BEARS EARS NATIONAL MONUMENT – One of the most exciting and important things that happened over the weekend at the Bears Ears Summer Gathering was the arrival of the bear totem pole, said Gavin Noyes.

The colorful, earth-toned bear totem arrived at the summer gathering site – the Bears Ears meadows on the north side of the monument – in a pickup truck just before dusk. It stands over 11 feet tall and weighs a ton, according to Noyes, executive director for Utah Diné Bikéyah, a nonprofit group of Native American tribes fighting to protect Bears Ears, or Shash Jaa’ in the Navajo language. An illustration of the totem was also printed on the event T-shirts.

The bear totem was carved by carvers from the Lummi Nation in the state of Washington.

“And it started its sacred journey … on Tuesday morning near the Salish Sea,” Noyes said. “And we had a contingent of Utah Diné Bikéyah Ute board members and staff (who) escorted that totem down.”

On July 19, the bear totem made a stop at the Urban Indian Center in Salt Lake City, where the Lummi carvers presented the totem to the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition – made up of the Hopi, Navajo, Uintah and Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni nations – during a ceremony. At least 40 people showed up and blessed themselves by touching the totem, said Noyes.

    “And that’s, I believe, to give power t the totem,” he explained. “It also gives strength to yourself and it’s good medicine.”

Another ceremony was held when the bear totem arrived at the summer gathering site, where the three-day event, now in its fourth year, took place. The bear totem is now housed at the Southern Ute Museum in Ignacio, Colorado.

The bear totem symbolizes unity, just as the summer gathering was about unification, healing and connection to the Bears Ears area.

“That’s what this is about and locals, they don’t support us,” Davina Smith said of the nearby non-Native community members of Blanding, Utah. “Twice I had to go do a sign check. Someone threw (one of the event signs) in the bush. The signs were taken. There was a big one and I had to (replace) it. Those are the kinds of issues that have happened.”

Smith is the director of operations for UDB and she is the granddaughter of the late Katherine Smith from Big Mountain, Arizona, who died on March 29, 2017. Her grandmother is famous for Hopi Partitioned Lands resistance.

“My ties are … in Monument Valley and also Big Mountain,” Davina said. “My (paternal) grandmother’s the late Katherine Smith and I’m trying to follow her lead. After she passed away, I knew he land is still something that she always wanted her family to still support and defend. I guess that’s why I took this job: to continue her legacy.”
But Davina has family ties to Bears Ears, where her maternal grandparents often gathered firewood, herbs, and picked piñons.

“I’m so passionate about our connection to our land (here) and coming from my grandmother and what she stood for,” Davina said. “I want to bring that awareness. It’s not through anger or negativity, but it’s through awareness in a positive manner.”

Bears Ears is where six Diné clans originated from, according to Willie Greyeyes, a Diné UDB board chairman.

“Through the Navajo clans, we say that the Bears Ears is our grandfather,” said Jonah Yellowman, in an interview in Navajo. “The concept of our clans has originated from here. But there are so many different stories.”  

Yellowman also has family ties to the area where his relations once lived, including Diné leader Chief Manuelito.

“My grandmother was born here as well, just down the canyon (nearby Bears Ears) and her cradleboard was made out of the ponderosa pine just south of here,” Yellowman continued. “These stories come from a few generations ago, through my mother and grandmother. We’re originally from Bears Ears area.”

But not only did the Diné people lived here, other Native tribes lived here as well. And there are traces of old sites where Native elders today still perform ceremonies and offer prayers, according to Kenneth Maryboy, a Diné UDB board member.

“We like to sing those,” Maryboy emphasized. “What’s so wrong with that? This is why (people were) here to support us, to make some noise, to cry with us, (and) to feel the hurt that we feel. And it’s so sad that some of my own tribe (members) have taken the position on the opposite side. That shouldn’t be. If they can only sit down and listen to the elders and listen to what the relatives are saying, maybe they’ll understand.”

The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, along with other groups, played a key role in securing the protection of 1.35 million acres surrounding Bears Ears from development and resource extraction just before President Barack Obama left office.

“But our brother in Washington, D.C., said, ‘No, these damn (Native Americans) don’t need that land. We’ve mineral rights under the Bears Ears. We’ve uranium, oil and potash,’” Maryboy explained. “So, he reduced the (designated Bears Ears National Monument).”

President Donald Trump, however, ordered the U.S. Department of the Interior to review the size and scope of national monuments larger than 100,000 acres created since 1996, saying that these designations “unilaterally put millions of acres of land and water under strict federal control,” and called it a massive federal land grab.

Then he directed Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review and reverse some of them. Bears Ears was one and was slashed by 85 percent, or 1.1 million acres.

“But the tribes that come (here) as one say, ‘No, this is our land, our aboriginal land. You cannot hurt it no more. It has already suffered enough,’” Maryboy added. “The good words are going to be coming from here, out to where it needs to go. And have that respect is all we ask for.”