Cedar Mesa Moon House, Bears Ears National Monument.
American Indian history is littered with euphemisms masking atrocities committed by the federal and state governments under their cover. Beginning with “removal,” that benign-sounding word for forced marches and starvation, the settler communities that invaded Indian Country have deployed a wide array of terms to describe what are now generally acknowledged to have been policies aimed at destroying tribal communities and their traditions—the Dawes Act, Relocation, Termination.
The latest word to enter the vocabulary of those who would carve out more sacred grounds and treaty land for their personal use is perhaps the most galling. That word is sovereignty.
During the 2015 armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, members of a group called Citizens for Constitutional Freedom invoked sovereignty in the form of state’s rights to justify their actions. They said the federal government’s management of western lands was illegitimate because their own “ancestral rights” to cattle grazing usurped any federal claims (Read more).
Over the course of the protracted negotiations to end the Malheur occupation, the Burns Paiute Tribe, which once held land that included the refuge, called on the militants to end the standoff. From the point of such tribal communities, this bastardization of the concept of sovereignty is absurd. Yankton Dakota Sioux writer Jacqueline Keeler put it this way:
As a Native American, I find [their] late-nineteenth-century claims of “ancestral rights” presumptuous, since by law all remaining pre-emptive rights in [the states] belong not to late arrivals like [them] but to tribes that have lived in the region for thousands of years (Read more).
Unfortunately, the “ancestral rights” types have the ear of the new president. During the Obama administration, more lands were returned to the Native nations than in the terms of the three previous presidents. Now, the current Commander in Chief has signed an executive order instructing the Interior Department to review all national monument designations, paying special attention to the Bears Ears National Monument in San Juan County, Utah.
Members of Utah’s congressional delegation started lobbying the new administration soon after November’s election, asking it to reverse course on Bears Ears. Indian Country Today reported at the time that “a White House official justified this action, saying, ‘Past administrations have overused this power and designated large swaths of land well beyond the areas in need of protection.’”
The term I would use for these efforts is depatriation.
That is because repatriation and the renewal of cultural protocols presupposes a homeland where remains may be re-interred and ceremonies restored. The word’s etymology suggests a post-classical Latin reference to returning something or someone to the homeland, the country of one’s father. Yet it is given in a feminine form—patria—and thereby refers to a motherland as well. Thus, the word is, first and foremost, about land. It represents a landed definition of ownership, consanguinity, identity, association.
There is also the question of power. About 50 percent of San Juan County is Native American, yet just nine percent of business owners are Indian, according to the U.S. Census. It is also one of the poorest counties in the state. “It’s all about control,” said Mark Maryboy, a member of the grassroots Utah Diné Bikéyah, which initiated the effort to make Bears Ears a national monument.
Of course, not all tribes or tribal members agree. Darren Parry, Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation vice chairman, has said that the designation is not in the best interest of the Shoshone. Navajo Republican County Commissioner Rebecca Benally agrees, and has formed a group called Stewards of San Juan County. Ms Benally feels that the tribes are being “used” by environmentalists and that the monument’s boundaries extend too far into county lands that could he used by tribal members for grazing.
While these complaints deserve a proper hearing, it is also worth noting that the most outspoken supporters of rolling back President Obama’s designation are no less suspect of manipulating tribal politics and “using” Native people than the environmentalists Rebecca Benally opposes.
It’s all about control.
San Juan County Commissioner Bruce Adams, a Republican rancher, is a case in point. As part of his support of the rollback, Adams distributed cowboy hats emblazoned with the message: “Make San Juan County Great Again.” It’s a witty take on the president’s campaign slogan, but just 200 days into this administration, it is a phrase that should give us all pause.
Bruce Adams (“Indian Country Today,” Kim Baca)
We have now experienced what “great” means for the new president, and it does not appear to have anything to do with helping rural counties like San Juan. It does, however, promise corporate interests more access to extractive resources, tax breaks, and relaxed environmental regulations. None of these would seem to offer farmers and ranchers any shot at “greatness.” More mining and drilling means less grazing land. Less oversight means more tainted ground water, more erosion. Nor are the corporate interests at all local. If they employ locals, they do so only sporadically, as suits their immediate needs. They rarely reinvest in the local infrastructure or participate in community activities. They build temporary roads to and from their mines and wells, hire itinerant workers, and cut and run when the mines are payed out and the wells run dry. Their profits go to place like Panama and the Cayman Islands, while rural people like those of San Juan County, both Anglo and Indian, are left to clean up the mess.
This is not sovereignty, it is fealty, a word that should strike fear in the hearts of anyone with a desire for freedom and local control. It is not at all euphemistic. It means exactly what it says: “a feudal tenant’s sworn loyalty to a lord.”
