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Last week during a visit to the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona, President Joe Biden offered a formal apology for atrocities committed at Indian boarding schools from the early 1800s to the 1970s. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who joined President Biden at the event in Arizona, said, "We all carry the trauma that these policies and these places inflicted. This is the first time in history that a United States Cabinet secretary has shared the traumas of our past, and I acknowledge that this trauma was perpetrated by the agency that I now lead."
Earlier in his term, President Biden designated new national monuments of spiritual and cultural importance to Tribes in the West using his authority under the Antiquities Act. Avi Kwa Ame National Monument and Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukveni-Ancenstral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument were both designated in 2023. The Bears Ears National Monument draft management plan, released in 2024, is historic in its inclusion of Tribal co-management of the monument.
Indigenous communities across the West have called on President Biden to protect additional areas of spiritual and cultural importance as national monuments. Examples include the proposed Chuckwalla National Monument in California, Sáttítla Medicine Lake Highlands in California, and the proposed Kw'tsán National Monument in California. In the remaining days of his presidency, President Biden has the opportunity to make conservation history while continuing to make progress on addressing historical injustices to Indigenous communities.
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The transfer of public lands from federal to state governments is the pathway to streamlined privatization.”
