In 1978, Sen. Orrin Hatch backed the legislation that created the 1,300-mile Mormon Pioneer Historic Trail -- 132 years after Mormon pioneers traveled portions of it to reach the Salt Lake Valley. The trail passes through several states across private, state and federal land and is part of the National Trails System.
The Bears Ears National Monument was established by President Obama thousands of years after Native American ancestors first inhabited the area. Hatch and the rest of our congressional delegation are attacking the monument’s existence even though it is entirely on public lands.
Today’s Mormons revere the history the Pioneer Trail commemorates and generations of families have re-enacted the migration in order to feel closer to that experience. The trail’s status as part of the National Trails System offers protection to the trails’ heritage.
The Park Service brochure tells visitors to “not use metal detectors, dig at sites, collect artifacts, or remove anything. Please respect these historic places.” These are among the protections the coalition of tribes supporting Bears Ear’s Monument want to strengthen on their heritage lands.
Hatch introduced bills five years in a row to study the feasibility of adding more land to the National Trails System, telling the Deseret News in 2003, “Not every great or tragic event took place along the main routes. ... To the contrary, tens of thousands of settlers set out from other places, and many of the most memorable and important events occurred along the historical side roads and alternate routes.”
None of the bills became law.
The same News article says, “However, a coalition of Wyoming oil producers, ranchers and farmers said they worry about expanding those trails — all of which pass through Wyoming — because of restrictions the government may put on surrounding lands. ... Which could significantly curtail economic and resource development in Wyoming and across the West.”
This objection by Wyoming business interests doesn’t pass the smell test. The trails would ruin the economy? But when San Juan County officials use these same objections to additional protections for thousands of years of cultural artifacts entirely on public land – Hatch listens.
The law creating the trail allows the federal government to recognize, document, publicize and protect the historic record of an American migration by members of his religion across mostly private land in several states that he doesn’t represent, and yet he personally lobbied Trump to rescind protections on federal land in San Juan county that have long been sought by Native Americans who makes up more than 50 percent of the county’s population.
I think part of the reason why Hatch doesn’t show the same respect for land deemed sacred by Navajos as he does for land beloved by his religion – and for which he used his position as a U.S. senator to federally recognize and protect -- was demonstrated by San Juan County Commissioner Bruce Adams’ comment at a 2016 public meeting in Bluff, a meeting attended by then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
Presumably attempting to make the case that his voice should carry more weight in land decisions, he said, “nobody really had settled here” before his own white ancestors.
What do we call this? Willful ignorance of a long-persecuted minority population that Hatch was elected to represent? Racism? Political horse-trading with Trump to pass a tax bill? Hatch and our entire delegation need to think about the importance they attach to protecting the physical history of their ancestors’ pilgrimage across the west and whether the vast physical record of the five tribes allied in the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition doesn’t deserve the same respect.
James Allred
James Allred, Millcreek, is retired from a career in Utah’s health care industry and owns land in San Juan County.
