Native people have been the guardians of some of this continent’s most beautiful and most fragile lands. The current administration and Congress seem committed to reducing protections surrounding many of these federally-owned sites.
Monuments and the Antiquities Act of 1906
Creation Justice Ministries reports that Interior Secretary Zinke’s recommendations to the president included “diminishing” ten sites that have been declared National Monuments since 1996. They include: Bears Ears in Utah, Cascade-Siskiyou in Oregon and California, Gold Butte in Nevada, Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, Northeast Canyons and Seamounts in the Atlantic Ocean, Organ Mountains Desert Peaks in New Mexico, Pacific Remote Islands near Hawaii, Rio Grande Del Norte in New Mexico, and Rose Atoll in Pacific Ocean near American Samoa. Several of these areas have special significance for Native people.
If these recommendations move forward, our colleagues report, the result would be “the biggest loss of conservation protections in U.S. history. This could mean mining, oil and gas drilling, logging, commercial fishing, and grazing could take place in previously protected areas. It also could mean desecration of sacred sites, loss of wildlife habitat, destruction of delicate watersheds, and lost public access to wild places for prayer, recreation, and education.” Please visit the web site of Creation Justice Ministries for suggested actions to oppose these recommendations. The site offers a letter to sign from a Christian perspective, and materials to use from the perspective of many who would protect creation.
Congress, meanwhile, is looking forward – considering limitations on the future actions of presidents that might be inclined to protect the beauty of this country. On October 6, Representative Bishop, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee and a bitter opponent of the previous president’s declaration of the Bears Ears National Monument, introduced amendments to the Antiquities Act of 1906 in the “National Monument Creation and Protection Act” (H.R. 3990). On October 11, the committee approved an “amendment in the nature of a substitute” to the bill on a party-line vote.
The bill would limit the authority of the president to take unilateral action to protect large areas as national monuments. The Antiquities Act would allow presidents that prerogative for up to 640 acres, provided that no monument was declared within 50 miles of another monument. Monuments larger than 640 acres, up to 10,000 acres, would require environmental reviews. For areas larger than 10,000 acres, elected local and state legislatures and the governor of each affected state would need to approve the designation. No marine national monuments would be allowed. The bill is silent on whether a president would be allowed to breach a national monument declared by a previous president.
The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
In 2006, oil drilling companies pressed for rights to drill and build an oil pipeline in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Eleven years ago, Alaska Natives and allies strongly opposed this intrusion, as it would interfere with the homeland of the Gwich’in people, which they share with the porcupine caribou.
Now the threat is back again. The specific proposed site for drilling is on the north coastal plains of Alaska, in the calving grounds of the porcupine caribou. The Gwich’in share not only a spiritual tie with the porcupine caribou, but also a tie of survival. If the calving grounds are not protected, the caribou will die out. Porcupine caribou meat makes up about 90 percent of the Gwich’in traditional diet, so the people themselves would not survive. Many of the Gwich’in have embraced the Episcopal church as an expression of their faith; the national policy office of the Episcopal church is leading an effort to raise faith voices in opposition to the intrusion of the drilling companies. Creation Justice Ministries also has made a petition available on their website, which you can find here.
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