Ethel Branch & Angelo Baca: The Bears Ears Battle

When President Donald Trump announced his plan to drastically slash both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments by millions of acres in December, it was a huge blow to public lands advocates and recreationists. But it was particularly painful to the five tribes of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, who had worked for years to protect the 1.9 million acres of Utah wilderness — home to indigenous lands and countless ruins sites — through national monument designation. And many tribal members responded by fighting back. “We want to ensure that those lands and the knowledge that is tied to those lands are preserved and protected and advanced ... and that our ways of being can continue to exist,” Ethel Branch, the Attorney General of the Navajo Nation, told decision. In this joint presentation, Branch and cultural activist, scholar, filmmaker and fellow front-line fighter Angelo Baca will take the stage to talk about the way indigenous cultures are woven inextricably into the land, the effort that went into creating the monument and what’s at stake today. As Baca wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times, “Bears Ears has been since time immemorial a place of peace and rest, a sanctuary undisturbed by the kind of colonial violence many other places faced. A revitalization and renewal of spirit prevails here and, like the monument, must be kept intact so that healing, of wounds past and present, can take root and grow.”