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Trump Has Dismantled More Monuments Than Any Protest
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-dismantle-national-monuments_n_5ef4f34dc5b63220fcca2d74The president is threatening 10-year prison sentences for anyone who vandalizes a monument. He has destroyed four himself, including one honoring Native American cultural heritage.
. . .
But it is Trump who has done the most damage to national monuments, dismantling or desecrating four federally protected land and water sites with significant cultural, archeological and natural resources.
Those rollbacks include carving more than 2 million acres from a pair of protected national monuments in Utah — Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante ― in December 2017. The boundary of Bears Ears, a 1.35 million-acre landscape that several tribes consider sacred, was cut by 85%. Nearby 1.87 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante, the largest land national monument in the country and rich in both archeological and paleontological resources, was cut roughly in half. This month, Trump signed a proclamation to greenlight commercial fishing within Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a vast protected site off the East Coast ― a move that goes against the very purpose of designating a marine sanctuary.
The administration has also bulldozed and blown up Indigenous cultural and burial sites within Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a UNESCO biosphere reserve that is also home to endangered species, to make way for Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Ned Norris Jr., the chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, has compared construction of the wall on sacred burial sites to desecrating Arlington National Cemetery.
The Interior Department has floated additional cuts at several other protected national monuments.
In the case of Bears Ears, five Native American tribes had come together to petition for the creation of the monument to honor and safeguard their cultural heritage. The Obama administration protected the site, named after a pair of buttes, which is home to thousands of Native American archeological and cultural sites.
When Trump traveled to Salt Lake City to sign the proclamation gutting Bears Ears, he said nothing about the tribes’ yearslong fight to secure monument status for the area. Instead, he railed against “far-away bureaucrats” in Washington, D.C., and boasted that he was ending “another egregious abuse of federal power” and opening up protected areas to “tremendously positive things,” namely potential energy and mineral development.
The rollback was widely viewed as an illegal assault on tribes, tribal sovereignty and tribal culture. The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition — a group of the five tribes with ties to the region — called the move “a slap in the face to the members of our Tribes and an affront to Indian people all across the country.” The coalition is among several groups now suing the administration in an effort to restore the monument’s original boundaries. . . .
. . .
But it is Trump who has done the most damage to national monuments, dismantling or desecrating four federally protected land and water sites with significant cultural, archeological and natural resources.
Those rollbacks include carving more than 2 million acres from a pair of protected national monuments in Utah — Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante ― in December 2017. The boundary of Bears Ears, a 1.35 million-acre landscape that several tribes consider sacred, was cut by 85%. Nearby 1.87 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante, the largest land national monument in the country and rich in both archeological and paleontological resources, was cut roughly in half. This month, Trump signed a proclamation to greenlight commercial fishing within Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a vast protected site off the East Coast ― a move that goes against the very purpose of designating a marine sanctuary.
The administration has also bulldozed and blown up Indigenous cultural and burial sites within Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a UNESCO biosphere reserve that is also home to endangered species, to make way for Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Ned Norris Jr., the chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, has compared construction of the wall on sacred burial sites to desecrating Arlington National Cemetery.
The Interior Department has floated additional cuts at several other protected national monuments.
In the case of Bears Ears, five Native American tribes had come together to petition for the creation of the monument to honor and safeguard their cultural heritage. The Obama administration protected the site, named after a pair of buttes, which is home to thousands of Native American archeological and cultural sites.
When Trump traveled to Salt Lake City to sign the proclamation gutting Bears Ears, he said nothing about the tribes’ yearslong fight to secure monument status for the area. Instead, he railed against “far-away bureaucrats” in Washington, D.C., and boasted that he was ending “another egregious abuse of federal power” and opening up protected areas to “tremendously positive things,” namely potential energy and mineral development.
The rollback was widely viewed as an illegal assault on tribes, tribal sovereignty and tribal culture. The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition — a group of the five tribes with ties to the region — called the move “a slap in the face to the members of our Tribes and an affront to Indian people all across the country.” The coalition is among several groups now suing the administration in an effort to restore the monument’s original boundaries. . . .
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