Voices from Bears Ears: A Preservation Technology Podcast Conversation

Listen to episode 146. NPS, National Center for Preservation Technology and Training.

In episode 146 of the NPS Preservation Technology Podcast, produced by the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, Catherine Cooper talks with writer and journalist Rebecca Robinson and retired astronomer and photographer Steve Strom — her grandfather — about their book Voices from Bears Ears, published in 2018.

How the book began

• The campaign: in early 2015, conservation groups led by the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance asked the Obama administration to create a large national monument in the red-rock country of southeast Utah, a landscape of deep cultural and ecological importance to Native American tribes and others, and one that drilling and mining companies wanted to open.
• The law: the monument would be made under the Antiquities Act, signed by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, which lets the president protect historic and prehistoric structures and "other objects of historic or scientific interest" on federal land.
• "Land grab"? Strom notes that the land was already public — like a national forest, it belongs to everyone.

Letting people speak

Robinson chose to let the people in the conflict tell the story themselves, rather than the academic history-and-geography book Strom first imagined; he credits that choice with the book's power. One interview led to another, and time on the ground across the Four Corners helped them find sources — ranchers, business owners, climbers, tribal representatives, Latter-day Saint elders, politicians and advocates. They tailored each interview, going deep into policy with those who shaped it, including the stakeholder talks led by Utah congressman Rob Bishop, which broke down over politics and cultural differences.

Three shared themes

Across all sides, people shared:

1. a cultural and spiritual connection to the land;
2. a sense that their voices hadn't been heard by those deciding its future;
3. the uncertainty of life in a rural, poor area whose industries, such as uranium mining, had boomed and gone bust.

Memorable moments

• Mark Maryboy, the first Native American elected official in Utah (1986) and a longtime San Juan County commissioner, led early work to document the sacred sites and cultural resources at the heart of the monument proposal. At a place important to him, just as a desert thunderstorm cleared, he told them how, as a boy in 1968, his father made him listen as Navajo elders explained to Robert Kennedy why their sacred places deserved protection — a lesson that shaped his life and his work bringing five tribes together.
• They also rode along with Latter-day Saints retracing their ancestors' Hole in the Rock Trail by ATV, and met readers on a book tour just before COVID.

What changed after the book

As Robinson describes it:

• In 2017, President Trump cut the monument created by Obama the year before by 85%, from 1.35 million acres, prompting lawsuits by a coalition of tribes and conservation and recreation groups.
• In October 2021, President Biden restored the boundaries, and the Bears Ears tribes later signed a co-management agreement with the federal government.
• Utah sued the federal government, arguing the Antiquities Act allows only the smallest area needed to protect specific objects — a case that could reach the Supreme Court and affect future monuments.
• In 2021, Deb Haaland became the first Indigenous Secretary of the Interior, emphasizing tribal sovereignty, Indigenous representation, and traditional ecological knowledge in land management.

Where their work went next

• Strom went on to write about the Greater San Rafael Swell (2020) and conservation agreements in Arizona and New Mexico, where he lived for 22 years. The lesson: consensus takes time and trust — at least five years in the cases he studied, typically 10, and up to 25 — yet habitat and watersheds need protecting quickly, across a mosaic of tribal, private and public lands.
• Robinson is writing about a coalition of nearly 60 Northwest tribes seeking to remove four dams on the Lower Snake River to save salmon, opposed by farmers, utilities, barge companies and others who value the dams' clean power.

Lessons for compromise

• Good faith: every party must come to the table with an open mind, knowing no one gets everything — as rancher Heidi Redd put it, the dinner plate must be split.
• Listen widely: policymakers should hear all constituents, not just the loudest, and acknowledge painful history to heal old wounds.
• Start local (Strom): conservation that begins on the ground among the people of a place, before national groups and governments square off, is far more likely to succeed.
• Two kinds of knowledge (Robinson): the future of conservation will likely blend Western science with Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge.

Sources

Based on "Podcast 146: Voices from Bears Ears," Preservation Technology Podcast, National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The guests' remarks are summarized, not quoted; their photographs, credited to individuals, are left out. The audio is the episode's file from the NPS podcast feed. More podcast articles.