A coalition of Native American tribes in the Southwest is lobbying the Biden administration to create a sweeping national monument to protect federal lands adjacent to Grand Canyon National Park from uranium mining and other development.
Members of the Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition, which includes the Havasupai, Hopi, Hualapai and nine other tribes, held a press conference Wednesday to officially call for approximately 1.1 million acres north and south of the park to be designated as Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument.
Edmon Tilousi, vice chair of the Havasupai Tribe, told reporters a monument would safeguard tribal ancestral homelands, cultural sites and water resources from the harmful effects of mining. The area is rich in uranium.
“We simply cannot live without these clean waters,” Tilousi said. “As guardians of the Grand Canyon, we have a duty not only to our ancestors…but to our children and future generations.”
Several area tribes have deep cultural and spiritual ties to the Grand Canyon — connections that tribes hope to see reflected in the proposed monument’s name. “Baaj Nwaavjo” means “where tribes roam” in the Havasupai language. “I’tah Kukveni” means “our footprints” in Hopi.
A monument designation under the Antiquities Act of 1906 would cement a currently 20-year mining ban that the Obama administration put in place in 2012. In 2017, after a multiyear legal battle, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld the Obama-era ban, concluding that temporarily freezing mining leases “will permit more careful, longer-term study of the uncertain effects of uranium mining in the area and better-informed decision making in the future.”
The Trump administration publicly opposed legislation that sought to permanently protect the same area from uranium and other hardrock mining, and in 2020 rolled out a plan to revive America’s domestic uranium industry.
The tribal coalition and allied groups are hoping President Joe Biden will act to permanently protect an area he has called “an irreplaceable jewel.”
Joining tribal leaders at Wednesday’s press conference were Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who introduced similar bills in 2019 to prohibit new uranium mining around the Grand Canyon.
“We are officially calling on the administration to designate these areas of the Grand Canyon as a national monument, to protect our water and our cultural heritage while providing recreation opportunities that our communities in Northern Arizona rely on,” Sinema said. “Luckily for the administration, we’ve already done the hard work. We’ve proposed a framework that we’ll use to work with the administration and our coalition over the coming months to create the monument under the Antiquities Act.”
The push comes just weeks after Biden created two new national monuments — Avi Kwa Ame in Nevada and Castner Range in Texas — that span a combined 513,000 acres.
Grijalva said the national campaign for a monument designation is the culmination of a 20-year effort to protect the greater Grand Canyon landscape. And he noted it comes on the heels of House Republicans passing an energy package late last month — nicknamed the “Polluters Over People Act” by its critics — that seeks to dismantle Biden’s climate agenda and mandate increased drilling and mining across America’s public lands.
“The threat and the danger to the Grand Canyon is greater than ever,” he said. “H.R. 1 will make the Grand Canyon an expendable commodity. It will exploit, sell and trade this iconic public land for private profit. If they are willing to do it to the Grand Canyon, then none of our lands are safe from this sort of unbridled greed.”
The monument campaign “is not just about making history, it’s about saving history and its spirit and the people who honor the canyon,” Grijalva added.
The White House did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. Grijalva said the administration is aware of the effort and staff-level discussions have already taken place.
Tim Nuvangyaoma, chair of the Hopi Tribe, said securing monument status for the area is “the highest priority to the Hopi people.”
“The creator gave us a gift, and that gift is in the form of a grand canyon,” he said. “That gift is not only to the tribal nations that have that intimate connection with it, but it’s a gift to the state of Arizona. It’s a gift to the United States. It’s a gift to the entire world. So we do have to protect the beauty and grandeur of this area that we call home.”