| Updated: April 9, 2021, 3:28 p.m.
Blanding • Early Thursday morning before closed meetings with Utah leaders, before the press questions and the shouting protesters Interior Secretary Deb Haaland joined tribal leaders on the landscape near Bears Ears National Monument for a moment of reflection and prayer.
“It was a beautiful gathering of tribal leaders to start off the day right,” said Angelo Baca, a Hopi/Diné man from San Juan County who was part of the group.
“From the Indigenous perspective, how you start off the day is with gratitude,” continued Baca, cultural resources coordinator for Utah Diné Bikéyah. “[Haaland] said she felt right at home.”
feed to stay on top of the news.
Former President Trump, however, later reduced the size of the monument by 85 percent, prompting backlash from environmental groups and Native tribes and praise from many state leaders long opposed to the designation.
President Biden ordered a review of the monument’s boundaries following the reduction under Trump, and on Wednesday, Haaland met with leaders from the Navajo Nation, the Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute, the Hopi Tribe and the Zuni Tribe to hear about the significance of the monument that is the ancestral home to many of the southwestern tribes.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez was among the leaders and called for a restoration of the monument’s original boundaries and a possible expansion to 1.9 million acres.
1:12
Last month, Deb Haaland made history as the first Indigenous person ever confirmed by the Senate to serve in a president s cabinet. In her first official trip as secretary of the Interior, she visited the Mountain West with a focus on tribal issues.
Haaland spent Tuesday in Albuquerque, hearing from leaders of nine Pueblo communities from across Northern New Mexico. She was welcomed by Wilfred Herrera, chairman of the All Pueblo Council of Governors and a former governor of the Pueblo of Laguna, of which Haaland is a citizen. This is your birthplace. The lands that molded your identity, the lands that as a young girl nurtured your mind and your heart, that guides your passion today, Herrera said after an opening prayer. We welcome you home as the honorable secretary of the Interior.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will tour Bears Ears on Thursday as monument review heats up msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.