History is written by the winners and, if there is someone who does not like to lose, that is Donald Trump.
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Just hours before his speech for the 250th anniversary of the United States, last July 4, the White House published a report in which, echoing all the resentments of the president, it accused the Smithsonian Institution, the great national network of museums and cultural institutions, of condemning white citizens by emphasizing such unpleasant things as slavery, indigenous people, or non-white immigrants who arrived after the Mayflower, the famous English merchant ship that transported the Pilgrim Fathers to North America.
Just a few days later, this same week, Trump struck again, like the Seventh Cavalry, against Native Americans – they were here before the others – and those who were called Indians in Hollywood movies, where they were portrayed as very bad (rapists, scalpers…) and were massacred by the good guys, all handsome and white, of course.
The Bears Ears and Grand Staircase monuments lose more than one million hectares to facilitate drilling
Trump signed this Monday in the Oval Office a drastic reduction in the size of two national monuments in Utah considered sacred by many Native Americans, in the latest step to open public lands to private developers and the oil and gas industry.
Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will see their area reduced by about 607,000 hectares each (6,070 km2 per territory), the president explained at the signing of the executive order.
“They took the land from the people, frankly,” he emphasized to reporters. “We are giving it back to them,” he insisted.
The Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, located in southern Utah, house ancient cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, and spectacular canyons, as well as deposits of oil, coal, and uranium that state authorities want to make available for exploitation.
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The ultra-conservative leader has an obsession with these landscapes. He already made a similar cut during his first term by opening 809,000 hectares (equivalent to the size of Puerto Rico) to oil drilling, uranium mining, and other projects. Tribes and environmentalists took the matter to court. President Biden restored the protection.
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This time, before signing the orders, Trump boasted that he was making an even bigger cut and encouraged development and recreational use on federal lands across the country. “We are giving more than we gave the first time to the citizens of Utah,” he emphasized.
Again, this decision is expected to reach the courts as it is considered that the measure has major implications for the conservation of these lands, putting many other monuments at risk by allowing their commercial exploitation. The Utah government, controlled by Republicans, was at the White House to support the presidential resolution.
National monuments are legally protected lands against development
National monuments are legally protected lands against development. They enjoy a status similar to that of national parks, although these were created by Congress, and their modification requires its agreement, while monuments were established by presidents under a 1906 law.
Bears Ears gets its name from two flat-topped hills that rise hundreds of meters above the surrounding canyons. These two symmetrical rock formations dominate the landscape of southeastern Utah.
The name Grand Staircase comes from a succession of sedimentary rock layers that extend from Bryce Canyon to the Grand Canyon. Paleontologists have made extraordinary discoveries by excavating fossils of tyrannosaurs and other dinosaurs that inhabited the area 74 million years ago.
Apart from being the habitat of numerous species, the natives consider these lands sacred and culturally significant because they contain remains of burials, cliff dwellings, and rock art. For Trump, things for losers.
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