Bears Ears, first and foremost, is indigenous land.

It is a place essential to the physical, spiritual and cultural identity of the Hopi, Zuni, Ute and Navajo Nations. Before the advent of European settlers in the West, these peoples were here. They lived and flourished in the curvilinear canyons of red and orange labyrinthine rock in what is now Utah. People made their homes and offered their prayers around the green areas of the high elevations near the twin buttes that lend the area its name.

This is also land for which hard-fought protections were won just recently. It was designated a national monument in 2016 after a long campaign of indigenous leadership, advocacy and the assertion of tribal sovereignty. But on Monday, the Trump administration announced it would slash the size of that monument by 85 percent.

UTAH Lockhart Basin Bears Ears Canyonlands national park Indian Creek Corridor Beef Basin Natural Bridges National Monument Bears Ears Buttes Cedar Mesa Comb Ridge Grand Gulch Valley of the Gods Navajo nation Lockhart Basin UTAH Bears Ears Canyonlands national park Indian Creek Corridor Beef Basin Natural Bridges National Monument Bears Ears Buttes Cedar Mesa Comb Ridge Grand Gulch Valley of the Gods Navajo nation By The New York Times | Source: Department of Interior

This announcement strikes at the heart of a concerted effort to protect the ancestral land of these tribes and others whose histories permeate this land. My grandmother’s grandmother lived near the “ears” and passed important ceremonial information down to us. Others in the community have their own connections to this place, its sacred sites, and the life that grows here, forming an important part of our traditions. If you come here and ask, they will tell you how.

In 2015, five indigenous nations formed the Bears Ears Coalition to work to protect this place. Tribes that historically fought and argued with one another set aside their differences to defend a sacred land that they know and love. They began nation-to-nation discussions with the Obama administration on a proposal to protect Bears Ears as a national monument.

The coalition was determined to protect a living cultural landscape that, if left to outside interests, would be exploited for financial gain — just like the many other areas around Bears Ears in San Juan County that are now wrecked by pollution from oil drilling and the pollution-intensive mining of other resources. The tribes wanted future generations, regardless of their background and culture, to enjoy this place’s gifts.

Once this advocacy led to the monument designation, the tribes took on an important role in the collaborative management of the area. Bears Ears is the only national monument where traditional knowledge has been explicitly integrated into land management planning, placing the tribes, the original stewards of the land, alongside federal agencies. It was a signal that the United States would finally listen and respond to indigenous peoples.

We are confident that this reduction of the national monument by a shortsighted president is ultimately illegal (because only Congress has the authority to make such a change under the Antiquities Act), and will not survive a court challenge.

Some of those who oppose protecting this land try to make their own narrative the primary story, attempting to drown out the oral traditions that have nourished and undergirded the landscape since long before the arrival of white settlers. The indigenous relationships with animals, plants, people and other-than-human beings forged over immense stretches of time here represent a deeper and richer connection than that of those who are newcomers to this area, and who claim to be stewards of the land in the name of their own interests.

As a Navajo resident of San Juan County, I believe that people in the indigenous community generally want to protect Bears Ears, though not everyone necessarily agrees on how. So we listened to the direction that tribal leaders and elders provided. After weighing many options, they decided to pursue the national monument designation, which prohibits resource exploitation of these sacred lands while explicitly allowing us to continue our many traditional uses of this living cultural landscape that needs us as much as we need it.

The monument designation sends a clear message that damaging, disturbing and looting our heritage is unacceptable, unethical and illegal to those nonnative residents who have always believed it to be allowable. The thousands of ancient cultural sites in Bears Ears represent an anchor for tribes to understand and share with today’s generation who they are, and helps show us the way to a more hopeful future.

The designation is also a recognition that indigenous and nonnative people alike are all responsible for the health and future of this place. If the monument shrinks, the extraction of oil, gas, potash, uranium, and other natural resources would be on the menu for those who would despoil a priceless landscape for short-term profit.

It’s true that in the long view of millenniums, borders and official designations can mean very little for indigenous people. The land is still here. The people will still be here. Bears Ears will always be indigenous land, and nothing will change that.

But Bears Ears, as a national monument, is also about respect. The designation is a long-overdue acknowledgment the need for tribal input on policies affecting this land, and of the fact that previous treaties should have ensured the right of indigenous communities to govern and maintain that which is theirs. It is not right to go back on these promises now.

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.

This message, we hope, will get through to every person who has ever experienced the power and the gift of a place: “Bears Ears speaks. Listen.”