The President has ordered officials seek language that "inappropriately disparage Americans" at monuments and other sites. Here is what we know now.

Bahozhonii Whitehat's great-grandmother and great-great-grandmother were both born in the area of southern Utah that's now part of Bears Ears National Monument. Their umbilical cords were buried there, an act that, by Navajo tradition, ties a person to the land and signifies their connection to home.

Bears Ears also served as a place of refuge during a period of violent upheaval amid the U.S. government's campaign of forced removal. The region offered protection to Navajo families as the U.S. Army sought to round up Diné people and relocate them from their homeland, Diné Bikéyah, to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. This brutal journey, known as the Long Walk, forced thousands to march more than 300 miles under devastating conditions -- part of a larger effort at ethnic cleansing.

Whitehat said her family hid in Bears Ears from the fearful fate of the Long Walk.

"During the time of the Long Walk my family hid out in those areas," said Whitehat. "We never went to the Long Walk. I have a lot of great family medicine people whose songs and ceremonies were tied to the lands in those areas."

Long before the creation of Arizona and Utah, before the concept of reservations or even the founding of the United States, Whitehat's ancestors and members of tribes in the region believed Bears Ears to be a sacred and holy site. It is a place where countless songs have been sung, prayers offered and ceremonies performed -- traditions that continue to this day, even if in different forms than from the past. The land has long been a source of medicine, a place for hunting, gathering and a site of deep spiritual and cultural significance.

"These teachings and ceremonies are our history," said Whitehat. "They are not things that are made up. These stories and ceremonies have been taught over thousands of years from our people. These ceremonies, all these things that tie us to the land, that are being affected, that's our connection to our past. That's our connection to our ancestors."

Now they fear for the future of Bears Ears as the Trump administration eyes public lands for energy production and considers plans to reduce the boundaries of existing national monuments, opening the land to mining companies and other commercial interests.

Bears Ears emerged as a focal point of political debate after it became the first national monument established at the request of a coalition of sovereign tribal nations. That coalition included the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Zuni Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and the Ute Indian Tribe.

When designated as a national monument by President Barack Obama under the Antiquities Act, the protected area spanned approximately 1.35 million acres.

During his first term, President Donald Trump reduced the monument by about 85%, a move that sparked widespread controversy. President Joe Biden later reversed that decision, restoring the original boundaries and adding roughly 11,000 additional acres. His action reignited national attention on the monument's future and amplified the voices of the tribes who have long held the land as sacred.

Now, in Trump's second term, there is growing concern that his Interior Department could reduce not only Bears Ears National Monument but also reduce and strip federal protections for Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments.

Those areas, which Biden called the Moab to Mojave Conservation Corridor, comprise over 5 million acres of public land in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Utah, according to Earthjustice a nonprofit environmental law organization.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren, who has drawn attention for aligning with some of Trump's energy policies -- including efforts to revive coal production and negotiations with Energy Fuels to transport uranium ore from the Pinyon Plain Mine to the White Mesa Mill in Utah, despite the Nation's longstanding ban on uranium transport -- has nonetheless stated his opposition to the reduction of the Bears Ears National Monument.

On March 26, Nygren sent a letter in coordination with the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department, reaffirming the tribe's commitment to protecting Bears Ears. In the letter, he respectfully urged Trump and the Interior Department to maintain the monument's current boundaries. In a separate letter, Nygren asked Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to make no changes to monument designations without full and meaningful tribal consultation, as outlined in federal policy.

"In light of the current administration's stated priorities on efficiency and reducing waste, we believe that maintaining the integrity of established monument boundaries supports those goals," said Nygren. "Changing the boundaries and reopening finalized planning processes would not only risk the loss of valuable progress but may also lead to inefficiencies, duplicative expenditures, and delays in implementing conservation strategies."

The coalition wrote a tribal proposal that year for a presidential proclamation under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to "protect historical and scientific objects in an area of 1.9 million acres of ancestral land on the Colorado Plateau."

It was a proposal that had taken grassroots people and tribal leaders six years to get to, but a cause that had been ongoing for decades.

The letter cited the "rampant looting and destruction of the villages, structures, rock markings, and gravesites within the Bears Ears landscape" as a major reason to protect the area. At one point, it noted that former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy visited Bluff, where elders at the time told him he had to protect the land.

"Bears Ears remained of grave concern to us but for many years we did not address it comprehensively. That was probably due to its remoteness and the power of the San Juan County Commission, governing the country where Bears Ears is located, which has always been in favor of big, rapid development and indifferent at best to Indian and environmental concerns," stated the letter.

The letter recommended establishing a Bears Ears Management Commission alongside a monument manager. The commission would serve as the primary policy-making and planning body for the monument, with oversight authority over the manager. Although it would be created by the federal government, it would not operate as a federal agency. The proposed commission would include eight members -- one representative from each of the five tribes and one from each of the three federal agencies involved.

Obama affirmed the importance of tribal participation in the care and management of the monument and established the Bears Ears Commission to inform the management of its lands and resources. Through this federal and tribal relationship, the Bear Ears National Monument Resource Management Plan and Environmental Impact Statement were developed.

Those documents aimed to protect and manage the "objects of antiquity" and "historic or scientific interest" within Bears Ears National Monument, and describe and analyze six alternatives for managing the Bears Ears National Monument. They also outline a framework for resource allocation and federal land management in accordance with the proclamation.

"The Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum has to deal with this, and so does the president as well, and those are things they need to be educated on as well," said Navajo Council Delegate Curtis Yanito, also Co-Chair of the Bears Ears Coalition about the management plan and environmental review. "Hopefully, we will send a letter to them and visit with its commissioners and coalition and discuss these initiatives that have taken place."

Like Whitehat, Yanito, who is from Bluff, Utah, has deep-rooted ties to Bears Ears. His memories of the land are filled with the ways it sustained his community, from the abundance of medicinal plants to the wildlife that provided food through hunting, among other things.

"Bluff is where I am from, from the Rez, I can see Bears Ears," said Yanito. "On hot summer days, when there is no clouds in the sky, you will see a speck of cloud that appears on top of Bears Ears, and they'll say 'hey, there's going to be rain today.' That's how we know the weather."

The complete freedom to use the mountain began to disappear "long before the Antiquities Act," said Yanito. While tribal members have faced increasing restrictions on access to Bears Ears and its sacred sites, that hasn't stopped looters and vandals.

For over a century, the region has been targeted by grave robbers and artifact thieves drawn to its rich archaeological and cultural resources, and the problem continues today, according to the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. Between May 2014 and April 2015, more than a dozen serious looting cases were reported.

"I have a business in Bluff, and I was sitting there and all these federal agents come around and ask me questions," said Yanito. "This looting has been going on all these years."

Whitehat said the national monument designation has played an important role in reducing looting at Bears Ears. While it hasn't stopped it entirely, she noted that the monument status has significantly curbed the problem and helped protect many cultural sites.

"When looting happens with a lot of these sacred sights, even ancestral sights, I can't even express how much thousands of items have been looted," said Whitehat. "You can find so many bones, jewelry, and a lot of this gets stolen and sold."

A nearby uranium mine raises concerns

According to Yanito, the threat to Bears Ears comes not so much from tourists, but from the local non-Native population. Designations like national monuments are often met with resistance from local residents who want unrestricted access to the land for their own purposes.

Yanito also pointed to a deeper conflict -- a clash of spiritual and cultural values -- between non-Native locals and Indigenous communities, whose members have served as caretakers of the land for thousands of years.

"It's a monument and it's been breached by the state of Utah," said Yanito. "We came up with the tribal Indigenous knowledge, they don't like that. I believe the locals are more into their own beliefs."

Traditional Indigenous knowledge serves as a foundation for collaborative management of the monument, blending traditional and scientific ecological knowledge to protect its cultural resources. Yanito noted that the commission has communicated this approach to both the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

At the same time, tribal members have grown increasingly concerned following Trump's January Energy Emergency Executive Order, which instructs federal agencies to fast-track energy project permits by sidestepping key environmental review laws such as the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act.

Their fears intensified after the Department of the Interior recently announced it would expedite permitting for the Velvet-Wood uranium mine in Utah using newly created emergency procedures. For many, this raises serious concerns about what Trump might have in store for Bears Ears and other national monuments. Yanito, whose family has a history of working in uranium mining, recalled how, as a young man, he once planned to follow the same path. He even drilled for uranium throughout the Bears Ears region

"So when a congressman or legislator says there's no uranium over there, I say 'yeah, there is. I found them. I am living proof,'" said Yanito. "My grandparents and dad worked at the uranium mines up there and I wanted to become a miner as well. I took all the courses at trade school but by the time I finished, they were all shut down. That's how I know Bears Ears. I've hiked it, camped it, did everything, made offerings, did prayers up there."

Whitehat shared that many family members have suffered health issues due to uranium exposure. When uranium mining took place, she said, the mines were never properly sealed, and radioactive debris would wash down toward her family's homestead and neighboring community, exposing them to dangerous contamination.

"A lot of my family have died from cancer because of the exposure," said Whitehat. "The water table has gone down because of drilling that has happened, even oil drilling, all of that area is affected badly. Now they're trying to exploit it and open it back up again."

Grant Shimer, an associate professor of geology at Southern Utah University, recently visited Bears Ears, and said that from a geologist's perspective, it's difficult to determine which resources within the current monument boundaries are economically viable. Factors such as fluctuating commodity prices, the high costs of extraction and processing, logistical challenges, environmental concerns and potential legal battles all complicate the picture. Additionally, competing industry interests often undermine one another.

"Low global oil and gas prices, for instance, limit the demand for coal but also limit new oil and gas drilling (especially fracking) because it's so expensive to do," said Shimer. "If there is enough value in those geologic resources for companies to invest in exploration and development within altered monuments boundaries, due to the challenges I mentioned it might take years for that to lead to stable jobs, if that's what communities are looking for."

Shimer emphasized that, speaking personally and not on behalf of any industry or organization, he supports keeping the monument as it is. He appreciates that Bears Ears offers a wide range of recreational opportunities for various interests, but cautioned that even non-motorized recreation, if excessive and unregulated, can damage ecosystems just as much as industrial activity.

That's why, he said, it's important to have numerous protected yet accessible areas to help disperse the impact. Well-staffed public lands also play a critical role in managing that balance. Shimer added that he strongly supports the creation of more national monuments and public land designations across the country, particularly in the eastern U.S., where public land is scarce. He said he believes it's appropriate to restrict access to certain areas, and in the case of Bears Ears, those decisions should ultimately be guided by the tribes.

"I didn't grow up in the West, so I know how scarce protected spaces can be, and how valuable they are to many people physically, mentally and spiritually," said Shimer. "I've seen wild spaces and farmlands be developed and disappear everywhere I've lived, even Alaska, and I've seen how that negatively impacts communities and ecosystems. I've also seen places start to recover, but that takes decades."

Arlyssa D. Becenti covers Indigenous affairs for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Send ideas and tips to [email protected].