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Bears Ears National Monument

Today is the day that the Trump administration is scheduled to announce their plan to shrink Bears Ears National Monument by 1.1 million acres and slash Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in half. While this is worrisome for outdoor enthusiasts and conservationists, for Native Americans, this is a vicious attack on their home, history, and identity. I urge my fellow white members of the outdoor community to elevate and center native voices when we talk about land access issues. Public land is first and foremost an issue of racism, not recreation.

Leaked documents show Bears Ears will be cut by 85%. Source: Washington Post.

In this interview, I chat with Len Necefer, founder of NativeOutdoors, about the challenges he faces as a Native person in the outdoors, what the outdoor community can learn from Native Americans, how the outdoor industry and tribes need to become allies, and the importance of the Bears Ears Education Center. Len and I are on a grassroots team to build the Bears Ears Education Center, which you can learn more about here.
Len Necefer, Ph.D. is the founder of NativesOutdoors, a outdoor gear company that works with indigenous artists and athletes to create gear that supports outdoor recreation on tribal lands. He is a member of the Navajo Nation & holds a Doctorate from Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Engineering and Public Policy. How did you get into outdoor recreation?
I grew up in Lawrence, Kansas for the first few years of my life. As one could imagine living in the Midwest the outdoors was fairly difficult to access. We had to drive pretty far to get to mediocre public lands. However, while my outdoors adventures in Kansas were limited, during the summer I got to fully be immersed in the outdoors. My grandparents still retained many parts of ranching & farming in the Chuska Mountains and in Red Valley, Arizona.

Getting them outside was a necessity in many instances - gathering herbs & plants, grazing the sheep, going to the well and getting water. It was during these outings of collecting plants and grazing we were told stories about the land and the history of the place we lived. I remember scrambling around volcanic rocks with my cousins during the summers in the Chuska mountains over 20 years ago. Little did we know that we were doing V2, V3 bouldering just to kill time. However I also remember discovering climbing by the anger of my relatives about the various white folks that would venture out and try climbing on Shiprock (a sacred volcanic outcropping). In the early 70's a man died climbing Shiprock which lead to the ban of all rock climbing, not only here, but all over the Navajo Nation.

Given that backdrop of climbing on the Navajo Nation I wanted to discover it for myself. In grad school about 4 years ago I got a membership at a small climbing gym in Pittsburgh - it wasn't anything special but it definitely stoked my interest. Then when I moved out to Colorado I took it upon myself to learn how to do get better & eventually go outside. I've been fully climbing for little less than a year. I hope to one day figure out a way to roll back the complete ban of climbing on the Navajo Nation and allow for it to happen in designated areas.

Specifically to Bears Ears: When I moved to the reservation when I was a teenager my mom and stepdad made it a point to get out and explore the Navajo Nation and surrounding areas. Cedar Mesa, Dark Canyon Wilderness, Comb Ridge, Valley of the Gods were places that we would often visit as they were less than 3 hours away from Tsaile. These are where I had some of my first serious outdoor experiences. These places are where I encountered the thousands of years of history that I come from. This is the place where I first felt proud about being Navajo.
Tell us a little about how you relate to the land, and how that relationship may differ from a non-native person.
My relationship to the land is my identity, it is what I live to protect, and by doing so it one thing I can ensure that future generations can enjoy the places we call come. These values are informed by a number of rites of passages and traditions that connect us to the land from an early age as Navajos.

One of the first rites of passage as a Navajo is that our parents bury our umbilical cord in a place that has spiritual significance to our family. Our umbilical cords enable us to grow and live in utero and giving the cord back to the earth allows one to acknowledge and recognize the role that the earth serves for us after we are born. The place where my umbilical cord is buried is where I return to during challenging times and it is a place where I return to reflect as I grow older. This tradition is a gift because it provides me with roots and a deep understanding of our connection to the earth from an early age. I find that many, not all, non-native people don't have this direct connection to place.

As we grow older we participate in medicinal and healing ceremonies that directly come from the landforms and mountains that we call home. These ceremonies often directly call out the four sacred mountains and acknowledge their power and purpose in Navajo worldview. The ethic of reciprocal relationships with these landforms is one of the main tenants of these practices. For the healing, mental clarity, and other benefits that these places provide through these ceremonies we must always return the favor by giving offering, actively protecting these places, and making strident efforts to ensure that they are preserved for the future.

The benefits derived through the ceremonies is something that all folks can relate to and aren't that different for why folks like to get outside. Like many people, I get outdoors for my own mental and physical wellbeing, that feeling of mental clarity and feeling physically good after a long day of climbing or skiing is exactly what our ceremonies provide for people. That feeling, the mental clarity is exactly the power of these natural spaces. We as Navajo people have simply institutionalized and developed these into healing practices.

One area where I see there being some need for development of the outdoor community is in acknowledging and giving back for these experiences. I see the status quo being an extractive relationship with the land specifically taking experiences without giving back. Going out and recreating in the mountains or desert without giving something back isn't sustainable. I'm not a perfect example of what this should look like but I try to acknowledge my impact. Volunteering is a good idea, giving money to organizations that maintain these areas is a good step too. Simply what I ask is what are the things we each are capable of doing to ensure that these places we care about are maintained for future generations?

Len giving an educational talk.
What are some of the biggest challenges you face as a native person in the outdoor community?
Resources & Connections

I do not come from a community with many financial resources or connections. Even less so specifically in the outdoor industry. I have started NativesOutdoors by taking on debt with few connections to folks and resources that could help me take this to the next level. I'm breaking down these barriers so that other folks, with less privilege than myself, can have the same opportunity that I have now to create this business. Every day I wonder how much longer I can continue this work without further investment. I worry that this NativesOutdoors idea will die on the vine and that the status-quo will remain - underrepresentation of communities of color in the outdoor industry.

Legitimacy & Relevance

I believe the largest reason why I have been taken seriously in the outdoor community is because of how articulate I am and the flashy education credentials that I have. The fact that I am a native person who is passionate about the outdoors seems to be secondary. I think there is a tentative acceptance that I am capable but I have yet to see the opportunities appear (at least until I was asked to be a part of the Bears Ears Education Center fundraising).

Other issues

Tribes have been working on protecting Bears Ears for decades and much of the heavy lifting has been done by them. Not to downplay the outdoor community but their contributions, while vitally important, are relatively new and far less substantial in comparison. One concern that many Native folks have about efforts to protect Bears Ears is that the outdoor community will attempt to claim all the hard work and then have a sense of entitlement to the area. Tribes already have enough challenges protecting sacred sites, the thought of dealing with folks that feel entitled to accessing an area is a bit nauseating. However I think that public education and hard work by athletes, influencers, and brands can set important precedents in preventing this.
What do you want the outdoor community to know about native land?
Many folks are aware that native people were forcibly and brutally displaced from their homelands however the extent and timeframe which this occurred is not well understood by the outdoor community. Each tribe is unique and the dispossession of their land has its own story.

The process of Indian removal on a systemic scale extended all the way into the 1970's (some would argue that the Dakota Access Pipeline was a continuation of this policy). When forced removal fell out of vogue, assimilationist policies, which accompanied forced removal policies, continued until the 1960's. These included the Dawes Act & Indian Termination which aimed to dismantle tribal governments and tribal lands by forcing native people to adopt lifestyles that were not their own - namely being forced into cash economies, private land ownership (that led to forced removal by banks), and the dissolution of tribal lands and governments.

So why is this relevant to the outdoor community? Many of the lands that now encompass private and public land belonged to native people as late as the 1960's. The wounds of these removals and policies are quite fresh and in all instances out of the control of the native people that lived there. Now the outdoor community is creating and solidifying identities and relationships with lands that native people today do not have the opportunity to. One can image how frustrating that is for the native folks seeing this happen when just a couple generations ago this connection was strong. Now non-native folks can fairly effortlessly enjoy themselves in these places because of these policies.

This is the context and it's not a comfortable place to be.

However, from my experiences with the outdoor community folks tend to want to do the right thing to try and rectify this history, yet many folks don't know where to start or are afraid to do anything. However, folks need to carry the weight to make these things happen and it's going to take a lot of work. Donating to this cause is one way to correct this history. The next is education your fellow recreationists about this area and how to respect it.
What values or attitudes do native people hold that you believe the outdoor community should adopt?
Relationship of reciprocity with the land, not just for oneself but for folks that are coming behind them.

Learn about the history and people that consider the place where they recreate home. Understand that forced removal and assimilation policies enable recreation in places that are considered scared.
Why do you support the Bears Ears Education Center?
One thing I've been pushing in the outdoor industry is that a coalition between tribes' political and legal power with the outdoor industry's financial and social influence can be an unstoppable force in protecting public lands. I support the Bears Ears Education Center because it's the outdoor community stepping up to the plate and leveraging their financial resources and social media presence to educate the broader public about this culturally and ecologically sensitive area. Public education is going to be key to protecting this place as our current administration seems hell bent on defunding and under resourcing the agencies that would otherwise protect Bears Ears. If privatization is what they are shooting for, I'd say let's get there before the extractive industries do.

My opinion & support on this topic are my own and as no group of people are monolithic and it is important that I acknowledge thar there are native people who do not agree on supporting this education center. The reasons for opposition may not be readily apparent however I agree with the premise of the opposition - namely why aren't we as Native people telling our own story about this instead of a group of folks from the outdoor industry telling it for us? Another concern is that if this place is ultimately protected and the legal fight is won - who's going to claim the credit for the work done? Many, including myself, fear that native people will again be erased from the picture yet again. I asked questions of the organizers to this effect and I was satisfied with the responses to support the effort. I trust the intentions of the organizers and participants to do the right thing.

Yes, we as Native people deserve to tell our own story and I see this effort to build the education center as the steps toward making this happen. Time is of the essence in this situation and it's a lot easier for the outdoor industry to garner financial resources to make these things happen. Secondly, if we are not at the table, we are on the menu. I created NativesOutdoors as a company in the outdoor industry specifically so we could have a seat at the table in these efforts. I'm going to do the right thing by Native people.
Why is it important for the outdoor community to support, respect, and learn about the tribes?
The outdoor community benefits from historical policies that have removed indigenous people from the land. While this history cannot be undone, supporting, respecting, and learning about the tribes of the places we recreate is one way we can bring things closer to a place of healing. Native people aren't gone and are the strongest allies and advocates for protecting and ensuring access to the places we care about. Together we can protect the places we deeply love and care for.
To support and learn more about our efforts towards building the Bears Ears Education Center, check out the Kickstarter

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Protecting Public Lands, Together: An Interview with Len Necefer of NativeOutdoors

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Today is the day that the Trump administration is scheduled to announce their plan to shrink Bears Ears National Monument by 1.1 million acres and slash Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in half. While this is worrisome for outdoor enthusiasts and conservationists, for Native Americans, this is a vicious attack on their home, history, and identity.

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"In Texas, Climbers and Native Americans Find Common Cause on Public Land"

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"In Texas, Climbers and Native Americans Find Common Cause on Public Land"

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Thirty-two miles east of El Paso, the four rocky crests of Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site rise above the Chihuahuan Desert like beacons. Native Americans have lived in this 860-acre stretch of Texas for thousands of years, and their ancestors scaled the scalloped boulders at Hueco to collect rainwater from the eroded hollows. After local students visited in the 1950s and word spread about the best bouldering crag in America, a new generation of rock climbers established their history at Hueco. Now after recent route closures due to newly discovered "invisible" art, climbers are taking a stand - and showing conservationists how to respect the land you play on.

Hueco features one of the best-preserved collections of indigenous rock art in the American Southwest, and it's the only archaeological site in the region where every period of local human history - from prehistoric to present day - is represented. The visual chronology begins with "archaic" Native Americans' simple, painted figures and ends with the carved names of Spanish and Anglo-European colonists, but the bulk of the art is from the Jornada Mogollon tribe, which lived in the area for roughly a thousand years.

In 1992 a vandal wriggled through a small gap beneath a boulder and scrawled graffiti across a cave wall painted with several Jornada Mogollon pictographs. Though the incident was gang-related, rangers had chafed under the increasing traffic at Hueco since the park became a bouldering mecca decades before. They argued that climbers littered, strayed from paths, and sometimes climbed across pictographs. In response to the defacement, the superintendent locked Hueco's gate for two weeks and added restrictions when the park reopened.

Eight years later park officials confirmed a public use plan. Rangers closed several illustrated boulders, three of Hueco's four sectors were restricted to tours and guided climbing only, and daily admittance was capped at 70 for the fourth zone. "[Hueco Tanks has] 10,000 years of ongoing human activity," says Senator Rodriguez, who doubled down on restrictions in 2014. "It's a special place in so many ways, from the history as a place of restoration, refuge, and prayer, to the flora and fauna that could only exist in this desert oasis."

In February, a few days before the American Alpine Club hosted the 2017 Hueco Rock Rodeo, park rangers started handing out sheets of paper at the registration kiosk on North Mountain, the unguided sector. On those pages are a list of 18 bouldering areas, newly closed until further review, because scanning had revealed hidden art. But when the revelers and pros arrived in their Subarus and ratty vans, nobody seemed to mind. One scruffy white kid even had a tattoo collage of Jornada Mogollon masks on his calf.

The boulderers' reaction to newly closed routes and stricter park rules was respect and understanding. Despite plenty of room for conflict after decades of tightening recreation restrictions, climbers, park officials, and First Nations representatives formed a working group and discussed their concerns for balancing recreation access with historic preservation. When rangers began to scan all climbing boulders to identify faded pictographs undetectable to the naked eye, climbers assisted them.

"We respect the Native American community and work hard to make sure climbing doesn't negatively affect cultural resources, wherever they are," says Erik Murdock, the policy director for the Access Fund, an organization devoted to keeping climbing areas open. "Hueco is an important piece of American bouldering history, but we'll also always respect the values of our Native American partners. We don't see these as competing interests."

In fact, the pro-climbing group has shown its commitment to protecting public lands for everyone and fought alongside representatives from the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation for over a decade to halt a proposed copper mine at Oak Flat, Arizona. Last year, they helped a five-tribe coalition successfully lobby for the Bears Ears National Monument.

Aaron Mike, a native lands coordinator for the Access Fund, grew up on a Navajo reservation and is passionate about the overlapping agendas of the climbing community and First Nations tribes. "Native American tribes and climbers share a common interest in protecting the environment," he says.

The detente seems to be working. True to their word, park rangers reopened the classic Five Bimbos boulders for climbing in early March after a 17-year closure for revegetation, which the Climbers of Hueco Tanks Coalition called a "privilege."

Dr. Kendra Moore, Hueco's Community Outreach Interpreter, agrees. "A utopian vision of the park depends on who you're talking to," she says, "but for me, it's to find a balance between recreation and preserving the rock art. Both groups share a common motivation: preserving Hueco."

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In Texas, Climbers and Native Americans Find Common Cause on Public Land

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Thirty-two miles east of El Paso, the four rocky crests of Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site rise above the Chihuahuan Desert like beacons. Native Americans have lived in this 860-acre stretch of Texas for thousands of years, and their ancestors scaled the scalloped boulders at Hueco to collect rainwater from the eroded hollows.

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Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife

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The 24 tribes that have off-reservation hunting rights in Washington can set hunting regulations for their tribal members.

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A key goal of the Healthy Environment portfolio is to support a movement for a healthy environment that is effective and relevant for all Oregon's diverse communities. So we were delighted to have a chance to speak with Anna Elza Brady, an advocate who works to elevate the voices of people and place. Next month, Anna will be speaking on a panel titled "Decolonizing Public Lands" at the University of Oregon Symposium on Environmental Justice, Race and Public Lands. I recently caught up with her to get a preview of thoughts she will share on the panel on Friday, May 11.

Can you please share a little about the coalition of tribes that have led the Bears Ears protection effort and why this place is important to them?
Anna Elza Brady:
From the outset, the effort to protect the Bears Ears cultural landscape as a national monument was developed by elders and local Native American grassroots citizens and later led by a historic coalition of sovereign tribal nations. Five tribes - the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, and the Ute Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation - came together as sovereigns in 2015 and, with a unified voice, called on the president of the United States to designate 1.9 million acres of shared ancestral homelands in southeast Utah as Bears Ears National Monument.

As I have heard expressed time and again by tribal leaders and elders, the Bears Ears cultural landscape is important to the five tribes because it is the dwelling place of the spirits of the ancestors. For those peoples who have inhabited these lands since time immemorial, the spirits of the ancestors are still very much alive in the Bears Ears landscape. When tribal members travel within Bears Ears, they are visiting those who have come before, who walked these lands, harvested its foods and medicines, and left their stories etched in rock. Archaeologists estimate there are over 100,000 cultural and archaeological sites within Bears Ears National Monument - the densest and most well-preserved concentration of such sites anywhere in the United States. For the coalition of tribes that led the effort to protect Bears Ears National Monument, these sites are not simply objects of study: They are the resting places of the Ancient Ones. In this way, the Bears Ears region is sacred and must be safeguarded accordingly.

Bears Ears is also important to local people because it serves as a key source of essential natural resources, including firewood, medicinal herbs and food plants such as pinyons. In the arid desert southwest, Bears Ears is a sort of island ecosystem, providing habitat for a variety of plant and animal species, many of which are not found elsewhere in the region. Jonah Yellowman, a Navajo elder and spiritual leader who has lived in and around the Bears Ears region since birth, explained to me in 2014 how Bears Ears is "our grocery store; it's our pharmacy." Jonah also taught me about nahodishgish, the Navajo word for wilderness, meaning literally "places to be left alone." Nahodishgish recognizes that some landscapes are meant to be used by human beings and others should remain as they were created: untrammeled places from which wild life emerges. Native peoples of this region know that the Bears Ears landscape - the rugged terrain of canyons and mesas fanning up from the sacred confluence of the Colorado and San Juan rivers - is a place of healing and renewal for all people and all beings.
Jill:
In what ways is their organizing approach different than other national monument/public lands protection organizing efforts, particularly those led by mainstream environmental organizations?
Anna:
The tribes' organizing approach around Bears Ears National Monument has been fundamentally different than other public lands protection efforts, in part because of tribal peoples' profound history and depth of relationship with these lands. The tribal leaders continually express and bring to bear the central role of culture and spirituality that has driven the vision of Bears Ears National Monument from the very beginning. Tribal leaders aren't simply advocating for a place they find beautiful or enjoy visiting from time to time. They are giving voice to the land - its plants, animals, waterways, weather patterns - that has sustained their peoples since time immemorial. Bears Ears holds the songs and stories of their past and the seed-in-promise of their future. In that way, the organizing effort around Bears Ears National Monument has been a reaffirmation of identity.

I'll never forget something that Willie Grayeyes told me on my first day helping out with the Bears Ears initiative in 2014. Willie is the board chair of UDB (Utah Diné Bikéyah) and a Navajo elder and grassroots community leader from Naatsisʼáán (Navajo Mountain). Willie is also a former Navajo Nation council delegate and currently serves on the Bureau of Land Management's Utah Resource Advisory Council. Willie has long, silver hair that he wears bound in a traditional Navajo bun, a , and he is both quick-witted and wise. Our Ute Mountain Ute board members have teasingly nicknamed him gamuch, which means jackrabbit. Willie has been a thought-leader of the Bears Ears initiative since its inception. It was he who articulated that Bears Ears has always been first and foremost about healing. That notion has been an orienting and unifying compass for the entire Bears Ears Coalition throughout the long journey to protect and defend Bears Ears National Monument.

On that first day, I was timid and quiet, listening and observing, not wanting to impose or offend. I had written an essay about the fledgling vision for Bears Ears National Monument, and to my surprise (and mild alarm) the executive director had given copies to all the board members. I remember Willie Grayeyes approaching me late in the day, my essay in his hands. His eyes were on mine, unwavering, as he leaned in and told me, in his signature growl, both fierce and patient, "Don't be afraid to say it's spiritual."

The tribes have never shied away from saying that protecting Bears Ears is ultimately a spiritual journey of healing: healing the relationship between Native peoples and their ancestral homelands, between tribes and the federal government, between people and the Earth. Organizing takes on a whole different feel and purpose when it rises out of the long history and deep spiritual connection that Native cultures and communities have with the land. Such a spiritual orientation cannot be manufactured, nor should it be co-opted. Yet individually and collectively, we all share an inimitable bond with the Earth that sustains us. Starting from that space, and constantly nourishing and returning to it, has made tribes' organizing approach around Bears Ears uniquely resonant and powerful.
Jill:
Do you see some of this approach reflected in public lands protection efforts in Oregon? If no, what's a missing piece?

That's a tricky question. I have not been as intimately involved in public lands protections efforts here in Oregon as I have been in Utah (even as an Oregonian!). From what I saw and knew of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument designation effort, as well as the ongoing Owyhee Canyon National Monument initiative - both areas very worthy of federal protection - tribes have not been nearly as involved as the five tribes at Bears Ears, much less in the lead.

That said, a significant facet of recent public lands protection efforts here in Oregon has been the defense of public lands against the armed takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in early 2016. Perhaps the most potent and resounding response to that bewildering occupation was the Burns Paiute Tribe's statements on behalf of the 190,000-acre wildlife refuge, which lies within the their ancestral territory. Tribal Chair Charlotte Roderique cogently pointed out the irony of the armed occupiers' claims to be returning federal public lands to their "rightful owners": "This is still our land, no matter who is living on it." Chairwoman Roderique told reporters, "Armed protesters don't belong here. By their actions, they are endangering ... our sacred sites."

Chairwoman Roderique's words rang out across the globe, exposing not only the narrow hypocrisy of the Bundy-esque perception of the commons, but the narrative of settler colonialism that has underwritten natural resource management and allowed the Malheur occupation phenomenon to take root and persist. The Bundys' rallying cry to "return federal lands to their rightful owners" - i.e. Euro-American ranchers and resource extractors - rings hollow in the face of Chairwoman Roderique's resoundingly simple statement about true belonging: of people to place, rather than the other way around.

If there's one piece that's missing when it comes to efforts to protect public lands, in Oregon and throughout most of the country and the world, it's this idea of letting tribes lead. Getting out of the way, stepping aside, making room for other voices to rise in their own time and in their own way. Listening: that is the biggest takeaway from the Bears Ears process, and it's right there in the name - Bears Ears. Native people listened to the land, tribes listened to one another, and the federal government listened to the sovereign tribal nations - for a time anyway.

We've got to learn to listen, and not just when it's convenient or comfortable or happens to behoove our mission or our egos. Rather than approaching tribes and Native communities with ready-made solutions, the first step that the conservation community and mainstream environmental organizations can and should take is to recognize tribes as sovereign nations with complicated modern histories and carefully guarded, highly nuanced traditional knowledge about ancestral ecosystems, organisms and lands. Then organizations that are really ready to be in it for the long haul might patiently seek to cultivate relationships and build trust with tribes. Show respect for tribal protocols and observe tribal chains of command. Be prepared for long pauses. Talk to tribes before talking about tribes. Start by asking, "What do you need?"

What would it look like if public lands protection in the West accounted for the U.S. legacy of colonization and focused on indigenous rights and tribal sovereignty?

That would look amazing! In fact, public lands are a natural space for such a reckoning to take place, where truth and reconciliation might begin. As ecologist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer (Citizen Potawatomi) has explained, public lands are ancestral lands after all. Where do we think public lands came from in the first place? Who did they belong to before the National Forest Service or the BLM stuck a sign in them and traced their boundaries on a map? Federal public lands, in particular, are a tremendous seed of reconciliation waiting to sprout.

Under the legal doctrine of the federal Indian trust responsibility, all branches and agencies of the federal government owe a fiduciary duty to every federally recognized sovereign tribal nation and enrolled tribal member. This solemn trust responsibility has been articulated and recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court for nearly 200 years and imposes an affirmative duty of care and loyalty on the part of the federal government toward all 573 recognized tribes and Alaska Native villages. This includes the obligation to protect tribal interests and property.

When we put the two together - the very real fact that virtually all public lands are ancestral tribal territories, alongside the doctrine of the federal trust responsibility (not to mention the perennial underfunding, understaffing, and under-enforcement that federal land management agencies face) - a holistic solution begins to emerge that could help heal the legacy of colonization and honor indigenous rights and tribal sovereignty. What if agencies and administrators charged with managing federal public lands invited tribes to the table and formally engaged the continent's original sovereigns in helping to oversee and steward their ancestral territories? What if, with the permission and inclusion of practitioners, tribal traditional knowledges began to inform management of America's public lands? What if tribal co-management of traditional lands and resources was the rule rather than the exception? What if healing historical wounds, inflicted on both people and place, was part of our public lands policy?

That is the vision that was realized through the designation of Bears Ears National Monument, and it's a model that resonates in our bones and in our bedrock. It also makes sense economically, as the West transitions from a resource extraction economy to a recreation, service and information economy, in which quality of life and climate resiliency increasingly drive decisions about where to live and work.

In this process, tribes have much to teach about renewing humanity's relationship with the natural world and dwelling in place for the long haul - should we choose to finally listen.

Anna Elza Brady hails from the Olympic Peninsula and has been a lifelong resident of the American West. She has served as co-director of the University of Oregon's Native American Law Student Association and as the policy and communications strategist for Utah Diné Bikéyah, a Native American-led nonprofit, where she supported tribes in securing protection and designation of Bears Ears National Monument. Anna holds a master's degree in environmental humanities from the University of Utah.

View our cardstack to learn more about Anna and the Bear Ears National Monument leaders, here.

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Indigenous rights and public lands: A chat with Anna Elza Brady

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A key goal of the Healthy Environment portfolio is to support a movement for a healthy environment that is effective and relevant for all Oregon's diverse communities. So we were delighted to have a chance to speak with Anna Elza Brady, an advocate who works to elevate the voices of people and place.

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Public Trust Feature Film | The Fight for America’s Public Lands

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Hunting And Fishing Rights

Hunting and fishing rights are some of the special rights that Native Americans enjoy as a result of the treaties signed between their tribes and the federal government. Historically, hunting and fishing were critically important to Native American tribes. Fish and wildlife were a primary source of food and trade goods, and tribes based their own seasonal movements on fish migrations. In addition, fish and wildlife played a central role in the spiritual and cultural framework of Native American life. As the Court noted, access to fish and wildlife was "not much less necessary to the existence of the Indians than the atmosphere they breathed" ( United States v. Winans, 198 U.S. 371, S. Ct. 662, 49 L. Ed. 2d 1089 [1905]).

When Native American tribes signed treaties consenting to give up their lands, the treaties often explicitly guaranteed hunting and fishing rights. When the treaties created reservations, they usually gave tribe members the right to hunt and fish on reservation lands. In many cases, treaties guaranteed Native Americans the continued freedom to hunt and fish in their traditional hunting and fishing locations, even if those areas were outside the reservations. Even when hunting and fishing rights were not specifically mentioned in treaties, the reserved-rights doctrine holds that tribes retain any rights, including the right to hunt and fish, that are not explicitly abrogated by treaty or statute.

Controversy and protest have surrounded Native American hunting and fishing rights, as state governments and non-Indian hunters and fishers have fought to make Native Americans subject to state hunting and fishing regulations. The rights of tribal members to hunt and fish on their own reservations have rarely been questioned, because states generally lack the power to regulate activities on Indian reservations. Tribes themselves have the right to regulate hunting and fishing on their reservations, whether or not they choose to do so. Protests have arisen, however, over the rights of Native Americans to hunt and fish off of their reservations. Such rights can be acquired in one of two ways. In some instances, Congress has reduced the size of a tribe's reservation, or terminated it completely, without removing the tribe's hunting and fishing rights on that land. In other cases, treaties have specifically guaranteed tribes the right to hunt and fish in locations off the reservations. In the Pacific Northwest, for example, treaty provisions commonly guaranteed the right of tribes to fish "at all usual and accustomed grounds and stations," both on and off their reservations. Tribes in the Great Lakes area also reserved their off-reservation fishing rights in the treaties they signed.

These off-reservation rights have led to intense opposition and protests from non-Indian hunters and fishermen and state wildlife agencies. Non-Indian hunters and fishermen resent the fact that Indians are not subject to the same state regulations and limits imposed on them. State agencies have protested the fact that legitimate conservation goals are compromised when Indians can hunt and fish without having to follow state wildlife regulations. The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has consistently upheld the off-reservation hunting and fishing rights of Native Americans. In the 1905 case United States v. Winans, it ruled that treaty language guaranteeing a tribe the right to "tak[e] fish at all usual and accustomed places" indeed guaranteed access to those usual and accustomed places, even if they were on privately owned land.

The most intense opposition to Native American off-reservation hunting and fishing rights has occurred in the Pacific Northwest, where tribal members have fought to defend their right to fish in their traditional locations, unhindered by state regulations. In a series of cases involving the state of Washington and local Native American tribes, the federal courts ruled on aspects of the extent and limits of tribal fishing rights. In a 1942 case, Tulee v. Washington, 315 U.S. 681, 62 S. Ct. 862, 86 L. Ed. 1115, the Court ruled that tribal members could not be forced to purchase fishing licenses because the treaties that their ancestors had signed already reserved the right to fish in the "usual and accustomed places."

That case was followed by a series of cases involving the Puyallup Indian tribe that became known as Puyallup I, Puyallup II, and Puyallup III. In the first of those cases, the Court ruled that the state of Washington has the right, in the interest of conservation, to regulate tribal fishing activities, as long as "the regulation meets appropriate standards and does not discriminate against the Indians" ( Puyallup Tribe v. Department of Game, 391 U.S. 392, 88 S. Ct. 1725, 20 L. Ed. 2d 689 [1968]). In the second case, the Court ruled that the state's prohibition on net fishing for steelhead trout was discriminatory because its effect was to reserve the entire harvestable run of steelhead to non-Indian sports fishermen ( Department of Game v. Puyallup Tribe, 414 U.S. 44, 94 S. Ct. 330, 38 L. Ed. 2d 254 [1973]). In its ruling, the Court declared that the steelhead "must in some manner be fairly apportioned between Indian net fishing and non-Indian sports fishing." Finally, in Puyallup III, the Court ruled that the fish caught by tribal members on their reservation could be counted against the Indian share of the fish ( Puyallup Tribe v. Department of Game, 429 U.S. 976, 97 S. Ct. 483, 50 L. Ed. 2d 583 [1976]).

This notion of a fair APPORTIONMENT of fish was clarified by United States v. Washington, 384 F. Supp. 312 (W.D. Wash. 1974), in which the court determined that treaty language guaranteeing tribes the right to take fish "in common with all citizens of the Territory" guaranteed the Indians not just the right to fish but also the right to a certain percentage of the harvestable run, up to 50 percent. This decision set off a firestorm of controversy throughout the Pacific Northwest. Hundreds of legal disputes erupted over the allocation of individual runs of salmon and steelhead, and state and non-Indian fishing interests attacked the decision. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld the decision in a collateral case, Washington v. Washington State Commercial Passenger Fishing Vessel Ass'n 443 U.S. 658, 99 S. Ct. 3055, 61 L. Ed. 2d 823 (1979). In that case, the Court upheld the district court's ruling and went on to clarify the details of the way the fish should be apportioned. Writing for the majority, Justice JOHN PAUL STEVENS stated that the treaties guaranteed the tribes "so much as, but no more than, is necessary to provide the Indians with a livelihood-that is to say a moderate living." A "fair apportionment, " he said, would be 50 percent of the fish, emphasizing that 50 percent was the maximum, but not the minimum, amount of fish to which the Indians were entitled.

The Court resolved a decade-old legal dispute in 1999 involving Indian fishing and hunting rights with the decision in Minnesota v. Mille Lacs Band of Chippewa Indians, 526 U.S. 172, 119 S. Ct. 1187, 143 L. Ed. 2d 270 (1999). It ruled in favor of the Chippewa Indians' right to fish and hunt in northern Minnesota without state regulation. By a 5-4 vote, the Court upheld an appeals court decision finding that the tribe's rights under an 1837 treaty were still valid. The ruling marked a final victory for the tribe in its long fight to assert its treaty rights and to defend its cultural traditions.

Brought by the tribe in 1990, the lawsuit proved highly controversial in Minnesota, which regarded it as a threat to the $54 million in tourism revenue generated by the Mille Lacs Lake resort industry. But two lower federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the state's arguments that the 162-year old treaty had been invalidated by presidential order, later treaties, and even by Minnesota's gaining of statehood. The U.S. Supreme Court's majority opinion, written by Justice SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR, detailed the history of the treaty and subsequent actions that the state, nine counties, and landowners claimed had rendered the treaty invalid. She found nothing in this historical information that had bearing on the continued validity of the treaty.

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Native American Rights - Hunting And Fishing Rights

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Hunting And Fishing Rights Hunting and fishing rights are some of the special rights that Native Americans enjoy as a result of the treaties signed between their tribes and the federal government. Historically, hunting and fishing were critically important to Native American tribes.

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"Meet the Native American Climber Restoring Indigenous Place Names"

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"Meet the Native American Climber Restoring Indigenous Place Names"

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The 14,351-foot summit of Colorado's Blanca Peak erupts 7,000 vertical feet from the pancake-flat San Luis Valley to its west and gains its incredible altitude in just six miles. From any vantage point north, west, or south, the peak and the surrounding Sierra Blanca Massif groan improbably upward from the sagebrush plains. The contrast is striking. You can watch the seasons change just by following Blanca's ridges skyward until you see the high alpine blanketed with snow, which comes early in fall and stays late into summer.

For those looking to tackle all of Colorado's 53 "fourteeners," the site of Blanca is invigorating. Its relief speaks to the challenges ahead. The climb starts with a knee-wobbling trek five miles up a viscous fire road to the shores of Lake Como, where climbers camp for the night. The next day, the remaining five miles to the summit are made up of a quick gain to the treeless alpine, a traverse through a glacial cirque underneath Blanca Peak, and then a final mile up to the saddle between Blanca and Ellingwood Point and the steep, exposed north ridge to the peak. Once atop, the prominence of Blanca's summit affords outstanding views in every direction.

Those who make the climb up Blanca Peak know that it's an incredible mountain. But for Len Necefer, CEO of Natives Outdoors and an obsessed Navajo climber who has summited Blanca six times, there is more to tell beyond the visceral physical experience. In the Diné language, the peak is called Sisnaajini, and it marks the eastern boundary of the traditional Navajo Nation-the place where the sun rises to begin the day. Sisnaajini features in several Navajo songs that tell the chapters of the nation's history, and when Necefer climbs it, he is thinking not only about its incredible granite. He also reveres it for the sacred place that it is, and wonders what the standard route to the summit was for his ancestors 10,000 years ago. A swath of private land on the peak's south side no doubt altered the prehistoric approach. Necefer also sometimes thinks about the 1874 Wheeler Survey, which claimed a first "recorded" ascent of Blanca despite finding a manmade rock structure on the peak-plain evidence of earlier climbers, likely Ute or Navajo.

But since the American education system does a terrible job of covering the pre-Colombian history of the United States, this added perspective on Sisnaajini-even the idea that it has another name to begin with-is lost on most non-Native American adventurers. To try to remediate this ignorance, Necefer started playing around with a very simple, nonintrusive tool to pique interest about the indigenous history of the outdoor places many of us love: geotags on Instagram and Facebook.

By providing outdoor enthusiasts the opportunity to rename places with their Native American words-Mukuntuweap for Zion Canyon, or Babad Do'ag for Arizona's Mount Lemmon, for example-Necefer hopes to encourage those who already have a deep connection to a natural place to investigate that peak or landscape's indigenous significance and history. Along with partners like Joseph Whitson and his Indigenous Geotags, Necefer is trying to promote a deeper connection to landscapes and the passion to protect those places.

While Necefer doesn't expect that the European names of cherished outdoor places will be swapped out for their indigenous ones, he does hope that a greater understanding of the Native American histories of these places-places they have cherished, recreated on, and managed sustainably for hundreds or thousands of years-will increase public appreciation for them. And maybe even spur some people to respect those places more.

"It's not respectful to go climb a church," Necefer says. "That's a mainstream cultural norm. But the idea of respecting native sacred spaces in the same way is a pretty new discussion, at least on a national level." Necefer believes, for instance, that the campers at Lake Como who left the pile of trash that he stumbled across during his first visit to Blanca would have paused before doing so if there was any information to let them know it was a sacred Navajo site.

As Necefer has sought to increase awareness of Native American history, he has had to reconcile his own passion for outdoor recreation with what he initially perceived as restrictions surrounding how indigenous sacred sites "should" be respected. "The first time I went to climb Blanca, I was pretty nervous," Necefer says. "I was worried about how I would be perceived in my community and in my family. But after chatting it over with them, it wasn't a problem-they just told me to be reverent of the place, and to behave myself." Ultimately, he has come to the conclusion that outdoor recreation in sacred places is appropriate as long as a spirit of reverence accompanies it. "Some, but not all, native peoples think [these peaks] are too sacred to go to the top," he says. "But I think it's really important [to go to the top] because a lot of Navajo folks don't have the means to come and access these mountains and experiences, and it's great to share what it looks like up top, and get to know it, and impart that knowledge on others and share how fantastically beautiful [these places] are, to inspire others-and not just natives-to protect these places. For Necefer, a visceral, intimate appreciation for place is the common ground on which all other appreciations are built.

Necefer points to the fraught history of Wyoming's Devils Tower National Monument as an example of how adventure can coexist with reverence. The monolith of stone is a sacred site for Northern Plains Indians, including the Lakota, Dakota, and Cheyenne, who call the place "Bear's Lodge." In the 1990s, a coalition of native nations asked for a voluntary ban on climbing the tower's renowned cracks in June, out of respect for the tribal ceremonies that take place at its base in mid-summer. Afterward, the number of climbers attempting the tower's routes fell from a monthly average of 1,200 to less than 200. "Provided the information, the majority of people will make appropriate decisions," Necefer says. (There is currently an effort under way to formally rename the tower Bear's Lodge, though it has met resistance from state and local politicians worried about the impact on tourism.)

The years-long campaign to establish Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah offers another example of how Western ideas about conservation can combine with Native American traditions about sacred sites and land management. The effort to establish Bears Ears brought together five Native American nations that didn't always see eye-to-eye, and at the same time created new alliances between those nations and the outdoor recreation industry and conservation groups like the Sierra Club. These sometimes insular communities teamed up to advocate for the national monument's establishment for both its cultural and outdoor recreational values. That alliance succeeded in avoiding the flawed conservation view of the area as a pristine "wilderness" free of people-an idea that can do great harm to indigenous communities by negating their history and connection to the land, along with their generations-long sustainable management of landscapes.
In affiliation with Sierra. Photo of New Hampshire's Mt. Washington, known to the Abenaki as Agiocochook, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Meet the Native American Climber Restoring Indigenous Place Names

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The 14,351-foot summit of Colorado's Blanca Peak erupts 7,000 vertical feet from the pancake-flat San Luis Valley to its west and gains its incredible altitude in just six miles. From any vantage point north, west, or south, the peak and the surrounding Sierra Blanca Massif groan improbably upward from the sagebrush plains.

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“ Climbers Ignore Native Americans' Request At Devils Tower”

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“ Climbers Ignore Native Americans' Request At Devils Tower”

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Throughout the month of June, the National Park Service asks visitors to refrain from climbing Devils Tower to respect American Indian ceremonies. However, the closure is voluntary and the number of climbers in June has been on a steady rise in recent years.

At the Belle Fourche River campground near the base of Devils Tower, all 50 sites are taken. It's early in the morning and people are just beginning to crawl out of their tents and a couple of teepees to start a fire and make breakfast. A lot of the campers are Native Americans who are here for their annual visit. One group are Lakota youth who live on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

Waylon Black Crow Senior is among the chaperones to the kids. He said they didn't drive to get here. They ran.

"So we start from Bear Butte and we go all around the Black Hills and we end at Bear Butte," said Black Crow.

The tradition began 35 years ago and it's called the Sacred Hoop 500 Mile Run. About 50 youth runners make a loop through the Black Hills and Devils Tower is their last stop.

"It's like a prayer, because during the day they run all day," said Black Crow. "They stand on that road. They run. And all they drink is water and fruits. So it's like fasting all day and they're running and they're praying. They're giving themselves. And at the end, it brings them up. So every year, they look forward to this."

Black Crow said the runners especially look forward to making it to Bear Lodge-the Lakota name for Devils Tower.

He said it's a sacred site, so it's painful when climbers ignore the closure. But there's not much Black Crow and other Native Americans can do about it since it's voluntary.

"We see them climbing up there," said Black Crow. "And all we can do is watch."

Tim Reid is the Superintendent of Devils Tower National Monument. He said, when the park's climbing management plan was developed in the early 90s, a working group of American Indians and climbing representatives came up with the idea as a kind of compromise.

Reid said tribal representatives felt a mandatory closure did not reflect the spirit of intent.

"June was the selected month," said Reid. "And they wanted people to want to abstain from climbing out of respect for the sacred site status, and the cultural significance of the tower to 25-plus tribes in the intermountain area."

And Reid said the climbers wanted the opportunity to show that their community could self-regulate. So, a voluntary closure made sense and it was put into the final draft of the climbing management plan.

That first season in 1995, the closure was hugely successful in reducing the numbers. The year before, more than 1,200 people climbed Devils Tower in June alone. That number went down to 167 the next season.

"But what we have ascertained in the last five years, there's been a steady incremental increase in the number of climbers in June that's not connected to just the steady overall increase of visitation at the monument," said Reid.

Last year, 373 people climbed the tower in June. That doesn't sound like a lot but, the problem is that it's been slowly trending up. Reid said when it comes to who exactly the June climbers are, the data is imperfect.

"But I think that it's safe to say that largely, the bulk of June climbing is done by relatively local or regional climbers, who for whatever reasons find it personally acceptable to climb in June," Reid said.

One of those climbers is Frank Sanders.

"The towers not for one person, or one group of people, or one month, or one day, or one week," said Sanders. "It's for all of us."

Sanders is a local, commercial climbing guide who owns and operates Devils Tower Lodge. Sanders said 18 years ago, he gave up drinking, and climbing the tower helps him to stay sober.

"It is conscious, constant contact with the Creator, or as in AA we say a higher power," said Sanders. "I don't think that the tower is my higher power, no, it's not. But it certainly helps."

Sanders said he knows not everyone agrees with his decision to climb in June. But he doesn't see it as a problem.

"I cannot help but reflect on my time on the reservation, and I've had plenty of times on Rosebud and Pine Ridge, a lot of people there are as alcoholic as I am," Sanders said.

Actually, studies show Native Americans abstain from alcohol use more than the general public.

"And I wish they would come to the tower," said Sanders. "But the truth is the Natives as far as I can see that visit are token, they are few."

But just down the road at the campground, there are dozens of multi-generational Native families who would disagree.

Along the mile and a half loop trail that circles the tower, prayer flags and offerings are visible, but the ceremonies that incorporate these objects are intentionally less visible.

Part of the reason they're held in private may be tied to harassment. Waylon Black Crow Senior said not very many vehicles that pass by the runners on their journey cheer them on.

"They go by and throw trash at them," said Black Crow. "They go by, and go 'oh, oh, oh.' Or they tell us to go home. 'Red man, go home,' or, 'red skins, go home.' And those are things that hurt. The kids come back crying. We tell them, "send it through one ear, and go out the other." Remember who you are. Remember God made you special. The Creator made you special."

As far as updating the climbing management plan, the National Parks Service would like to see the rising June numbers addressed through education, but if necessary they might have to move to a mandatory closure.

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Climbers Ignore Native Americans' Request At Devils Tower

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Throughout the month of June, the National Park Service asks visitors to refrain from climbing Devils Tower to respect American Indian ceremonies. However, the closure is voluntary and the number of climbers in June has been on a steady rise in recent years.

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"Origin Stories: Native Lore Behind America’s Iconic Climbing Areas"

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"Origin Stories: Native Lore Behind America’s Iconic Climbing Areas"

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For millennia, indigenous tribes have lived on the lands where North American climbers gather. The tribes have their own names for these sacred places, each with a unique story that guides their relationship to the land. In indigenous communities, it is not the people who name places, but the lands themselves who give the people their names.

Today, however, many of the original names for iconic climbing areas have been replaced. European settlers and explorers, who came to North America beginning in the 1600s, rewrote these sites' histories, not only displacing the original inhabitants but also renaming the lands. Take the Virginia-born rancher Samuel Bishop, who only stayed in Payahuunadü for 18 months in the 1860s before lending his name to the Eastern Sierra region. Even the continent's highest peak, Denali-from the Koyukon Deenaalee, meaning "high one"-was, for nearly a hundred years, named after President William McKinley.

"When you come here to recreate and let the lands bring out the best in you, you should know the history of this land, and that [this] history predates colonialism," says Jolie Varela, of the Nüümü and Yokut Nations, and the founder of Indigenous Women Hike. Understanding these sites' full-and not just colonial and post-colonial-histories can help climbers become more respectful stewards, just as it is helpful to understand the type of rock we're climbing on.

"Educating ourselves as climbers about the lands we climb on allows us to reflect upon local governance systems preceding colonial arrival and dominance," says Erynne Gilpin, a Saulteaux-Cree Métis climber, indigenous scholar, and the founder of Indigenous Womxn Climb. "It re-centers local land-based knowledge systems in the ways we think about place, and allows for us to correct relationships to indigenous communities and the lands they come from."

Fortunately, indigenous peoples have oral histories and records to help correct the record. Cultural centers like the Paiute-Shoshone Cultural Center in Bishop, California, apps like Native Lands, and organizations like the Owens Valley Indian Water Commission can provide visitors with more info about these lands' heritages. For this article, the names and stories were shared through personal relationships and gathered from tribal and governmental websites.

Payahuunadü (Bishop)

For thousands of years, the Paiute people, who call themselves Nüümü, have lived in Payahuunadü: "land where water flows." Payahuunadü sits next to the Pamidu Toiyabe, the West Mountains, which Spanish explorers formally renamed the Sierra Nevadas in the 1700s. The Paiute use the large boulders Ja'a Tubi, which climbers know as the Grandma and Grandpa Peabody boulders, as a place for wedding ceremonies, though none have occurred there in recent times.

"There's a reason for that," says Varela-it's been taken over by climbers. "We go to these places as indigenous people and sometimes don't even feel welcome because there are so many climbers there, and a lot of the time we don't look the part. Coming into a space like that can be pretty intimidating even though that is our homeland."

In the Volcanic Tablelands northwest of Bishop, home to the Happy and Sad boulders, the Paiute created mata, shallow dishes carved into the rock for grinding up plants-such as pine nuts-for food and medicine. The Paiute also carved petroglyphs into the volcanic tuff, creating lines, concentric circles, and ornate scenes at Sky Rock and other sites. One rock depicts the 13 moons of a lunar calendar. Petroglyphs like these provide a connection to indigenous peoples' ancestral roots, particularly in areas from which they've been violently evicted.

Ahwahnee (Yosemite)

Long before Warren Harding's ascent of El Capitan, Tu-Tok-A-Nu'-La, an inchworm, climbed Yosemite's centerpiece 3,000-foot cliff. According to a Miwok legend, the worm scaled the sheer cliff in an attempt to rescue two boys-or a family of bears by some accounts-stuck at the top. The Miwok, who have lived in Yosemite Valley for over 4,000 years, named the granite formation in honor of the worm.

Yosemite Valley was originally known to its inhabitants as Ahwahnee-"gaping, mouth-like place," according to Scott Beeler, in the 1995 Journal of the American Name Society. The Miwok and Paiute people who lived here called themselves the Ahwahnechee. When Lafayette Burnell, a physician and explorer, renamed the valley in 1851, he christened it after the tribe then living there, which he believed to be the Yosemite. However, outside Miwok bands called those who lived in the Valley Yohhe'meti or Yos.s.e'meti, which the Miwok translated as "those who kill." By Burnell's account, he later realized his translator may have confused Yos.s.e'meti with the Miwok üzümati, meaning "grizzly bear." At the same time, El Capitan gained its new name as a Spanish translation of what was thought to be the rock's Miwok name-the chief.

In the 1800s, Gold Rush miners increased pressure on indigenous lands and resources in the area. The Miwok, who numbered 10,000, were killed and evicted from Yosemite Valley during the Mariposa War, leaving less than 1,000 Sierra Miwok according to a 1910 census.

Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish)

Siyám Smánit (renamed Stawamus Chief), the mountain overlooking the Squamish Valley in British Columbia, contains some of the Pacific Northwest's best climbing. The area's original inhabitants, the Skwxwú7mesh, who continue to live in the area today, recount stories of a young warrior, Xwechtáal, who was once given an assignment-kill a massive two-headed serpent named Sínulhka. He pursued the serpent up Siyám Smánit, leaving a striking black streak, now known to climbers as the Black Dike, which rises from the waters of the Howe Sound. Ultimately, it took four years for the warrior to kill the snake. Today, climbers following in Xwechtáal's footsteps can climb the Black Dike, a 5.13b sport route that ascends Siyám Smánit.

A mile from Siyám Smánit sits a smaller, 600-foot formation that at one point was derogatorially named the Squaw. However, in 2009, the Skwxwú7mesh First Nation reinstated its traditional name, Slhanay, which it's commonly called today. From Siyám Smánit, the view of Nch'Kay dominates the horizon approximately 11 miles to the northeast. The 8,786-foot peak, renamed Mount Garibaldi after a man who had never visited the area, is where the Skwxwú7mesh Nation anchored their canoes to survive a great flood.

Mato Tipila (Devils Tower)

A group of Lakota girls were once out picking flowers. Suddenly, a great bear spotted them and chased the girls, who fled to a nearby pile of rocks. Taking notice, the Great Spirit raised up the rocks under the girls' feet. The bear tried to climb the vertical rock, scraping his claws up and down the formation, but he only left scars in the stone.

So goes the Lakota story of Mato Tipila, or Bear's Lodge, as the Lakota originally called Devils Tower. The five Northern Plains tribes-Lakota, Cheyenne, Shoshone, Arapahoe, and Crow-and Kiowa have lived in the region for 10,000 years and consider Bear's Lodge to be one of their most sacred sites. According to the Lakota, wisdom was born at Mato Tipila, and local indigenous tribes have long visited it to pray. The Kiowa say the Great Spirit later immortalized the girls in the stars, creating the constellation commonly known as the Pleiades.

The 867-foot phonolite formation provides the venue for the Sun Dance, a ceremony practiced by tribes to celebrate renewal and harmony with the earth in which the dancer suffers through fasting and self-inflicted pain, in part to take penance for the suffering of nature. The formation remains a sacred place, and modern Sun Dances have taken place at Mato Tipila since 1983. Many believe that climbers desecrate the formation when they scale it. Since 1995, the National Park Service has asked climbers to refrain from scaling Mato Tipila in June.

"Although the Tower is a spiritual site year-round for many native people, June is especially important, as it's the month of the summer solstice and ceremonies surrounding that date," says Annie Gilliland, acting chief of interpretation at Devils Tower National Monument. "The local tribes, park officials, and climbing organizations who helped plan for this felt that by making the closure voluntary, they were offering people the chance to show respect for native beliefs and cultures."

Mukuntoweap (Zion National Park)

The lands that are now Zion National Park were originally those of the Southern Paiute, before Mormon pioneers displaced them. The Paiute people have their own names for different canyons in the area, notes Dorena Martineau, cultural resources director for the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah. Zion Canyon, cut by Pawdoos', the Virgin River, was originally called Ai Oogoon or Oo Koon'uv, meaning "quiver," which was probably derived from the narrowness of the canyon. The Southern Paiute also call it Mukuntoweap, which means "straight canyon."

Mukuntoweap was the first name chosen for the national monument. A few years prior to it becoming a national park in 1919, Horace Albright, an interim park director, renamed it Zion since "'Mukuntuweap' was too difficult to pronounce and really tough to spell," as he wrote in Creating the National Park Service: The Missing Years.

Most of the park's major walls and features were similarly renamed with Mormon-inspired terms, with the exception of the Temple of Sinawava, which railroad businessman Douglas White named after the Paiute's coyote god, Soonungwuv. In the northwest corner of the park, Kolob Canyon, home to the striking Namaste Wall, takes its name from the Paiute word for neck- koduv '.

Indian Creek

Now a part of the larger monument of Bears Ears, Utah's Indian Creek and the surrounding areas have long been an important place in indigenous cultures, notes Alastair Bitsóí, communications director with the Utah Diné Bikéyah. "The monument is important to us as indigenous peoples because it's where all of our cultural values, our ceremonies, our foods, our knowledge, our science of the world are connected to," says Bitsóí. "The knowledge is part of who we are."

Over the past thousand years, the Hopi, Dine, Ute, Zuni, and Puebloan peoples have all called this land home. The Anasazi and Fremont peoples resided there a millennium before them, and the first signs of human presence date back 10,000 years. Today, you can still see structures and petroglyphs in Indian Creek, notably at Newspaper Rock (aka Tse' Hone: "a rock that tells a story"). Spread across 200 square feet, clustered drawings depict humans, animals, and abstract forms.
Modern climbers were not the first to access the cliffs-throughout the region, archaeologists have found remnants of yucca plants processed into cordage. These ropes provided indigenous peoples access to cliff-side nooks to store foods in times of raids. In 2004, researchers replicating the ropes found they could hold a static load of over 450 pounds.

"Climbers and people who recreate in different ways-I think that is a beautiful way to connect with the land. If [climbers] start with a land acknowledgment, it will help them to connect in a way that they never have or never thought of-that this land is native land," says Bitsóí. "There is something beyond just the chalk and the walls."

Shawangunks

Along the ridge of foothills bordering the Catskill Mountains in New York are a series of famed quartz conglomerate cliffs. Known as the Shawangunks, this area originally belonged to the northern Lenape and Munsee until the 1800s, when European colonists displaced them to Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario where many remain today. In the Lenape language, schawangunk translates to "in the smoky air." Lenape linguist Raymond Whritenour believes the word could have been an original name for a Munsee village, but could also stem from the burning of a Munsee fort in 1663. The nearby Catskills were originally named the "Hidden Mountains" by the Lenape, so called because of the heavy humidity and weather conditions created by the ridgeline. Unfortunately, due to the eviction of the Lenape, there is little info about their original connection to the land.

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Origin Stories: Native Lore Behind America's Iconic Climbing Areas

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For millennia, indigenous tribes have lived on the lands where North American climbers gather. The tribes have their own names for these sacred places, each with a unique story that guides their relationship to the land. In indigenous communities, it is not the people who name places, but the lands themselves who give the people their names.

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"Back in 2016, five tribes and the outdoor industry united around one national monument"

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"Back in 2016, five tribes and the outdoor industry united around one national monument"

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Back in 2016, five tribes and the outdoor industry united around one national monument. In 2018, Colorado state officials want to turn that historic coming together into a lasting alliance and long-term policy.
During the first morning of the summer Outdoor Retailer trade show in July, five climbers, ultra-runners, and outdoor sports advocates-all ambassadors for Natives Outdoors-circled a table at the Patagonia booth. The air buzzed with a vibe that had nothing to do with the newest gear. The energy stemmed from the previous day's summit, which convened representatives of a dozen tribes from seven western states to talk about outdoor recreation.

"We're natural allies, the outdoor industry and the tribes, and now we need to figure out how we navigate that relationship," says Lydia Jennings, a Natives Outdoors ambassador and ultra runner. Natives Outdoors was founded by Len Necefer in 2017 to promote images of indigenous people at the crags, on the trails, aboard boats and with freshly caught fish in hands, and it has branched into efforts to restore tribal names to peaks and to make the outdoor industry an economic driver for tribes often located near public lands. Necefer worked with the Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs and Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office to organize the event.

What this industry is and how to integrate it economically are a core qustion for the group, but so are increasing opportunities for outdoor recreation for tribal membersand securing tribes a spot in steering management of Colorado's public lands. Summit attendees at the July meeting even had a chance to review an accord signed by representatives from eight states with outdoor recreation offices to align around shared principles, one of which calls for engaging tribal governments.
A New Alliance
With a shared interest in causes like preserving Bears Ears as a national monument having sparked tenuous alliances between the outdoor industry and tribes, the two gourps have turned their attention toward solidifying that relationship. But these alliances don't always come easily. Like any use of the land, outdoor recreation has its impacts, and historic animosities stem from climbers and rafters ignoring the sanctity of spaces like Ship Rock, the Snake River, and Devil's Tower.

Take Colorado's 14,000-foot-tall Blanca Peak (Sisnaajini) which is one of four mountains that bound traditional Navajo lands and figures in their creation stories. Necefer has hiked up to the lake below Blanca, a popular spot for peak-baggers and off-roaders, and found scattered garbage.

"This is a sacred place and has a lot of significance, so just tread lightly," Necefer says. "The principles of 'leave no trace' and minimizing impact come back to respect not only for the natural environment and what's around you, but for all of the thousands of years of people that have come here before you."

If people knew this place's cultural history-or, for example, that Rocky Mountain National Park has traces of human presence dating back 10,000 years and continuing into the 1900s-perhaps they'd take a little more care.

"There still is a population of people who don't think Native Americans are around anymore and would be surprised to know there are 573 federally recognized tribes," says Ernest House, Jr., executive director of the Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs. The state recognizes 48 tribes who claim traditional homelands in it, and roughly 83,000 American Indians or Alaskan Natives still live in Colorado, according to Census data.

"We're still here, we're still thriving, and we're still around trying to honor our culture and our heritage," House says.

As Colorado wrangles a booming population and a growing pinch on its resources, House and Necefer both argue, who better to turn to than the people who have the longest history of stewarding these lands than Native people? For the first time, the state plans to do just that this year.

The Department of Natural Resources' Parks and Wildlife Department is working on the latest draft of the State of Colorado Outdoor Recreation Plan. That plan is rewritten every five years to qualify the state for federal grant funds, including those from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and is maturing into a vision document for the outdoors.

"It's looking at how we treat our natural resources, our wildlife, other users on the trail, outdoor rec, and cultural resources," says Jody Kennedy, public involvement planning specialist with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. "Our state's population is growing so rapidly that the need for a stronger stewardship ethic is really critical. That is kind of a core piece that brings these diverse users together. We can all recognize that need."

So the state is trying to involve tribes in that work and ensure the final plan includes their priorities.

"Tribes often have been left out of management structures and haven't been consulted on lands that are bordering the reservation," says Aaron Mike, owner of Pangaea Mountain Guides, native lands regional coordinator for the Access Fund and a Natives Outdoors ambassador. Mike grew up exploring Monument Valley with his grandfather, discovered what rock shoes and a chalk bag can do, and has been climbing for the 17 years since. "It would be a huge step just to have that seat again."

One way Necefer, who holds a Ph.D. in engineering and public policy, argues these new allies could cement ties between state governments and Native people is through economic integration.

"If tribes have a major stake in jobs or employment, that relationship can be really solidified and force the need to work together," he says. "I think the alignment of interest is already there in a big way, especially around environmental issues."

Kennedy, like Necefer, says outdoor recreation could secure the economic vitality of Colorado's rural communities, including those on and near tribal lands. While it's too soon to say quite what projects could stem from this plan, there's hope it will also imbed some of that cultural sensitivity Necefer says is needed.

"The tribes connect us to Colorado's history in a really important way and we need to think about doing a better job of connecting people who are in the outdoors recreating, whether they're climbing a fourteener, on a trail or in a state park, to the historic presence of tribes," Kennedy says.
Tribal Conversation
The renewed efforts from the state have been met with some interest from the tribes and they're working out what their input might be, House says. There's also been a little skepticism. Tribes have previously seen surveys on community needs identify those issues, and but agencies have never put services on the ground to address them. What remains to be seen is how the state responds to the feedback to this survey, which was tailored to ask about management issues specific to tribes. Kennedy says a first read on feedback shows tribes asking the same questions a lot of communities come up with around outdoor recreation and conservation, health benefits, and how to increase opportunities to sports that aren't always affordable or self-explanatory.

As it stands now, it's like tribes are deliberately left out of the discussion around Colorado's full-speed charge into becoming a booming outdoor sports destination. "There's been an initiative to create more mountain biking trails and loops through southwest Colorado, and sometimes when it comes to tribal lands, it just stops," House says. "I think sometimes people are afraid to approach the tribes."

He also thinks that the 20,000-acre tribal park that his tribe (the Ute Mountain Ute) runs near Mesa Verde National Park is "one of the best-kept secrets in the state." It's a chance to see similar artifacts as are in that neighboring Mesa Verde National Park, but on the tribe's terms instead of the federal government's.

Stepping into these conversations may at least help people get past some of the fears about engaging with the tribes, if not learn how to obtain permission to enter tribal land or to understand why some areas are off limits.

"If we continue to stay silent, it just perpetuates that division," House says.

One of the places the state is working to ease those divides is in its annual Partners in the Outdoors Conference, organized by Dan Zimmerer, statewide partnership coordinator for Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The event assembles outdoor industry advocates, business owners, hunters, anglers, and conservationists to talk about Colorado's public lands.
Connecting All Coloradans
This year, House was invited to speak on a panel with Necefer and Steve Whiteman, director of wildlife management for the Southern Ute Tribe, which runs a wildlife and conservation program. It was his first invitation to that event, House says. They've been working to add diversity each year, Zimmerer says, and will continue to as they plan next year's event.

"We need to make sure all Coloradans are connected to the outdoors and feel like they're represented, and when that happens, it really sets the stage for good things for conservation and recreation in Colorado," Zimmerer says.

If all of this sounds like a lot of good intention and not a ton of change on the ground, that's because, in some ways it is. Tribes are expected to reconvene at an upcoming Outdoor Retailer show-but the state outdoor recreation plan won't be enacted until 2019.

"We might not know the answer, but we're starting the conversation," Zimmerer says. "We're trying to get the right voices in the room talking, and we don't know where it's going to lead."

To continue those talks, shortly after Outdoor Retailer's booths were packed back down into storage and the convention center in downtown Denver emptied of ultralight tents and next season's cut of rain jackets and yoga pants, Necefer and Zimmerer headed out into the field. They made the hike up to North Table Mountain above Golden, and there, between pitches of basalt-a new hobby for Zimmerer-they talked about next steps for this work.

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Back in 2016, five tribes and the outdoor industry united around one national monument. In 2018, Colorado state officials want to turn that historic coming together into a lasting alliance and long-term policy. During the first morning of the summer Outdoor Retailer trade show in July, five climbers, ultra-runners, and outdoor sports advocates-all ambassadors for Natives Outdoors-circled a table at the Patagonia booth.

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"AMERICAN INDIAN GATHERING AND RECREATION USES OFNATIONAL FORESTS"

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"AMERICAN INDIAN GATHERING AND RECREATION USES OFNATIONAL FORESTS"

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Journal Information

American Indian Quarterly has earned its reputation as one of the dominant journals in American Indian studies by presenting the best and most thought-provoking scholarship in the field. The journal is a forum for diverse voices and perspectives spanning a variety of academic disciplines. The common thread is AIQ's commitment to publishing work that contributes to the development of American Indian studies as a field and to the sovereignty and continuance of American Indian nations and cultures. In addition to peer-reviewed articles, AIQ features reviews of books, films, and exhibits.

Publisher Information

The University of Nebraska Press extends the University's mission of teaching, research, and service by promoting, publishing, and disseminating works of intellectual and cultural significance and enduring value. We primarily publish nonfiction books and scholarly journals, along with a few titles per season in contemporary and regional prose and poetry. On occasion, we reprint previously published fiction of established reputation, and we have several programs to publish literary works in translation. Through our paperback imprint, Bison Books, we publish reprints of classic books of myriad genres. Our primary mission, defined by the University through the Press Advisory Board of faculty members working in concert with the Press, is to find, evaluate, and publish in the best fashion possible, serious works of nonfiction..

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Protecting Sacred Sites on Public Land: Religion and Alliances in the Mato Tipila-Devils Tower Litigation on JSTOR

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Journal Information American Indian Quarterly has earned its reputation as one of the dominant journals in American Indian studies by presenting the best and most thought-provoking scholarship in the field. The journal is a forum for diverse voices and perspectives spanning a variety of academic disciplines.

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"Bringing Outdoor Recreation to Native Americans"

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"Bringing Outdoor Recreation to Native Americans"

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Bringing Outdoor Recreation to Native Americans

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Marshall Masayesva is lying on his side in a dandelion-sprinkled lawn, clutching his stomach and groaning as if someone's sticking a knife into it. A clean-cut, athletic 28-year-old who recently founded an outdoor education organization called Adventures for Hopi, Masayesva isn't actually hurt-he's feigning appendicitis to learn how to recognize its symptoms in the backcountry.

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The Sun Dance ceremony is often held at the park, although not every year. This photo shows the set up of a site from the 1980s.
NPS photo

Tribal Connections

Many of the tribes below have a sacred narrative, or oral history, about the creation of the Tower. You can read some of these oral histories on our park website.

Arapahoe

Arapahoes call Devils Tower "Bear's Tipi."

Sherman Sage, an Arapahoe, said that his grandfather, Drying-Up-Hide, was buried near the Tower.

The Cheyenne call Devils Tower "Bear's Lodge," "Bear's House," "Bear's Tipi," and "Bear Peak."

The Cheyenne camped and hunted at Bear's Lodge in the winter and consider it a holy place.

"A band of Cheyenne Indians went on one of its visits to 'Bear's Tipi' to worship the Great Spirit, as did many other tribes before the white man came. The Cheyenne braves took their families with them as they felt that would be safe, as Bear's Tipi was a holy place."

Devils Tower is where Sweet Medicine died and it is his final earthly resting place. Sweet Medicine is the great culture hero of the Cheyenne who brought the Four Sacred Arrows to the tribe. The Four Sacred Arrows' sanctuary was located within a secret cave on the south side of Bear's Lodge. Sweet Medicine also founded the Cheyenne Warrior Societies, tribal government, special laws, and ceremonies. As Sweet Medicine lay dying in a hut by Bear's Lodge, he foretold a dark prophecy of the coming of the horse;the disappearance of the old ways and the buffalo, to be replaced by slick animals with split hoofs the people must learn to eat (cattle). He told of the coming of white men, strangers called Earth Men who could fly above the earth, take thunder from light, and dig up the earth and drain it until it was dead.

Crow

The Crow call Devils Tower "Bear Lodge."

The Crow people were known to fast and worship at Devils Tower and built small stone "dream houses" there as part of these vision quests. The stone dream houses were about as long as a man is tall. A man would recline inside with his head to the east and feet to the west, "like the rising and setting sun."

Kiowa

The Kiowa call Devils Tower "Aloft on a Rock" and "Tree Rock." The oral histories of the Kiowa people link Tree Rock with their astronomical knowledge.

"...origin memories of American Indian people reveal none anywhere 'as bright- and remote-' as the Kiowas memories of their days in the Black Hills and at Devils Tower."

The Lakota people call Devils Tower "Bear Lodge," "Bear Lodge Butte," "Grizzly Bear's Lodge," "Mythic-owl Mountain," "Grey Horn Butte," and "Ghost Mountain." Of the may tribes associated with the Tower, the Lakotas arguably have the strongest connections (or at least the most well-documented).

The Lakotas often had winter camps at Devils Tower, documented as far back as 1816. Lakotas have an ancient and sacred relationship with the Black Hills, including Bear Lodge and Inyan Kara. The Black Hills are the Lakotas' place of creation.

A Sioux legend tells of a Lakota band camped in the forest at the foot of Bear Lodge. They were attacked by a band of Crow. With the assistance of a huge bear, the Lakota were able to defeat the Crow.

At Devils Tower, they fasted, prayed, left offerings, worshipped the "Great Mystery" (the essence of Lakota spiritual and religious life), and performed sweatlodge ceremonies. Lakota pray for health, welfare, and personal direction.

The healing ceremony is known to have been performed at Bear Lodge, conducted by a healing shaman. The Great Bear, Hu Numpa, imparted the sacred language and ceremonies of healing to Lakota shamans at Bear Lodge. In this way, Devils Tower is considered the birthplace of wisdom.

"White Bull told of 'honor men' among the people who went up close to Devils Tower for four-day periods, fasting and praying. There they slept on beds of sagebrush, taking no food or water during this time. Once, five great Sioux leaders-Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud, Gall, and Spotted Tail-went there together to worship. We did not worship the butte, but worshipped our God."

Vision quests are a very intense form of prayer requiring much preparation, fasting, purification rite (sweatlodge/inipi), and solitude. It is a ritual integral to the construction of Lakota identity. In addition to learning lore and moral teachings, individuals who seek visions "often regain clarity of purpose in their lives and a secure identity as a member of their tribe." Men and women may seek a vision for a variety of reasons: to give thanks, to ask for spiritual guidance, or simply to pray in solitude. One of Devils Tower National Monument's archaeological sites, assessed by archaeologist Bruce Jones in 1991, is a post-1930's shelter made of stone and wood which could have been used for vision quests.

A Lakota legend tells of a warrior undergoing a vision quest at the base of Bear Lodge for two days. Suddenly, he found himself on the summit. He was frightened since he did not know how to get back down. After praying to the Great Spirit for assistance he fell asleep. Upon awakening, he found himself back down from the butte.

The Lakotas traditionally held their sacred Sun Dance at Devils Tower around the summer solstice. The Belle Fourche River was known to the Lakotas as the Sun Dance River. ¹ Bear Lodge is considered a sacred place of renewal. The Sun Dance is a ceremony of fasting and sacrifice that leads to the renewal of the individual and the group as a whole. The Sun Dance takes away the pain of the universe or damage to Nature. The participant suffers so that Nature stops suffering. The Sun Dance is "...the supreme rite of sacrifice for the society as a whole [and] a declaration of individual bravery and fortitude... Young men went through the Sun Dance annually to demonstrate their bravery as though they themselves had been captured and tortured, finally struggling to obtain their freedom." The tearing of the pierced flesh is symbolic of obtaining freedom and renewal. NPS records indicate that modern Sun Dance ceremonies have been held at Devils Tower since 1983.

The Lakotas also received the White Buffalo Calf Pipe, the most sacred object of the Lakota people, at Bear Lodge by White Buffalo Calf Woman, a legendary spiritual being. The sacred pipe's sanctuary was located within a secret cave on the north side of Bear Lodge. In 1875, General George A. Custer swore by the pipe that he would not fight Indians again. "He who swears by the pipe and breaks oaths, comes to destruction, and his whole family dies, or sickness comes upon them." Pipes often are held as sacred objects used in vision quests, Sun Dances, sweatlodge rites, and in making peace.

Shoshone

The Eastern (Plains) Shoshone claim to have a sacred association with Devils Tower. Their religious world, however, is kept very secret and, as a result, cannot be documented at this time.

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A Sacred Site to American Indians - Devils Tower National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)

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Tribal Connections Many of the tribes below have a sacred narrative, or oral history, about the creation of the Tower. You can read some of these oral histories on our park website. Arapahoe Arapahoes call Devils Tower "Bear's Tipi." Sherman Sage, an Arapahoe, said that his grandfather, Drying-Up-Hide, was buried near the Tower.

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When public lands become tribal lands again

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When public lands become tribal lands again

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The smell of scorched soil and burnt wood filled the air. Michael Rondeau, CEO of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, looked over the damage, clad in forest-green pants and a lemon-yellow jacket with "Douglas Forest Patrol" on the back. The Milepost 97 Fire, which started just days earlier with an illegal campfire, had consumed almost 13,000 acres in southwest Oregon. Almost a quarter of that was on the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians Reservation - land so recently acquired by the tribe from the Bureau of Land Management that no conservation work or logging had yet occurred.

The tribe lost a good stand of timber, and officials estimate that replanting and recovery could take millions of dollars. Less than two months earlier, I had visited this tract of land, touring it with Rondeau and Tim Vredenburg, Cow Creek director of forest management. Then, it had been lush with evergreens and wildflowers - lupine, beargrass and paintbrush. Now, that was all gone.

"We've been so focused on managing to prevent fire," Vredenburg told me over the phone, a few days after the fire. "That's where all of our mental energy was being invested in: How do we manage this forest to prevent fire? And doggone it, now we're looking at: How do we manage it after fire?"

The answer may lie in something Vredenburg and Rondeau said to me before the fire: that the Cow Creek lands would be managed differently now than they were by U.S. agencies prior to their return. Thinning and reintroducing fire through prescribed burns, they told me, would be a top priority for the more than 17,000 forested acres the tribe received through the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act in 2018. Rondeau explained that the management of Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians reservation lands would reflect Indigenous values: an example separate from either industry or conservation groups. "We don't believe in locking up the forests and allowing them to 'remain natural,' because it never was,'" Rondeau said. "For thousands of years, our ancestors used fire as a tool of keeping underbrush down, so that the vegetation remains healthy and productive."

Looking down from Canyon Mountain at a valley full of blackened madrones and pines, Rondeau and Vredenburg - along with some 1,800 Cow Creek tribal citizens - are thinking of the future, 165 years after their lands were taken and only one year after they were partially returned. The Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act's passage illustrates just how long it can take - and the kind of political will it can require - to hold the United States and its citizens accountable for illegal treaty violations.

The journey to regain control of Cow Creek lands has been a long one. In 1853, six years before the state of Oregon existed, the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians signed a treaty with the U.S. government. In exchange for a reservation, housing and health care, the Cow Creek ceded 800 square miles of land. But instead of complying with the terms of its treaty, the federal government sold Cow Creek lands to settlers through the Donation Lands Claim act, making the tribe landless. In 1932, Congress passed a bill to restore the tribe's land base, only to see it vetoed by President Herbert Hoover. Litigation followed. "That really did set back our tribal members for quite a few decades," Rondeau says. "There was a continuation of their lifeways, but the longer it went from the time of the treaty, they would lose more and more of their culture or just simply be blended in to the new life ways and assimilate."

But last year, the Cow Creek made a breakthrough with the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act. The act - which passed the U.S. House seven times, only to die each time in the Senate - finally was signed into law by President Donald Trump. It restored more than 17,000 acres of public land to the Cow Creek Band, along with nearly 15,000 acres to the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians.

"This is pretty rare. It shouldn't be, but it is," says Cris Stainbrook, president of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, of the restoration act. "Those are the homelands of the tribe - these are lands that were reserved by the tribe in the treaty process."

THE MILEPOST 97 FIRE, then, was particularly devastating as a pointed reminder of the tribe's long pursuit of land. During the Termination Era, which started in 1954 and affected tribal nations across the U.S., the federal government terminated 61 western Oregon tribes, abdicating its legal responsibility to Indigenous communities. (To date, five tribes in western Oregon have regained their federal status.) In the 1950s, former Oregon Gov. Douglas McKay, who headed the Interior Department, "enthusiastically" supported termination, after pushing state-level policies to "integrate the Indians into the rest of our population."

Michael Rondeau represents one of the last generations of Cow Creek to remember what termination was like: no access to higher education or health care, and no land base - despite legal promises. His father, Tom Rondeau, the descendant of French traders and Umpqua people, grew up with a ramble of cousins on his grandparents' Tiller, Oregon, homestead in the 1940s, hearing a mix of English, French and Chinuk Wawa, also known as Chinook Jargon. Tom, a big guy with a flattop, raised Michael and his brother in Glide, Oregon - 17 miles from where Michael now lives and works. The Rondeaus were a timber family, and Michael spent his childhood summers on the meandering North Umpqua River, a self-proclaimed river rat. By age 17, his dad had him setting chokers on Douglas fir trees to make sure he understood the hard labor he'd be doing if he chose to work in the timber industry.

Decades after termination, persistent efforts by tribal nations and advocates resulted in the federal government once again recognizing tribes and treaty obligations. In the 1970s and '80s, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde gained federal recognition again, along with some lands. The Coquille Indian Tribe, Cow Creek and Coos were re-recognized, too, but without lands. Efforts by tribes in what is currently western Oregon to reacquire their land came shortly after recognition.

In 1996, the Coquille Indian Tribe, based on Oregon's southern coast, regained 5,400 acres of BLM land. But local voters opposed the transfer by nearly 5 to 1 in an advisory vote, and the final legislation required that the tribe allow public access for hunting, recreation and fishing.

An attempt by the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians to acquire federal lands the next year in 1997 hit a roadblock when voters and environmental groups vocally opposed the transfer, arguing that the land would no longer be subject to federal environmental law, despite promises from the tribal chairman that the tribe would adhere to federal standards. "Although the Coos tribe still hasn't formulated details such as the amount of acreage or specific parcels of land," a 1997 Associated Press article wrote, "environmentalists already say they would oppose any plan that would remove federal land from public control." The Coos tribe would not receive their lands for another 21 years, until the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act.

In 2013, when the Cow Creek drew up plans for the BLM land transfer, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden's office nixed the deal. The lands were ground zero for the timber wars of the 1990s, when the Endangered Species Act and industry clashed over the spotted owl, making their transfer almost 20 years later a non-starter for conservation groups. "It was such a touchy conversation with the environmental community - it would have been a complication that would have been hard to overcome," Rondeau said. Instead, the tribe received BLM lands of relatively lower timber quality - checker-boarded lands, instead of the contiguous land base of many reservations.

The tribe also tried a less conventional approach. In 2017, the Cow Creek Tribe made a bid to buy Elliott State Forest, after the state of Oregon put it up for sale. The Elliott, which was legally required to make money for Oregon schools, hadn't been producing enough. "Our tribal leadership was concerned that some out-of-state, out-of-the-area or foreign-owned company could come in and buy this forest," Vredenburg said. With its $220 million price tag, the Elliott was out of reach, so the Cow Creek turned to Lone Rock Resources, a local Oregon-based timber company.

Conservation groups, critical of Lone Creek's forestry practices, staunchly opposed its involvement and accused the partnership of wanting to privatize the forest. Conservationists in turn were called out for their failure to work with tribal nations: "Your organization has mobilized opposition to the sale, with little to no engagement with the Tribes who would have, once again, become the stewards of this land," a consortium of racial justice groups, including NAACP Portland, wrote in an open letter to the Sierra Club, Cascadia Wildlands and four other conservation organizations. "We also note the many ways in which environmental groups in Oregon remain predominantly white, and work from a place of white privilege; this situation is a very clear example of the lack of racial justice analysis applied to what is a complicated situation." Then-Sierra Club Oregon Chapter Director Erica Stock responded, "As an environmental conservation community, we must do more to proactively reach out to Tribal Nations and rebuild trust."

Ultimately, the sale was dropped by the state after intense public outcry, but tensions between conservation groups and tribes remain.

"The conservation movement began as a way for settlers to justify the seizure of Indigenous lands under the pretext that Native peoples didn't know how to manage them," says Shawn Fleek, Northern Arapaho, who is director of narrative strategy for OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon. "If modern conservation groups don't begin their analysis in this history and struggle to address these harms, it becomes more likely they will repeat them."

Rhett Lawrence, conservation director for the Sierra Club's Oregon chapter, says that his group opposed the timber company and privatization, not the concept of tribes regaining their lands. Still, Lawrence acknowledges, "We need to do better about having those conversations. We certainly have not resolved things from where they were two years ago." Since then, two groups named in the open letter, Trout Unlimited and Wild Salmon Center, have now partnered with the Cow Creek Tribe on restoration projects.

Once a decade, a national study of tribal forests is conducted to monitor land health, production and management. The latest study, in 2013, found that the federal government was not fulfilling its trust responsibility to fund tribal forestry programs, yet noted that tribal stewardship could nonetheless serve as a model for resource management and practices on federal lands. "Those studies have shown that Indian forest management is superior than BLM and BIA because of the direct tie the Indian people have to the land," says George Smith, chief forester for the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1978 to 1983 and the former executive director for the Coquille Tribe. "That's their homeland, so they have a lot more vested interest in how those lands are managed."

Tribes are often better at managing timberland holistically, says Smith, adding: "The tribal capacity with most of the tribes now, particularly the self-governance tribes, is at least equal to or better than the federal government."

ON A CHILLY DECEMBER NIGHT IN 2018, Michael Rondeau learned that the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act had passed. He had been driving through Medford, Oregon, when the call came from Sen. Wyden's office. After hearing the news, he sat in his car in a parking lot, feeling drained. The Cow Creek would have at least some land back, roughly 3% of what was originally ceded, the result of decades of letter-writing, lobbying, and compromising. "I was of course proud of my team, and the effort that we had accomplished. I was excited for the future and knowing what it would mean to our people," Rondeau says now. But the sense of victory was inextricably linked with the feeling of injustice that the act sought to correct. "Probably most emotional for me was the sadness that my grandparents and great aunts and uncles and beyond that didn't have a day of recognition."

He thought of his great-aunt, Francis Rondeau Corder, whom they had cared for, ferrying her from her mobile home to doctors' visits that they had to pay for out of pocket, since the promised federal medical care never materialized. She passed before the tribe was recognized. He'd seen the legislation go through the House seven times since 2012, only to die in the Senate, victim to horse-trading and the hazards of Congress.

While the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act received less public pushback than the land conveyances of the 1990s and the Elliott debacle, some hard-line environmentalists continue to oppose the return of public lands to tribes. Al Runte, a Seattle-based environmental historian, wrote in National Parks Traveler in January that "had we protested the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act, they would have called us racists." Meanwhile Andy Kerr, who worked for two decades at Oregon Natural Resource Council (now Oregon Wild), still objects to public lands becoming tribal lands. "The Democrats who supported this legislation came down on the side of Native Americans and, in this case, against nature," Kerr wrote in a December 2018 post on his website.

While "Native Americans" should get some form of compensation, Kerr argued that "such compensation should not come at the cost of losing federal public lands of benefit to all Americans." Both Runte and Kerr see money as an adequate substitute despite treaty law, since "in the society that won out in that struggle for a continent, the most common way to right wrongs is by money being transferred to the aggrieved parties from the parties that unjustly benefited." Kerr continues: "The currency of compensation by the United States to Native American tribes ought to be the currency of dollars, not that of the irreplaceable and precious public lands that belong to all of us."

But it's not a matter of money, says Cris Stainbrook, Oglala Lakota, of the Indian Land Tenure Foundation. "It's ironic they don't recognize they've had the public benefit of lands for on the order of 165 years of using someone's land that was guaranteed to them, and used those lands to their own benefit. It's about time, after 165 years, that they live up to the treaty."

Stainbrook says he and others at the foundation often hear arguments like these against tribes working to regain land. Often, opponents say that too much time has passed - that broken treaties, while unfortunate, are a relic of the past. "The same could be said of the U.S. Constitution - why bother with any of that, that was done in the 1770s," Stainbrook says. "I could quit paying my house mortgage tomorrow, since I signed that nearly 20 years ago. Time isn't the issue here."

THE MILEPOST 97 FIRE STARTED a mile south of Canyonville, Oregon, on July 24, then spread to an old burn scar from the 1980s that was, at the time, BLM land, and is now Cow Creek again. Nine firefighters were injured over five days as snags 100 feet in front of the fire ignited from the embers, "lighting up like roman candles," recalled Vredenburg.

Recovery from fire means different things depending on the time scale, but with the fires still burning, it's difficult to think too far ahead. "The irony of finally, after 165 years, getting the reservation that was promised in the treaty, only to have almost a quarter of it burned, it's gut-wrenching," Rondeau told me from his office in early August. Still, he talks about the importance of beginning the hard work now, to be carried on for generations of Cow Creek: "I was taught that land was forever."

The cream-colored beargrass, purple lupine and red paintbrush wildflowers will return within the next few years, and in a few decades, mature pines. But the legacy of fire and its scars will always be there, under the heights of evergreens.
Note: This story has been updated to reflect that snags ignited from the embers, not exploded from the heat.
Anna V. Smith is an assistant editor for High Country News. Email her at [email protected] or submit aletter to the editor. Follow @annavtoriasmith

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When public lands become tribal lands again

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The smell of scorched soil and burnt wood filled the air. Michael Rondeau, CEO of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians, looked over the damage, clad in forest-green pants and a lemon-yellow jacket with "Douglas Forest Patrol" on the back.

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"'Piecing together a broken heart': Native Americans rebuild territories they lost"

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"'Piecing together a broken heart': Native Americans rebuild territories they lost"

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‘Piecing together a broken heart’: Native Americans rebuild territories they lost

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Tribes across the US are buying back land lost during and after the colonization period on the open market

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Haaland’s nomination for Interior secretary advances to full Senate

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Haaland’s nomination for Interior secretary advances to full Senate

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But Native Americans in the state also told Murkowski that Haaland would be crucial to elevate their issues to the highest levels of the federal government.

"I am going to place my trust in Representative Haaland and her team despite some very real misgivings," Murkowski said.

"Know that I intend to work with you because I want you to be successful and quite honestly we need you to be successful, but I am also going to hold you to your commitments to ensure that Alaska is allowed to prosper," she added.

Among those voting for approval was Energy Chair Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a moderate Democrat who was viewed as crucial to Haaland's chances. Manchin said he had had qualms over Haaland's opposition to fossil fuels, but that support for her from Alaska Rep. Don Young - a staunch Republican who said he had worked with her successfully in the past - helped convince him to vote to approve her.

"While I may not personally agree with some of her past statements and policy positions, as secretary she will be carrying out President Biden's agenda," Manchin said. "I was deeply impressed by the strong endorsement that she received by Congressman Don Young, for whom I have the utmost respect, and who has been in Congress long enough to be able to read people and know their heart and soul."

Manchin added: "230 years after Washington called his first Cabinet meeting, it is long past time to give a Native American woman a seat on the cabinet table."

Murkowski's vote had been in question, as the Alaska senator took Haaland to task for her criticisms of Tara Sweeney, a Native American Interior official under former department Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Context: The committee vote puts Haaland one step closer to becoming the first Native American to win approval to a Cabinet position. Several Republican committee members, including ranking member John Barrasso and Sen. Cynthia Lummis, both of Wyoming, plus Steve Daines of Montana had sharply criticized Haaland, pledging to vote against her nomination even before her hearing was scheduled.

The oil-state senators blasted Haaland for her past statements against fossil fuels and oil pipelines. During her confirmation hearing last week, Haaland, softening her stances, said the department would work with the fossil fuel industry to address any toll the Biden administration's push to develop clean energy would have on the sector's workers.

Barrasso, before the vote, blasted Haaland as unresponsive during the hearing and to questions for the record.

"Representative Haaland's positions are squarely at odds with the mission of the Department of the Interior, and outside of the mainstream," he said.

Still, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, another moderate Republican, pledged Wednesday to vote to approve Haaland as Interior secretary, all but ensuring her winning the 51 votes necessary for appointment.

What's next: Haaland'snomination goes to the full Senate for a vote.

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Haaland's nomination for Interior secretary advances to full Senate

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But Native Americans in the state also told Murkowski that Haaland would be crucial to elevate their issues to the highest levels of the federal government. "I am going to place my trust in Representative Haaland and her team despite some very real misgivings," Murkowski said.

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"Reclaiming A Presence in Ancestral Lands: The Return of Native Peoples to the National Parks"

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"Reclaiming A Presence in Ancestral Lands: The Return of Native Peoples to the National Parks"

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Written by: Jeanette Wolfley, 2016

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"Biden appointments, including Nez Perce fisheries champion, bolster Native American presence in federal government"

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"Biden appointments, including Nez Perce fisheries champion, bolster Native American presence in federal government"

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There's a saying in Indian Country: either you are at the table, or you are on the menu.

Appointments by the Biden administration now in the works would put American Indian and Alaska Native people very much at the table, including posts where Native people have never before served, with enormous influence over lands and waters and environmental policy across the U.S.

The appointments, some already made and others under consideration, are a redemptive moment for federal agencies that in the past terminated the federal relationship with tribes, destroyed tribal fisheries and worked hard to eliminate tribal cultures.

The biggest appointment, still to be confirmed by Congress, is that of U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland, of New Mexico and a member of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, to serve as secretary of the Department of the Interior. Other appointments include Robert Anderson, who would be one of Haaland's top lawyers, and Jaime Pinkham, a Nez Perce tribal member, to a top post at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

David Z. Bean, council member for the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, an important donor in federal and state elections, called the appointments "both historic and exciting. It is going to change the conversation, and right the wrong of so many wrongs through the years."

While they run their own governments and nations, tribes care deeply about the partners they work with at every level of government.

That is because the exercise of tribal sovereignty and even the most fundamental aspects of protecting and continuing their way of life depend on productive government-to-government relationships.

Haaland's potential confirmation holds significant promise, Bean said.

"With her historic and eventual confirmation, she will be the first Native American to head an agency that had one time charged itself with the destruction of our people," Bean said.

During the so-called Termination Era from 1953 to 1969, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, under the Department of Interior, oversaw the termination of federal relations with more than 100 tribal governments across the country, and the relocation of tribal members from their communities and reservations to live in cities, including Seattle.

Earlier, beginning in the 1870s, Indian children were also taken from their families and sent to boarding schools whose mission under U.S. federal policy was to destroy their tribal culture. The legacy of trauma inflicted by the schools, some of which operated under what would become known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs, continues today.

Indian leaders who grew up hearing their parents' and elders' stories honor what their elders survived, and the changes underway today.

"My dad and so many elders literally went through blood, sweat and tears to fight for who we are," said Willie Frank Jr. III, a Nisqually tribal council member. He is the son of Billy Frank Jr., a nationally celebrated treaty rights activist jailed dozens of times for his defense of tribal treaty fishing rights.

A statue of his father, who died in 2014, is now under consideration by state lawmakers to replace missionary Marcus Whitman as one of two statues representing Washington state in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.

Meanwhile, other native leaders around the region also are being tapped for important appointments.

Anderson would be one of Haaland's top lawyers if she is confirmed. He has been appointed principal deputy solicitor at the Department of Interior.

He is enrolled in the Bois Forte Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and taught at the University of Washington School of Law and directed its Native American Law Center for the past 20 years. He also for more than a decade has been a visiting professor at the Harvard Law School.

Pinkham, a Nez Perce tribal member and treaty fishing rights champion as executive director of the Columbia Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, has been invited by the Biden Administration to serve a primary deputy secretary for civil works at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps has significant impact nationwide on the lands and particularly the waters of the U.S., including jurisdiction over permitting for pipelines, construction in wetlands, and the operation, maintenance and construction of dams.

Pinkham's appointment comes as Congressman Mike Simpson, a Republican of Idaho has put forward a massive proposal for removal of four dams on the Lower Snake River and replacement of their benefits for river users, as part of a federal fisheries restoration, energy and transportation package in the Northwest.

For Shannon Wheeler, chairman of the Nez Perce tribe, Pinkham's appointment is a matter of pride and opportunity to have someone in such an important position at such an important time. Pinkham already understands tribal treaty fishing rights and the federal relationship with tribes, Wheeler said.

"I am really smiling a lot right now," Wheeler said. "He brings a lot to the table and a wealth of knowledge. Definitely, native nations are abuzz right now.

"We are at a critical juncture. Sometimes, that is how the Creator works," Wheeler said, with the right person in the right time in the right place when change needs to occur. "Not everyone will see it that way, but we as Nez Perce do," Wheeler said.

Pinkham earned praise far beyond tribal circles from his years of work both as an elected official at Nez Perce, at the fish commission, and working at a foundation and on the boards of nonprofits.

Elliot Mainzer, former administrator at the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA), praised Pinkham as someone good at seeking solutions even in very contentious issues. The two worked together on negotiations for a 2018 agreement governing the spill of water over dams to benefit salmon in their migration to the sea.

"We called this carrying water for each other," Mainzer said. "Jaime was just a great partner during my time at BPA. He has such a unique skill set and background, he is such a great collaborator."

The appointment is a good sign for the region, said Mainzer, who is now the CEO for the California Independent System Operator, which manages and markets power sold to the Western grid. "I think this signals a genuine willingness of people to sit down at the table and listen to each other in different ways to think long-term for the good of the region."

W. Ron Allen, chairman of the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, said the appointments are no accident. Indian leaders have been very clear they want the Biden Administration to put Native people in high-level jobs and especially where they were not typically, or even ever held by Native people.

Allen noted the advancement in consideration of Debra Lekanoff, an Aleut-Tlingit Native and Democratic representative from the 40th District, for director of Region 10 for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The Region 10 director has jurisdiction over environmental affairs in a vast region of the Northwest, encompassing the states of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and 271 tribal nations.

If appointed, Lekanoff would be the first Native American to hold the post.

In addition to her service in the Legislature, Lekanoff has decades of experience working with local, state, and federal governments as the intergovernmental affairs director for the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community.

That is the kind of track record that is delivering so many qualified Native candidates for top positions, Allen said.

Pinkham, for instance, at 64, has built a diverse career, starting out in forestry. He got his first look at politics on the days he took off his boots and suspenders to serve as an intern for state lawmakers, while employed in forestry by the state Department of Natural Resources.

Pinkham went on from forestry jobs first at DNR and then the Bureua of Indian Affairs to managing natural resources for the Nez Perce Tribe and serving as treasurer elected to the Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee. He also worked at a private foundation to strengthen native governance at tribes in North and South Dakota and Minnesota, in addition to serving on the boards of multiple non-profits.

For all his professional success, and now with a move coming to Washington D.C., Pinkham said he always knows where home is: with his family, in his cabin on the reservation; at elk camp, or, he said with pride, "sitting at a round drum, singing the old songs, in the old ways."

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Biden appointments, including Nez Perce fisheries champion, bolster Native American presence in federal government

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There's a saying in Indian Country: either you are at the table, or you are on the menu. Appointments by the Biden administration now in the works would put American Indian and Alaska Native people very much at the table, including posts where Native people have never before served, with enormous influence over lands and waters and environmental policy across the U.S.

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"On Deb Haaland, Native American history and renewed hope"

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"On Deb Haaland, Native American history and renewed hope"

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Most Americans are probably familiar with Crazy Horse, Geronimo and Disney's distorted version of Pocahontas. They may have heard of gold medalists Jim Thorpe and Billy Mills for their athletic footprints and the Navajo Code Talkers, who devised a military code based on the Navajo language to help defeat the Japanese during World War II. Beyond that, the remaining slate of nationally known Native Americans remains sparse, stereotyped and invisible. And almost entirely male.

That's changing with Deb Haaland, having made history as one of the first Native American women elected to the House of Representatives in 2018. President Joe Biden's appointment of her as United States secretary of the interior heralds a tremendous opportunity - a new page for Native Americans, Alaska Natives and Native island communities. It represents hope for undoing destructive policies of the previous presidential administrations. But most of all, it represents renewed hope for the land and for the Indigenous nations of this country.

Since the Department of Interior was established in 1849, none of the secretaries have been members of a tribal nation. This in a country where Native Americans have not only been systematically ignored, misunderstood and mistreated since the beginning, but where tribal nations were placed under the responsibility of the department that oversees the management of a wide range of natural resources on public lands, including honoring treaty responsibilities to Native peoples.

It may have been considered an improvement when tribal affairs transferred from the Department of War to the then-new Department of Interior 170 years ago. The reality is the decimation of the Native populations continued. Treaties were broken or not honored, treaties that stipulated for medical and educational support. That education came through the process of assimilation in the boarding schools and the erasure of Native identity and culture - to the point that as late as the 1950s and 1960s, when I was growing up, I wasn't allowed to speak the Navajo language, lest I get punished for it.

During the summer when I lived with my paternal grandmother, we walked 3 miles to the windmill to wash our hair and clothes. Water, wood and coal were hauled from a distance to her home. Electric power lines ran not even a mile from her house, yet she used kerosene lamps for light, wood to cook with and coal to warm her home in the winter. My grandparents and relatives then and now still live with many of the conditions that enabled the coronavirus to spread rapidly and widely this past year, infecting and taking many lives - poverty, lack of clean water, food deserts, poor infrastructure, inadequate medical services and resources - conditions that lead to the impoverishment of the mind and spirit.

I and many of my fellow Native Americans believe Biden's appointment of Haaland is monumental. Now that she has been confirmed, she holds a major seat at the table of American government. Her confirmation has the potential to transform past injustices, to build a more equitable government in which Native Americans, who hold a large voting bloc, gain a voice. It's an opportunity to bring Indigenous thinking to the stewardship of the land, water, air and the ecosystem, and address the negative impact of the destruction of cultural and sacred sites on and near Native homelands. It's a chance to consider more carefully interests in public lands that impact Native land and resources.

Deb Haaland's confirmation also brings to the forefront the image of the resilient and intrepid Native American woman elected as lawmaker in one of the most powerful countries and democracies. Her unique background has the potential to benefit all Americans in the kind of leadership derived from having a sense of community in policy and decision-making.

I first met Deb Haaland in Norman, Oklahoma, at the 1992 inaugural Returning the Gift Native Writers' Festival when we were beginning writers. Haaland's bright personality and easy demeanor made for friendly conversation. We connected over how our lives overlapped - our shared Laguna Pueblo heritage, our strong mothers and that we'd graduated from the same high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. By the end of the gathering, we exchanged addresses. I thought our friendship was a passing moment, so I was surprised when I received her letter. She was excited that her application to study at Swansea in the U.K. was approved. We corresponded, but eventually our lives took separate directions.

Haaland's unique background has the potential to benefit all Americans.

My path led me to write against the invisibility of Native people through poetry, stories and essays. Deb's path led her to use her gifts in the legislative process. In the early 2000s, I co-edited, "Sister Nations," an anthology of Native American women writing. Haaland submitted a poignant short story about a daughter witnessing the end of her mother's life journey as a moment of grace. I remembered our earlier conversations about our mothers, their resilience and even their severity, our shared cultures and the matriarchal societies we'd grown up in where women held leadership roles in the family and didn't have to fight for their place.

From these societies come the voices of women who strive to make a difference in government, literature, law, science, medicine and education. The Laguna stories of time immemorial tell of sisters who create the world through the power of their thoughts and a courageous woman who helps her community during times of great distress. The Diné stories tell of a sacred woman who was a lawgiver and brought one of the principal blessing ceremonies to create a stable society. From these stories, women are portrayed as intelligent, self-determined, and possessing strength. They demonstrate that women are in charge of their lives and bodies.

My single mother raised six children and once drove us home safely through a blinding blizzard. My aunt saddled her horse and took charge of our livestock at branding time. And my grandmother, without a college degree, became one of the first Navajo teachers. I credit their influences and high expectations for my love of language and stories, and for my success as a poet and librettist.

Haaland brings her Laguna background as one raised with community values, a sense of responsibility for the earth and the resilient spirit of Native communities. The traditional Laguna clothing and jewelry she wears at government occasions is her power suit. It makes her visible to the First Nations of this country; it enables Native Americans to see themselves in her; it symbolizes diversity that makes a nation strong, where Native Americans see a place for themselves and are reminded that they have a voice. And Haaland's moccasin wraps show that she stands on sturdy legs, ready to accomplish the important work for all Americans.
Laura Tohe is the poet laureate of the Navajo Nation. This story will appear in the April issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.

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On Deb Haaland, Native American history and renewed hope

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Most Americans are probably familiar with Crazy Horse, Geronimo and Disney's distorted version of Pocahontas. They may have heard of gold medalists Jim Thorpe and Billy Mills for their athletic footprints and the Navajo Code Talkers, who devised a military code based on the Navajo language to help defeat the Japanese during World War II.

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"What Deb Haaland at Interior means for Native Americans"

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"What Deb Haaland at Interior means for Native Americans"

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From the Political Theater podcast, episode 192. Roughly 17 minutes

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What Deb Haaland at Interior means for Native Americans - Roll Call

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Deb Haaland's position as Interior secretary is a historic milestone for Native Americans and might be a pivot for Native issues.

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"Tribal Leaders Demand Changes In Yellowstone National Park"

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"Tribal Leaders Demand Changes In Yellowstone National Park"

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Written by: Brie Ripley, 2017

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Tribes are gathering in Yellowstone National Park this weekend to demand two place names change. Leaders of the Blackfoot Confederacy and Great Sioux Nation are fed up that Hayden Valley and Mount Doan memorialize men who advocated for the genocide of Native Americans.

Tribal leaders want Hayden Valley renamed to Buffalo Nations Valley, in honor of all Tribal Nations that have treaty rights and interests to the Greater Yellowstone region.

The valley is currently named for Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden, who proposed the 1872 act that established Yellowstone National Park. But Hayden also advocated for "extermination" of tribal people if they did not comply with the new park boundaries.

Lieutenant Gustavus Doane is recognized with "Mount Doane" in the park. He was an early explorer of the park area, but Doane also led a massacre of the Piikani, a tribe within the Blackfoot Confederacy.

Yellowstone National Park spokesperson Morgan Warthin says this isn't the first time tribal leadership has requested places in the park undergo a name change.

"The tribes brought this to the attention of Yellowstone a year ago, and brought the attention of the names to us," says Warthin. "Prior to that, I would say that our historian is certainly aware of Hayden and Doane."

But Warthin says it's not up to the park. Members of the U.S. Geological Survey consider name changes within parks.

Leaders from the Blackfoot Confederacy and Great Sioux Nation are gathering at the Gardiner entrance on Saturday at 1 p.m.

USGS did not respond to Interview requests from YPR.

Last month, Native American lawmakers in Montana called for the removal of a memorial to Confederate soldiers in Helena.

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Tribal Leaders Demand Changes In Yellowstone National Park

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Tribes are gathering in Yellowstone National Park this weekend to demand two place names change. Leaders of the Blackfoot Confederacy and Great Sioux Nation are fed up that Hayden Valley and Mount Doan memorialize men who advocated for the genocide of Native Americans.