On August 24 Secretary of the Interior Zinke secretly recommended to President Trump a list of 27 national monuments that should be downsized. Trump has refused to say which will officially be impacted but at least 3 national monuments, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, as well as Cascade Siskiyou in Oregon, will almost certainly be reduced in size.
This move to alter protections on federal land and water is unprecedented. Secretary Zinke’s report attests to this administration’s continued alliance with industries that will promptly begin drilling, mining, and logging as soon as the monuments’ designations are removed. This will fundamentally, and permanently, alter the landscape. The decision to shrink these public lands further evidences Trump’s complete and utter disregard for climate science and environmental progress thus far.
What’s more, the initiative to reduce public lands is an extension of Trump’s white supremacist and racist agenda.
The United States has a long history of intentionally racialized outdoor spaces and historic trauma relating to the outdoors. According to NPR host Shereen Marisol Meraji, “we can't have this discussion about the outdoors and not talk about slavery— black people being forced to work outdoors, tending to fields and livestock— and if they ran away, the woods is where they were tracked down… This all affects the way that some black people still think of the outdoors.” Meraji’s point is a salient one in relation to the histories of other ethnic and racial groups including American Indians and people of Latinx or Hispanic origin. By law, people of color were either explicitly forced into or conversely excluded from many outdoor spaces for decades. Because of restrictions that created or allowed for spaces like reservations, plantations, and segregated swimming pools, our country’s outdoor recreation areas often carry different connotations for people of color today.
This is reflected in the demographics of those who use outdoor spaces like national parks and monuments— the National Parks Service has a whole office dedicated to diversity and inclusion, and yet 80% of their visitors annually are still white.
This is also reflected in the areas that are under federal protection themselves. Many of the monuments up for review, places like Bears Ears, are relatively new monuments with particular importance to local American Indian tribes that once inhabited them, and have worked to both use and manage them once again. Others, like Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico, also have special importance to local Latinx and Hispanic residents who have fought to use and protect the land for decades.
During his time in office, President Obama successfully designated 34 national monuments— more than any other president. These monuments ranged from an Alabama church bombed by segregationists to the historic Stonewall Inn in New York to the expansion of the sacred American Indian site of Bears Ears in Utah. Obama’s efforts, in his own words, “preserve critical chapters of our country’s history and ensure that our public lands are fully reflective of nation’s diverse history and culture.”
That President Trump is trying to shrink, defund, or exploit public lands like the 27 national monuments currently under review should not come as a surprise to those of us who acknowledge his racist and white supremacist agenda. A man who refuses to accept our nation’s beautiful, diverse history and culture— who will not accept this country as “great” because of it— is not a man who will protect the very lands that stand as witnesses to this history and culture. While we should be outraged, we should not be surprised.
In the same way that we cannot allow President Trump to infringe on the rights of the many diverse peoples that make up this great country, we cannot allow him to erase the history of places that tell their stories or to shrink opportunities for people of all backgrounds to access, manage, and protect these outdoor spaces. There is more than land at stake here. In shrinking these monuments, Trump will be putting our collective health, wellbeing, and culture at risk.