-Escalante in 1996. Together, the monuments once spanned more than 3 million acres. Trump’s proclamation reduced the protected lands to 303,000 acres combined. The reductions have been challenged in federal court and remain a flashpoint in the broader debate over public lands.
The new survey found that 66% of Utah voters say greater protections should be restored to all of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments. In addition, 82% say it is important for Native American tribes to have a strong role in managing public lands containing sacred or culturally significant sites.
The lands are sacred to tribes in the region, including the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe and Pueblo of Zuni.
They contain thousands of archaeological and cultural sites, including cliff dwellings, rock art, ceremonial locations and ancestral villages. Tribal citizens also continue to hunt, gather medicinal plants and conduct traditional cultural practices throughout the landscape.
Davina Smith-Idjesa (Diné), co-chair of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, spoke Wednesday at a press conference announcing the polling results.
“Bears Ears and Grand Staircase are not merely boundaries drawn on a map,” Smith-Idjesa said. “They are our sacred places, our churches, our medicine cabinets, our grocery stores, and living landscapes where ceremonies, histories, teachings, and relationships with land continue today.”
Smith-Idjesa pointed to the results favoring Native people taking a lead in stewarding public lands.
“I think these findings demonstrate broad public recognition that tribal nations must remain meaningfully involved in stewardship and co-management of their ancestral lands,” she said. “Whether every elected official agrees with the results or not, these findings are profoundly telling, and should not be ignored. They reflect broad support within Utah for protecting these national monuments and ensuring that tribal nations have a meaningful and lasting role in their future.”
Autumn Gillard, a descendant of the Cedar Band of Paiutes and coordinator of the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition, also spoke at the press conference. She emphasized preserving Native cultures through land stewardship.
“Protecting historic homesteads, trails, structures, inscriptions, and community places allows descendants to maintain meaningful connections to the lives, hardships, and achievements of their ancestors,” Gillard said. “These histories deserve protection alongside Indigenous cultural places, while recognizing that tribal relationships with this landscape extend back thousands of years and remain alive through our language, our oral traditions, our plant knowledge, our ceremonies, and our continued stewardship.
Responsible management must preserve the full cultural record of the monument and meaningfully include the communities whose identities and histories are connected to it.”
One day after Trump’s July proclamation shrinking the monuments, mining companies began filing claims on the newly unprotected land. But all claims filed before Friday, Sept. 11, are invalid. The poll also found that 81% of voters oppose selling public lands to private interests.
As the United States stands on the threshold of another uranium boom, the threats spurred by the loss of monument protections extend beyond cultural and spiritual concerns to the health and existence of Native peoples in the region.
Thousands of Native Americans are still living with the health and environmental consequences of the country’s first major uranium mining era, which spanned the 1940s to the 1970s. Mining was largely conducted on Native lands and left thousands vulnerable to the adverse effects of uranium exposure, including kidney disease, cancers and respiratory disease. Traces of uranium can still be found in many Native communities where mining took place, including in water supplies.
Smith-Idjesa grew up in Monument Valley, where she herded sheep with her grandparents and drank water from a well supplied by what she later learned was contaminated runoff. She spoke of growing up with constant headaches, seeing mutated sheep and watching her peers die of cancers believed to be caused by uranium exposure.
“Our community had no idea,” she said.
Gillard pointed to the risk posed by limited health care access in Native communities and formerly protected public lands being exposed to mining interests.
“You’re going to start to see people get sick,” she said. “You’re going to start to see the environment get sick. tribal rural communities on reservation areas are far away from health services, and when they experience severe health issues like those that come from uranium booms, you start to see a severe population depletion.”
This article was originally published by Native News Online.