BLM, FS moving to Trump-proof ancestral Pueblo lands

Our neighbors to the west, the Jemez, Cochiti and Zia Pueblos, the Santo Domingo and San Felipe reservations, were hit hard by the Trump Virus where tribal authorities have been restricting travel for non-members. New Mexico is home to twenty three Indigenous nations.

Established by President Bill Clinton in 2001, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument is just across I-25 from the Baja Waldo/Red Rock community and is one of the most popular national monuments in New Mexico.

The Monument was temporarily closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, BLM and Cochiti Pueblo jointly agreed to maintain the closure after pandemic restrictions were lifted in order to renegotiate operations of the Monument. In keeping with the Biden-Harris administration’s priorities of honoring Tribal sovereignty and the federal trust responsibility and respecting the ties that native and traditional communities have to public lands, the BLM and Cochiti Pueblo entered into an agreement under the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act that will allow Cochiti Pueblo to take on day-to-day operations of the Monument. [BLM, Cochiti Pueblo announce reopening of Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument]

On 18 April Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced protections for 4,200 acres in New Mexico for lands sacred to the Santa Ana and San Felipe Pueblos. In Arizona she signed historic agreements with the Colorado River Indian Tribes and pledged $14.5 million to the Navajo, Hopi and San Carlos Apache to electrify homes. 

Los Alamos County is a member of the Coalition of Sustainable Communities New Mexico and the city has been part of Local Governments for Sustainability since this interested party has lived in the state. LANL boasts its electricity needs are 31% carbon pollution-free so the National Nuclear Security Administration wants to erect a transmission line across the Caja del Rio wilderness from a substation that generates some of its power from a photovoltaic array.

Today, leadership from the Bureau of Land Management, the USDA Forest Service, and the Pueblo of Tesuque signed a memorandum of understanding to co-steward culturally significant Tribal places located on public lands of the Caja del Río Plateau west of Santa Fe, N.M. This agreement establishes a framework to collaboratively ensure the protection, preservation, and access to culturally significant Pueblo sites within the boundaries of land managed by federal agencies. In 2021, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack signed Joint Secretarial Order 3403 to ensure agencies manage federal lands and waters in a manner that seeks to protect the treaty, religious, subsistence, and cultural interests of federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native Tribes and the Native Hawaiian Community. [The Pueblo of Tesuque, Bureau of Land Management, and USDA Forest Service to co-steward the Caja del Río Plateau]

A settlement has been reached in the Jemez Pueblo's long dispute with the National Park Service to occupy a portion of the Valles Caldera National Preserve. A co-stewardship agreement is in place between the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes and Craters of the Moon National Monument & Preserve in Idaho.

In Colorado, Senator John Hickenlooper is taking fire from Republicans opposed to the creation of the Dolores River National Monument. Republicans in Arizona and Utah are challenging Pres. Biden's authority to limit grazing permits and uranium mining on Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument and on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. 

Kristi Noem’s father hated American Indians, she hates Indians and Donald Trump hates Indians so moving to prevent a convicted felon and his mob from seizing ancestral lands from Indigenous people again needs to happen fast.

Learn more at the Associated Press.

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