Another factor in Bears Ears debate: religious rights of native tribes
By LAUREN MARKOE
Religion News Service
Mar 10 2017 01:06PM
Washington • At the end of his second term, then-President Barack Obama gratified a coalition of Western Native Americans by creating Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, 1.35 million acres of high desert punctuated by dramatic rock formations.
Now a tribal coalition, which considers many sites within Bears Ears sacred, fears the Trump administration will take the unprecedented step of stripping a national monument of its designation and leave their ancestral lands vulnerable.
"Our religion is very much tied to the land," said Carleton Bowekaty, a Zuni tribe councilman and co-chair of Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. The group's lobbying made the monument the first ever to be created at the behest of sovereign tribes.
"For many of my people our day starts with prayer, and it's not just prayer for themselves or their family; it's for the entire world and therefore for the Earth. … If we don't have a healthy land, we won't have a healthy people."
http://www.sltrib.com/news/5041159-155/another-factor-in-bears-ears-debate
