A few months ago, the Biden administration announced some historic news: Indigenous tribes would be given long overdue say in how to manage and care for Bears Ears National Monument, a landscape with deep cultural and spiritual importance. Now, the public has a chance to ensure the Tribes’ vision is carried out.

After centuries of dispossession and discrimination at the hands of the United States and its government, this is a small but crucial step forward. It’s both a measure of justice for the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition—the Hopi, Navajo (Diné), Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute, and Pueblo of Zuni—and a model for the Biden Administration and future administrations to ensure proper collaboration with other Indigenous groups and communities of color when making management decisions.

As Carleton Bowekaty, lieutenant governor of the Pueblo of Zuni, put it when the collaborative management plan was first announced: “Today, instead of being removed from a landscape to make way for a public park, we are being invited back to our ancestral homelands to help repair them and plan for a resilient future.”

Thank you,