Lucas, it’s simply deplorable:
For the first time in more than 100 years, the federal government could
steal fragile, sacred land from Native American tribes and hand it over
to the fossil fuel industry.
Utah Republican Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz along with Sen. Mike
Lee recently
introduced a bill that would strip away protections for 100,000 acres of Ute tribal
lands to allow for oil drilling and uranium mining. The bill would also
prevent President Obama from designating 18 million acres of unprotected
land at Bears Ears a national monument.
This legislation is a massive giveaway to the oil and mining industry
and an attack on the indigenous people who have lived on this land for
more than 11,000 years. We must act now to stop this bill in its tracks.
Sign the petition from CREDO and Daily Kos: Stop the Native American land grab.
This legislation is another attempt by Rep. Bishop to advance his campaign
against the Antiquities Act, a law that allows the president to designate
land a national monument. It’s responsible for creating many of
our national treasures including the Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona
and Chimney Rock National Monument in Colorado. Most recently, President Obama
designated more than 87,000 acres in northern Maine a national monument, despite
pushback from Rep. Bishop and other extreme, anti-conservation Republicans.
This time, Rep. Bishop is going even further by attempting to rip away
ancestral homelands from the Ute Indian tribe and hand them over to the
fossil fuel industry. As Eric Ewert, professor of geography at Weber State
University in Utah, put it, Rep. Bishop’s legislation is “a
fossil fuel development bonanza and public land giveaway that significantly
rolls back existing protections for Utah’s wildlands. It was written behind closed doors with county
commissioners and industry developers” and “would be devastating
for our public wildlands and Utah’s tourism economy.”
Tell Congress: Stop the modern day Native American land grab.
Americans across the country have voiced their opposition to handing over
Native lands to the corporate oil and mining industry at Oak Flat in Arizona
and for the Dakota Access pipeline in the upper Midwest.
We must stand in solidarity with Native communities and allies on the ground
who are risking life and limb to protect these lands from further destruction
by the fossil fuel industry.
Tell Congress: Stop the modern day Native American land grab.
Thanks for all you do,
Josh Nelson, Deputy Political Director