The fight for bears ears: toward a decolonial rhetoric of public participation in environmental decision-making

In 2015, a coalition of five Native governments (the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Ute Indian Tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and the Pueblo of Zuni) published a proposal to create Bears Ears National Monument. The proposal defined a territory of 1.9 million acres and argued that this region held historical, natural, and cultural value for Indigenous peoples. A national monument, they argued, was needed to protect the area from destruction resulting from industrial development, looting and vandalism, and irresponsible recreational use, among other threats. Although President Barack Obama designated a monument largely aligned with the coalition's proposal in 2016, President Donald Trump rolled back that decision upon his inauguration in 2017, shrinking the monument by roughly 85% and restructuring the management plan to undermine Indigenous leadership. This dissertation takes up Bears Ears as a case study for examining the relationships between settler colonialism and public participation in environmental decision-making. I call for scholars and practitioners of environmental decision-making to develop alternative processes that support, rather than undermine, Indigenous sovereignty and leadership in ancestral territories. I trace the role of settler colonialism in disputes over public lands in the American West, particularly Utah, the contemporary rhetorics that constitute environmental decision-making processes, and the work of Indigenous people to establish alternative processes that move toward decolonization. Through a critical rhetorical analysis of documents surrounding the creation of Bears Ears National Monument (such as the BEITC's proposal, presidential proclamations, and federal law), I argue that scholars and policymakers must change how we approach environmental decision-making processes if we are to participate meaningfully in efforts for decolonization.

THE FIGHT FOR BEARS EARS: TOWARD A DECOLONIAL RHETORIC OF PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION-MAKING by Taylor Johnson A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication The University of Utah August 2021 Copyright © Taylor Johnson 2021 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL Taylor Johnson The dissertation of has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Danielle Endres , Chair 05/12/2021 Hokulani K. Aikau , Member 05/12/2021 Ashley Cordes , Member 05/12/2021 Rachel Alicia Griffin , Member 05/12/2021 Robin Elizabeth Jensen , Member 05/12/2021 and by Kevin Coe the Department of and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. Date Approved Date Approved Date Approved Date Approved Date Approved , Chair of Communication ABSTRACT In 2015, a coalition of five Native governments (the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Ute Indian Tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and the Pueblo of Zuni) published a proposal to create Bears Ears National Monument. The proposal defined a territory of 1.9 million acres and argued that this region held historical, natural, and cultural value for Indigenous peoples. A national monument, they argued, was needed to protect the area from destruction resulting from industrial development, looting and vandalism, and irresponsible recreational use, among other threats. Although President Barack Obama designated a monument largely aligned with the coalition’s proposal in 2016, President Donald Trump rolled back that decision upon his inauguration in 2017, shrinking the monument by roughly 85% and restructuring the management plan to undermine Indigenous leadership. This dissertation takes up Bears Ears as a case study for examining the relationships between settler colonialism and public participation in environmental decision-making. I call for scholars and practitioners of environmental decision-making to develop alternative processes that support, rather than undermine, Indigenous sovereignty and leadership in ancestral territories. I trace the role of settler colonialism in disputes over public lands in the American West, particularly Utah, the contemporary rhetorics that constitute environmental decision-making processes, and the work of Indigenous people to establish alternative processes that move toward decolonization. Through a critical rhetorical analysis of documents surrounding the creation of Bears Ears National Monument (such as the BEITC’s proposal, presidential proclamations, and federal law), I argue that scholars and policymakers must change how we approach environmental decision-making processes if we are to participate meaningfully in efforts for decolonization. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................... viii Notes .......................................................................................................................... x Chapters 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Public Lands and Settler Colonialism .................................................................. 5 1.2 Bears Ears and Colonization via U.S. Public Lands ............................................ 7 1.3 Chapters ............................................................................................................. 23 1.4 Notes .................................................................................................................. 28 2 DECOLONIZING PUBLICITY IN ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION-MAKING .... 35 2.1 Settler Colonialism and Decolonization ............................................................ 39 2.2 Decolonial Rhetoric ........................................................................................... 41 2.3 Public Participation in Environmental Decision-Making .................................. 44 2.4 Critical Rhetoric and Decolonizing Methodologies .......................................... 48 2.5 Notes .................................................................................................................. 54 3 TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO SETTLER ENVIRONMENTALISMS ............................................................................ 60 3.1 Land and Settler Colonialism in Extractivist and Environmentalist .................. 63 3.2 White Settler Colonial Studies, Land, and the Erasure of Settler ...................... 66 3.3 Settler Discourses of Land ................................................................................. 68 3.4 Decolonization and Environmental Resillience ................................................. 75 3.5 Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the BEITC’s Model for .......................... 78 3.6 Indigenous Understandings of Land and Environmental Decision-Making...... 87 3.7 Notes .................................................................................................................. 88 4 INDIGENOUS PUBLICITY IN AMERICAN PUBLIC LANDS CONTROVERSIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION-MAKING ......................................................... 95 4.1 Public Lands, Settler Colonialism, and “The American Public” ....................... 97 4.2 Public Participation, Citizenship, Nationhood, and the Public Sphere ............ 101 4.3 Decolonizing Publicity in the BEITC’s Proposal ............................................ 108 4.4 Lessons on Publicity from Bears Ears ............................................................. 118 4.5 Notes ................................................................................................................ 122 5 RELATIONAL PRACTICES OF SOVEREIGNTY IN THE BEITC’S COLLABORATIVE MANAGEMENT PLAN .............................................................. 126 5.1 The Challenge of Sovereignty ......................................................................... 128 5.2 The “Meaningful Consultation and Collaboration” Standard .......................... 135 5.3 The BEITC’s Decision-Making Model ........................................................... 142 5.4 Collaborative Management and Relational Sovereignty ................................. 153 5.5 Notes ................................................................................................................ 156 6 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 162 6.1 Major Contributions ......................................................................................... 165 6.2 Implications...................................................................................................... 172 6.3 Notes ................................................................................................................ 177 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 179 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BEITC – Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition NAIS – Native American and Indigenous Studies NEPA – National Environmental Policy Act NHPA – National Historic Preservation Act TEK – Traditional Ecological Knowledge UDB – Utah Diné Bikéyah ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation could not have been completed without significant support from mentors, colleagues, and friends. I have been blessed with a kind, caring, and generous network of people who have collectively ferried me through the last four years of my graduate career. I first wish to thank the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition for granting me permission to analyze their proposal and other documents for this project. Similarly, I want to extend my gratitude to Jacqueline Keeler (Diné/Dakota) for allowing me to analyze her writings and taking the time to discuss Bears Ears with me. Furthermore, I am grateful for the generous support of the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah, whose fellowship funding has allowed me to focus solely on this project for the past academic year. Portions of this dissertation have also been accepted for publication in Frontiers in Communication for a special issue on Communication, Race, and Outdoor Spaces. 1 I’m deeply indebted to my incredible advisor, Danielle Endres. Her extensive feedback, professional mentorship, and emotional support have been integral to my success in completing this project and surviving graduate school. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to my wonderful committee members – Hokulani Aikau, Ashley Cordes, Rachel Griffin, and Robin Jensen – for their helpful reading suggestions, insightful questions, professional advice, and personal support. I am also grateful to the network of faculty and staff in the Department of Communication who have supported my professional development, encouraged me to keep going when I was struggling, and gone to bat for me when institutional barriers have cropped up. Special thanks are due to Mike Middleton, Josh Ewalt, Kevin Coe, Travis Ciaramella, and Jessica Finch. Your generosity and care have been crucial for my success, particularly over this final semester. I must also thank my fellow graduate students, who have been an immense source of joy and comfort throughout my graduate journey. I cannot begin to express my gratitude for the countless hours of bouncing ideas off one another, commiserating in the face of difficulty, and celebrating one another’s successes that their friendship has provided. I am especially thankful for Kourtney Merryweather, Duncan Stewart, Oscar Mejia, Euni Kim, Devon Cantwell, and Madison Krall, all of whom have been absolute pillars of support over the last four years. Finally, I would like to thank my family and close friends for all of the love and care, pep talks, and vent sessions they have offered up. I couldn’t have done it without them. ix Notes Taylor Johnson, “Indigenous Publicity in American Public Lands Controversies: Environmental Participation in the Fight for Bears Ears National Monument,” Frontiers in Communication (forthcoming), https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.673115. 1 x CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In 2015, a group of five Native 1 governments (the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Ute Indian Tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and the Zuni Tribe) published a proposal for the creation of Bears Ears National Monument. The proposal defined a territory of 1.9 million acres in what is now called San Juan County, Utah and argued that this region holds historical, ecological, and cultural value to both Native people and nonNative Americans. In 2016, then-U.S. President Barack Obama responded to the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition’s (BEITC) proposal, designating 1.35 million acres as a national monument. While the response offered hope that the lands would be protected, it also brought complications. Although the BEITC had called for Tribes to manage the monument in partnership with the United States federal government, Obama’s proclamation granted only an advisory role to the Tribes. 2 Additionally, the proposal’s explicit focus on protecting ongoing cultural practices important to Native communities with ties to the region was stripped from the proclamation, minimizing the focus on Indigenous rights that had animated the proposal. The tension over Native rights at Bears Ears escalated with the 2016 election of Donald Trump to the office of the President of the United States. In December 2017, Trump released a proclamation reducing the size of the monument to roughly 200,000 2 acres. 3 John Echohawk (Pawnee), director of the Native American Rights Fund, denounced Trump’s proclamation as “an illegal attack on tribal sovereignty.” 4 Echohawk argued that the Trump administration had failed to meet its obligation to consult with Native nations as part of the decision-making process required by law or to engage in government-to-government relations with Tribes invested in the monument. The Trump administration touted the reduction in size as a victory for public interests, with thenSecretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke stating that “public lands are for public use and not for special interests.” 5 This statement drew criticism from both Native people and nonNative environmentalists, who challenged Zinke’s framing of people “that have lived and used these lands since time immemorial” and protection of sacred cultural landscapes as a special interest. 6 The framing of Indigenous sovereignty as a special interest, they argued, was couched in logics that center non-Native desires over the needs of Native people. The controversy over Bears Ears presents an opportunity to consider the complicated relationships between various Native nations, the U.S. federal government, and settler Americans as they manifest in the context of environmental decision-making processes. Public land-use decisions are a critical site for examining our conceptualizations of the American public, what appropriate relations to land look like, how sovereignty manifests in places where multiple Native and settler governments have ties, and what ultimately constitutes public good when Native nations are involved. Disagreements about the purpose of national monuments, the role of Indigenous people in the national monument designation and management process, and the best use of the land in and surrounding the Monument lay bare the fractures in environmental decisionmaking grounded in settler epistemologies. The controversy over Bears Ears serves as a 3 crucial opportunity to break open these fractures and create alternative environmental decision-making processes that align with decolonization, particularly in the case of public lands. The BEITC’s work to create and protect Bears Ears monument presents alternative ways of approaching environmental and public lands decision-making processes that challenge the colonial structures at the heart of U.S. public lands management. The fight for Bears Ears highlights the need for alternative ways of engaging with land and participating in environmental decision-making processes that reject settler logics. This dissertation project will analyze the ways that settler colonialism is manifest in decisions about public lands in the United States and ways that Indigenous nations seek to decolonize public lands. I will analyze the Bears Ears controversy in order to establish a framework for environmental decision-making that centers decolonization, focusing on how the documents produced by the BEITC and the federal government about the monument reproduce or challenge settler logics of land ownership, unilateral or bilateral decision-making, and monolithic perceptions of settler publicity. Thus, this dissertation asks three primary questions. First, how does settler colonialism manifest in environmental decision-making processes in the context of public lands controversies the United States? Second, what might alternate decision-making processes that contribute to decolonization look like? Third, how can a settler researcher enact a methodology that supports decolonization? This project uses critical rhetorical methods guided by Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) theories. Using humanistic inquiry to analyze primary texts, critical rhetoricians study the relationship between discourse (or rhetoric) and the circulation of power through society. 7 I use theories of settler colonialism and decolonization in my analysis to understand how 4 extant environmental decision-making processes produce structures of inclusion and exclusion that enable and constrain Indigenous participation in those decisions. Using abductive analysis, I primarily engage three artifacts: The Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition’s website, including their proposal for a National Monument (with permission); Barack Obama’s presidential Proclamation designating the Monument; and Donald Trump’s presidential Proclamation drastically reducing the Monument’s size. Taken together, these texts illustrate how settler colonialism operates in U.S. environmental decision-making processes and how Indigenous people resist settler colonialism in those contexts. This project makes two primary contributions. First, I establish a theoretical framework for approaching rhetoric and environmental decision-making grounded in theories of decolonization as the “repatriation of Indigenous land and life.” 8 This framework contributes to scholarly conversations that challenge the foundations of Whiteness in critical rhetoric and offer frameworks for analyzing a variety of rhetorical texts and situations. Second, my analysis expands rhetorical and environmental communication scholarship on environmental decision-making by centering Indigenous perspectives on settler colonialism and decolonization. I argue that attention to the structures of settler colonialism is essential for developing models of public participation in environmental decision-making that serve the aims of environmental justice and decolonization. Central to both contributions, I argue, is re-imagining publicity, in this case public lands, to challenge colonial metrics for inclusion and exclusion, thus undermining colonial political structures. The remainder of this introduction is organized thus: first, I briefly discuss the relationship between settler colonialism and public lands 5 in the United States, with a particular focus on my own positionality as a settler scholar and relationship to public lands in the context of this project. Second, I offer an abridged history of settler colonialism in the Bears Ears Region, focusing particularly on Indigenous struggles to protect Native communities and lands. Third, I preview the remainder of this dissertation project. 1.1 Public Lands and Settler Colonialism I am a non-Native woman living and working in Salt Lake City, Utah in Ute, Goshute, and Eastern Shoshone territory. My relationship to the state of Utah and my identity as a White woman have both been shaped by discourses surrounding public lands – particularly national parks and monuments. As a child growing up in the Missouri Ozarks on Oceti Sakowin, Osage, and Kickapoo land, I spent many weekends exploring national parks and forests, listening to interpreters in visitors’ centers, and reading countless plaques and pamphlets provided by the National Park Service. For my workingclass family, short road trips to nearby public lands provided the opportunity for vacation, education, and identity-formation as Americans all in one. The messages provided by the interpreters and reading materials in visitors’ centers often spoke of the “pioneering” American spirit, told celebratory stories of the White settlers who “discovered” these lands, and described the places as American treasures. Rarely, if ever, did they acknowledge or unpack the violent histories of colonization that underpinned the stories they told or incorporate Indigenous voices into their narratives. Later, as a visitor to and prospective resident of Utah, I was showered with images of public lands. Tourists and residents alike are drawn to Utah by the natural 6 wonders and outdoor activities the state offers. The outdoor recreation industry contributes more than $12.3 billion annually to the Utah economy and is intimately linked to the way residents describe the state. 9 It wasn’t until later, when I spoke to individuals invested in the fight for Bears Ears, that I learned about the state legislature’s commitment to resource extraction in public lands, their vehement demands that federal public lands be turned over to the state, and their bitter opposition to Native leadership in the management of Bears Ears. Indeed, this trend of demanding devolution of federal power to the states is part of what Jeff Corntassel labels “forced federalism,” and represents a direct threat to Native nations’ right to government-to-government relations with the federal government. 10 These experiences led me to an interest in how public lands in the United States are implicated in settler colonialism. They drew me to the question that drove this project’s early stages – who is the public in public lands? This question, of course, generated many more. This question brings to the fore tensions in rhetorical constructions of concepts like public good and public participation or engagement. It also highlights the ways that conceptions of American-ness are often tied up with narratives about land rooted in settler epistemologies. This project, for me, is an opportunity to deconstruct the narratives that have defined my relationships to public lands and unpack the realities that these narratives justify and produce. 11 As a settler scholar, my very existence is a result of settler colonialism. The access to public lands I have enjoyed my entire life, my space within the academy, and my ability to live and work in the places I do are just a few of the ways that I benefit from settler colonialism. Thus, it is critical that I use the privileges and resources 7 afforded to me by my positionality to challenge settler colonialism. This dissertation is one way in which I seek to do so. I see public lands disputes as important sites where the machinations of settler colonialism can be made particularly visible, and therefore ruptured and rejected in favor of alternative futures. Thus, this dissertation takes up Bears Ears as a case study with the potential to radically alter discussions surrounding public lands and environmental decision-making in the United States. 1.2 Bears Ears and Colonization via U.S. Public Lands The fight to protect Bears Ears comes in the midst of a number of high-profile movements led by Indigenous people to protect land and water. 2016 saw a national influx of attention to Native water and land rights issues with the visibility of the movement against the Dakota Access Pipeline, and 2019 saw a similar turn in attention toward Native Hawaiian resistance to the construction of a 30-meter telescope on Mauna Kea.12 Although these movements garnered greater national attention than many prior incidents, they are neither unique nor isolated historically. Rather, these movements represent moments of rupture at which sociocultural conditions made visible Indigenous peole’s struggles to protect their lands that span the entirety of colonial history. Nick Estes (Kul Wicasa) likens these moments to molehills, writing that they break the surface and make visible the work that has been going on below ground for much longer than most outside observers are aware.13 Bears Ears, I argue, is one of these moments of rupture; a place where long histories of colonialism and resistance become particularly visible, and where radical change is possible. In this section, I trace abbreviated versions of those histories of colonization and 8 resistance, paying particular attention to the multitude of investments that both Native people and settlers have in the Bears Ears region. I trace these histories through a variety of perspectives out of a desire to acknowledge the complexity of disputes over Bears Ears. It is not sufficient to begin with the BEITC’s proposal to Barack Obama in 2015, or even with the formation of the BEITC. This story begins much earlier, encompassing millennia of Native presence in the region, centuries of conflict and broken treaties on the part of the United States federal government, and decades of disputes over public lands designations and voting rights in the state of Utah and San Juan County. Additionally, the stakes of designating Bears Ears as a National Monument may be interpreted quite differently when understood from multiple perspectives. On the whole, this dissertation centers the perspectives of Native people with ties to the Bears Ears region, both because they are the original stewards of the region and because I believe that as a settler scholar, I have a responsibility to amplify the voices of the people whose lands I inhabit and engage in my writing. However, it would be impossible to tell the story of Bears Ears without at least acknowledging the other voices that have been most active in debates over the monument designation. I divide this history into four primary sections. First, I discuss nineteenth-century colonialism in the four corners region, paying particular attention to the role of the United States army in forcibly removing Native people from their territories during this era. Second, I turn toward disputes within the state of Utah over public lands designations. Third, I attend to the history of Mormon settlement in San Juan County and the legacies of early Mormon settlers’ experiences on the political landscape of San Juan County today. Finally, I explore the work that Native organizers in the area have done to improve 9 representation for Native communities and push for greater protection of the Bears Ears region over the last decade. These histories are substantially abbreviated, as the work of tracing them in their entirety is a larger project than can be completed in a single introductory chapter. Table 1 offers a chronological timeline of key events discussed in this abbreviated history. However, it is important to acknowledge that the imposition of linearity onto the history of Native peoples and colonial events in this region is inherently tied up with colonial narrative structure. 14 The events listed in this timeline are not comprehensive, and they are drawn from both Native histories and from colonial histories. I provide this timeline as a way of highlighting the substantial role that settler colonialism plays in creating the conditions that necessitate the creation of a national monument, and to offer my readers an easy-to-digest summary of the complex and overlapping stories I tell in this section. 1.2.1 Early Colonialism and Removal in the Four Corners Region The fight to protect Bears Ears, like other Indigenous struggles to protect land, is situated within a history of colonial violence and broken treaties that cannot be ignored. Native people have been present in the Bears Ears region for millennia. The Diné (Navajo) and Ute peoples trace their presence at Bears Ears to time immemorial. The Puebloan ancestors of the Hopi and Zuni peoples came to Bears Ears between 1250 and 1300 CE as part of their migration from where they emerged in the Grand Canyon to their present-day territories in Arizona and New Mexico. 15 The oldest identified archaeological sites in the region date to sometime between 11,000 and 6,000 BCE. 16 The region holds important spiritual and historical value for all of the five member Tribes of the BEITC, as well as for many other Native communities who are not members of the 10 coalition. 17 Today, the BEITC describes Bears Ears as “a place of healing and connection for present and future generations.” 18 The region has been the site of significant colonial violence and resistance to colonialism for centuries. Spanish colonizers who came to the region in the 16th century believed the Zuni people to possess significant amounts of gold that they hoped to steal, but they were met with significant opposition. 19 In 1680, Pueblo people, including the Zuni people organized and carried out a revolt against the Spanish, forcing them out of the region for the next 12 years. 20 Spanish control of the region continued until 1821, when Mexico gained independence from Spain. While the Mexican government engaged in relatively little intervention in Indigenous communities over the course of the next 20 years, they also failed to maintain water and land rights among Indigenous nations, resulting in disputes over territory and resources. 21 White American Mormon settlers began arriving Utah in the 1840s as part of a bid by the Mormon church to establish political control over the intermountain west and gain support for the creation of a sovereign theocratic nation called Deseret. 22 The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which transferred large swaths of what is now the Western United States from Mexico to the United States, brought an influx of White settlers to the area, resulting in increased conflict between White settlers, Mexican residents, and Native nations. Eventually, the U.S. army assigned Colonel Kit Carson to put an end to the skirmishes between Native and settler communities. Carson led a campaign of destruction, burning Diné hogans, killing livestock, and razing crops before rounding up large groups of Diné people to be confined at Fort Sumner in a campaign later called the Long Walk. 23 Carson’s violent campaign against the Diné was met with significant 11 resistance led by Diné Headman Manuelito, who was born near Bears Ears and returned there with a band of warriors in order to evade Carson’s troops during the Long Walk. Manuelito was later integral in negotiating the 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redonndo, which ended the Long Walk, instead establishing Diné a reservation on traditional Diné territory. 24 Removal efforts in the late nineteenth century were not confined to Carson’s campaign against the Diné. The 1870s and 1880s also saw significant moves toward removal of Ute and Hopi communities from their territories, concurrent with ongoing missionary work aimed at converting Native people to Christianity. In the late 1870s, Nathan Meeker was assigned by the U.S. Indian Agency to the White River Ute community after his attempt to found a utopian agricultural community in what is now Greenly, Colorado failed. 25 Meeker displayed outstanding disrespect of the Utes whose community he had been assigned to, referring to them as “savages,” insisting that they take up an agrarian lifestyle that ran counter to their traditional hunting practices, and even withholding rations as a punishment for refusals to submit to him.26 Eventually, Meeker telegrammed Washington, D.C. claiming to fear for his safety and the army responded by sending 200 troops to the White River agency. A battle between the army and the Utes ensued, resulting in the deaths of Meeker and ten others. 27 Following this incident, the U.S. army removed not only the members of the White River community who had participated in the battle, but a number of other Ute bands as well, relocating them to small reservations in Eastern Utah. 28 Around this same time, the Hopi people were also confined to a small reservation, following conflicts that had resulted from the land allocation outlined in the Treaty of 12 Bosque Redondo. That treaty had confined the Diné to a reservation that encircled several Hopi villages, without significant concern for the disputes this action might cause. By 1882, U.S. President Chester Arthur signed an executive order establishing a defined Hopi reservation including only a small portion of traditional Hopi territory and surrounded by the Navajo nation. Over the next 60 years, the Hopi reservation was increased in size twice, reallocating land from the Navajo nation to the Hopi reservation. These federal designations, unsurprisingly, resulted in significant territorial disputes between the Hopi and the Diné that continue to inform Hopi-Diné relations in the twentyfirst century. 29 The Zuni people were also subject to significant dispossession during this era. Although the U.S. government had agreed in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to respect Native nations’ territories as established in Spanish land grants, increasing settler demand for land resulted in numerous incursions on Zuni territory. For example, in 1856, Congress demanded that the Zuni hand over the documents detailing their land grants for approval, and returned altered documents with some Zuni lands allocated to the United States. 30 Disputes between the Zuni people and the U.S. government regarding the boundaries of Zuni territory continued until 1931 when the U.S. Congress passed Public Law No. 825 establishing the Zuni Reservation, which today encompasses only a fraction of traditional Zuni lands. 31 The policy of removal, which continued well into the twentieth century, contributed significantly to U.S. federal ownership of land in the Mountain West. Today, over 70% of land in Utah – including Bears Ears – is owned by the federal government, much of which was obtained via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and campaigns to 13 remove Native people from their lands. 32 Thus, the fight to protect Bears Ears via national monument status is rooted in a quandary. Federal ownership of Bears Ears is a direct result of colonial violence against the Native communities with ties to the region. At the same time, however, given contemporary resistance to returning land to Native nations, continued federal control of Bears Ears is perhaps the most expedient route for establishing real protections for the sacred and historical sites in the area. While the next section will discuss contemporary disputes over public lands designations in the State of Utah, many of which are rooted in political conservatism and states-rights discourses, the question of federal ownership of land in Utah is a multi-dimensional issue rooted in colonial histories. 1.2.2 Twentieth-Century Public Lands Disputes in Utah Much of the resistance to designating Bears Ears as a National Monument is rooted in disputes over public lands more broadly. Public lands have a long history of controversy, dating back almost to the advent of the National Parks system and the Antiquities Act. Although support for public lands has ebbed and flowed, there are several contingents, primarily made up of settlers, who vehemently oppose federal control of public lands. 33 Their reasons for doing so are wide-ranging: some argue that federal lands violate states’ rights, others oppose restrictions on land-use that limit cattle grazing or extractive industry development, and still others are opposed to the idea of public ownership of land altogether. These groups are neither monolithic in their makeup nor unified in their reasons for opposing public lands designations (nor, even, in which kinds of public lands designations they oppose or support). Nevertheless, broad resistance 14 to public lands designations cannot be ignored in telling the story of Bears Ears. Thus, this section will trace some of the most notable areas of controversy over public lands in the American West. 34 Public lands as we understand them today are a relatively recent concept in American politics. Land not held in private ownership was available for multiple uses by the public (including hunting, fishing, logging, and other activities) with relatively minimal regulation through the end of the nineteenth century. As the harms of overlogging in the late nineteenth century became apparent, a series of federal policies were implemented to increase environmental regulations over land held by the federal government, including the 1891 Forest Reserve Act, and the 1897 establishment of federal administrative control over roughly thirteen million acres of forested land in the American West. 35 These policies marked the beginning of a new conservationist era in American thought, which was bolstered by President Theodore Roosevelt’s commitment to establishing a system for preserving public lands and culminated in the establishment of the U.S. National Parks Service by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916. 36 Despite enjoying significant support, the early conservation movement was not without its share of controversy. Congressional representatives from Western States were especially vocal in their opposition to policies designed to protect federal lands, arguing that they would cause irreparable harm to industries like mining, logging, and livestock grazing. 37 In 1906, Congress passed the Antiquities Act, which was intended to address the widespread trend of graverobbing and looting facing Native historical sites. The act established presidential power to designate public lands as national monuments in order to protect historically and scientifically valuable objects. 38 This act, which would become 15 the foundation of Obama’s designation of the Bears Ears National Monument, was a valuable source of authority for Presidents seeking to increase protections for public lands, but also a point of contention for public lands opponents. The first use of the Antiquities Act to designate a large swath of land as a national monument came in 1908, when President Roosevelt changed the designation of the Grand Canyon from a forest reserve to a national park. The change brought significant criticism from Roosevelt’s adversaries, who argued that the size of the monument violated the intent of the Antiquities Act – which states that monuments must be kept to the smallest possible size that will allow protection of the artifacts within the monument – and constituted federal overreach (unsurprisingly, this logic is echoed in the Trump proclamation reducing the size of Bears Ears National Monument). 39 Opposition to federal control of public lands has remained a central pillar of public land controversies since the early twentieth century. Arguments against federal control of public lands often draw on states’ rights discourses, which assert that federal administration of public lands violates state governments’ authority to mediate disputes over land use. These arguments, for the most part, have little legal support and often function as “a smoke screen to attack environmentalists and regain unfettered access to natural resources”. 40 Furthermore, this demand that the federal government relinquish authority over public lands to the states undermines established rights of Indigenous nations to government-to-government relations. As states pursue increased administrative capacity over public lands, Indigenous nations seeking to protect their ancestral territories must navigate a web of state negotiation processes that do not meet the same standards of rigor as federal processes. For example, Jeff Corntassel writes that, 16 the offloading of federal responsibilities beginning in 1988 placed Indigenous nations in the difficult position of having to reassert their jurisdictional authority and governance powers with state and municipal policymakers, who often view Indigenous peoples as stakeholders or service opulations rather than selfdetermining first nations. 41 Thus, this anti-federal sentiment poses significant dangers, not only to environmental protections, but also to Indigenous rights. Another key source of opposition to federal regulation of public lands comes from a contingent of politically conservative miners, loggers, and ranchers who see federal management as a threat to their interests. These groups have engaged in a variety of strategies to undermine federal control of public lands, including legislative action, public relations campaigns, and all-out violence. Perhaps most widely recognized among this contingent is the mid-1970s Sagebrush Rebellion, in which a group of politicians – including then-San Juan County commissioner and uranium miner Cal Black and Utah Senator Orrin Hatch – established the League for the Advancement of States Equal Rights (LASER), raised funds from corporate donors, and wrote and sponsored numerous pieces of legislation aimed at transferring federal land to the states or removing regulations on land use for federally controlled public lands. 42 Attention to the Sagebrush Rebellion largely died down with the election of U.S. President Ronald Regan, whose support for reducing federal regulations largely assuaged the demands of the movement’s proponents. In its place arose the “wise use” movement, which encompassed many of the same ideas that had fueled the Sagebrush Rebellion, but shifted the strategic focus toward public campaigns aimed at garnering national attention and appropriating environmentalist discourses to draw support away from pro-regulation groups. 43 Like the Sagebrush Rebellion, the wise use movement largely faded from the public eye in the 1990s after accomplishing many of their goals, although the ideologies at the center of 17 the movement maintained significant support among American conservatives. 44 In 2014, national attention was once again drawn to controversy over public lands management when Cliven Bundy, a cattle rancher, anti-environmentalist, and virulent racist, led an armed standoff between his militia and federal agents attempting to enforce a policy against cattle grazing on public lands in a portion of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in Southern Nevada that had recently been re-designated to protect the endangered Mojave Desert tortoise. The standoff ultimately resulted in the deaths of two Las Vegas police officers, two militia members, and one other individual. 45 The Bundy ranch standoff was followed in 2015 by a skirmish between BLM officials and over one hundred militia members in Grants Pass Oregon. Militia members engaged in an armed protest in support of miners who had refused to file appropriate paperwork with the BLM regarding previously unreported mining activities, and ultimately ended when the miners were convicted a month later. 46 However, this was not the end of what many called the new Sagebrush Rebellion. In 2016, Cliven Bundy’s sons Ammon and Ryan led a group of insurgents to occupy the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon. The militia adopted the name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, and claimed that the federal wildlife refuge was oppressing local residents by preventing them from using the land as they saw fit (despite the fact that local residents overwhelmingly opposed the occupation of the refuge and noted that they had a positive relationship with the refuge). 47 In addition to anti-environmentalist rhetoric, the insurgents displayed significant anti-Native sentiments, discounting the Burns Paiute Tribe’s statements that the refuge protected thousands of Paiute artifacts and claiming that loggers and ranchers should be prioritized over Native people’s interests. 48 18 Much of the rhetoric present in these movements has been echoed in opposition to the Bears Ears designation, with locals claiming that Native people’s concerns should be secondary to those of settler locals and corporations, claiming that the designation is an example of federal overreach, and echoing “wise use” rhetoric that posits that local individuals engaged in resource extraction are better qualified to determine the best use of the land than federal agencies. The BEITC has highlighted significant threats posed to the region by the extractive industry, supported by historical evidence – there are hundreds of abandoned uranium mines in the area today, most of which have not undergone necessary cleanup processes. 49 Many of these mines were established in the mid-twentieth century as the U.S. nuclear industry experienced exponential growth. Similarly, leaked documents from the Trump administration showed that fossil fuel prospects played a significant role in the administration’s decision to shrink the monument. 50 Extractive industries also play a significant role in local economies, compounding local alignment with movements like wise use and the Sagebrush Rebellion. 51 1.2.3 Mormon Settlers in San Juan County While Bears Ears faces significant resistance from public lands opponents, it also has support from some local non-Native communities, particularly Mormon residents of San Juan County who trace their own history in the region to Bears Ears. 52 During James Buchanan’s 1857 bid to replace Brigham Young with Alfred Cumming, scores of Mormon settlers migrated south from the Salt Lake Valley toward the four corners region, both in an attempt to escape conflict between the army and the church and as part 19 of the church’s broader goal of establishing a Mormon stronghold in southern Utah. In the fifty years prior to Utah gaining statehood, there was significant antagonism between the federal government and the Mormon church. Indeed, U.S. President James Buchanan’s 1954 campaign relied partially on a promise to remove Brigham Young – then-President of the Mormon church – as the governor of Utah. Buchanan eventually fulfilled this promise in 1857, sending 2.500 soldiers to Utah to replace Young with Alfred Cumming. 53 The conflict drove many church members southward, resulting in an increased Mormon presence in southern Utah and ultimately culminating in a year of federal occupation of the state that ended only after the federal government pardoned the church in June 1858. 54 Mormon settlement of southern Utah continued for several decades following the 1857 incident, but San Juan County remained largely unsettled by Mormons until 1879, when the Church sent a group of roughly 250 settlers to colonize the area in an attempt to pre-empt an influx of non-Mormon settlers to the region as part of a larger mining boom in the four corners region. 55 This edict from the church also served an evangelical function, as the Mormon church’s doctrine held that converting Native people was a particularly high priority. 56 During their trip from northern Utah to San Juan County, this group passed through the Bears Ears region, following a trail that was poorly suited to wagon travel and thus facing significant danger. Their journey through what is now called Hole-InThe-Rock trail became a beloved origin story for many members of the San Juan County Mormon community, held up as evidence of the value of faith and pioneering spirit. Indeed, historian David E. Miller wrote of the voyage: In all the annals of the West, replete with examples of courage, tenacity and ingenuity, there is no better example of the indomitable pioneer spirit than that of 20 the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition of the San Juan Mission. No pioneer company ever built a wagon road through wilder, rougher, more inhospitable country, still one of the least known regions in America. None ever demonstrated more courage, faith, and devotion to a cause than this group of approximately two hundred fifty men, women, and children with some eighty wagons and hundreds of loose cattle and horses who cut a wagon passage through two hundred miles of this country…. The story of the Hole-in-the-Rock expedition is an excellent case study of the highest type of pioneer endeavor that broke the wilderness and brought civilization to the West. 57 Miller’s exaltation of Mormon colonizers is indicative of the conflicting discourses surrounding Bears Ears. Although the potential protections to Hole-in-the-Rock trail offered by a monument designation has served as a source of support for the monument among some local Mormons, that support is rooted in a celebration of colonization that runs counter to the primary reasons for designating a monument in the BEITC’s proposal. 58 1.2.4 Contemporary Political Disputes in San Juan County While potential protections for Hole-in-the-Rock have rallied support among some non-Native locals, there is also significant opposition from many settler San Juan County residents that is tied to decades-long disputes over political representation in the county. San Juan county has a long history of gerrymandering and voter suppression targeting Native communities that has posed significant barriers to creating protections for Bears Ears at the local level. In 1983, the Navajo Nation sued San Juan County over gerrymandering and a court determined that the County’s three districts had clearly been drawn to confine the majority of Native residents to a single county, despite their making up roughly half of the county’s overall population. 59 The county re-drew their districts as a result of that suit, but other problems have persisted. Voter suppression has been a 21 significant problem for Native people in the area, with insufficient infrastructure, a lack of polling locations, and inadequate postal service to support vote-by-mail serving to silence Native voters both in San Juan County and on the Navajo Nation (which is primarily located just south of San Juan County in northern Arizona). 60 Many settler residents of San Juan County oppose increased Native representation on the county commission and have opposed Native leadership in decisions regarding Bears Ears, arguing that the Navajo Nation is not a part of San Juan County and should not have influence over county decisions (despite the fact that roughly half of San Juan County residents themselves are also Native). 61 In 2010, Utah Diné Bikéyah (UDB) was formed to work towards protections for Bears Ears and increase Native representation in San Juan County. 62 The organization worked with Diné leaders – and eventually with the Ute Mountain Ute and Hopi Tribes as well – to conduct a cultural survey of the Bears Ears region, draft a proposal for a collaborative land-use plan to be sponsored by Utah Senator Bob Bennett, and to approach the county with a plan to protect Bears Ears. 63 Over the course of the next five years, UDB worked with politicians at the local, state, and national level in a series of attempts to craft a plan for protecting Bears Ears. 64 For example, in 2013, UDB submitted a proposal for a National Conservation Area to San Juan County as part of the county’s larger bid to develop a land use plan. The county conducted a public engagement process the following year in which they presented proposed plans to the public and asked for input, but they refused to include the UDB plan in the proposal. Nevertheless, roughly 65% of comments supported the unpresented UDB proposal. 65 The County did not take this feedback into account, instead submitting a proposal to the 22 federal government that would designate large swaths of the Bears Ears region as an “energy zone,” open to mining, drilling, and grazing activities. 66 Between 2013 and 2015, representatives from the Navajo Nation and UDB repeatedly met with members of congress to discuss Bears Ears but were met with little support. 67 After years of attempting to work at the county, state, and national legislative levels, supporters of the monument ultimately determined that a new course of action was needed. In 2015, representatives from the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Ute Indian Tribe, and the Pueblo of Zuni met several times and ultimately agreed July to form the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition with the intention of drafting a proposal for the Obama administration to establish a national monument using the presidential powers granted by the Antiquities Act. 68 Over the next several months, the BEITC worked on the proposal together, submitting it to the Obama administration in October 2015. 69 Obama responded to the proposal in December 2016, establishing a monument with similar boundaries to those proposed by the BEITC (although several areas with significant extractive potential were excluded from the Obama designation). 70 Just a year later, the monument was gutted by the Trump administration; later evidence indicated that this decision was made in large part to allow increased extractive activity in the region. 71 As of the writing of this text, the monument’s designation is once again under review; President Joe Biden ordered a 60-day review of several monument modifications made by the Trump administration in January, 2021 which may result in a return to the original monument boundaries established by the Obama administration. 72 The movement to protect Bears Ears is rooted in a complex web of colonial histories and must contend with multiple contingents with opposing perspectives on public lands, land 23 use and management, and political structures. The BEITC’s proposal was thus constrained by the need to navigate this rocky rhetorical landscape, not only appealing to the importance of protecting Native artifacts, sacred land, and delicate ecosystems, but also overcoming significant opposition from myriad directions. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that the BEITC’s proposal successfully addressed these challenges, producing a model of participation in environmental decision-making and public lands management that rejects the constraints of colonialism in favor of meaningful relationships with land, collaborative decision-making rooted in an insistence on Indigenous sovereignty, and reimagining the public sphere in support of decolonization. 1.3 Chapters With this in mind, the remainder of this project is organized into five chapters. Chapter 2, Decolonizing Publicity in Environmental Decision-Making, lays out the theoretical and methodological foundations of this dissertation. Here, I highlight scholarship on settler colonialism and decolonization, and argue that scholars of rhetoric and environmental decision-making should attend more closely to these literatures. I call for a shift in rhetorical understandings of discourse that moves away from settler conceptions of publics and counterpublics, which I term “decolonizing publicity.” Then, drawing from Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s (Ngāti Awa and Ngāti Porou, Māori) Decolonizing Methodologies, I detail a methodological approach to rhetorical analysis that centers settler responsibility, amplifies Indigenous voices through engagement with public-facing documents produced by Indigenous people and organizations, reads history through the lens of colonization, and imagines futures that reject colonial rhetorics and structures. 73 24 In Chapter 3, Traditional Ecological Knowledge as an Alternative to Settler Environmentalism, I read the BEITC’s calls for Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to be at the center of the monument’s management plan as a form of resistance against colonial extractivist rhetorics that posit land as mere resource. 74 I argue that these settler conceptions of land are present not only in anti-environmental discourses that justify environmentally harmful development practices, but also in settler environmentalist rhetorics that uplift settler enjoyment of and belonging in public lands at the expense of recognizing and respecting Native people’s relationships to their territories. I suggest that the prevalence of these discourses dooms settler environmentalist movements to failure, and call for settler environmentalists to critically reflect on how our own positionalities shape our engagement in environmentalist movements and discourses. I argue that centering Indigenous conceptions of land must be at the center of decolonizing and environmentalist movements. Chapter 4, Indigenous Publicity in American Public Lands Controversies and Environmental Decision-Making asks how publicity as an analytic props up settler colonialism in the context of public lands and environmental decision-making processes. I argue that Native people and nations are uniquely positioned on the boundaries of American publicity – both within and outside of “the American public.” Although the BEITC strategically navigates this positioning in order to argue for the value of establishing Bears Ears as a national monument, I ultimately argue that settler conceptions of publicity most often function to deny Native people access to decisionmaking authority and that a different model for understanding deliberative decisionmaking must be developed that moves “beyond inclusion.” 75 25 Chapter 5, Relational Practices of Sovereignty in the BEITC’s Collaborative Management Plan, draws from the BEITC’s monument proposal to imagine a model for environmental decision-making that diverges from publicity and instead centers Native sovereignty and leadership. In this chapter, I draw from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s (Michi Saagig Nishnaabeg) theorization of sovereignty as “the place where we all live and work together” to argue for collaborative environmental decision-making as a relational practice of sovereignty in which multiple nations cooperate to care for lands to which they share commitments. 76 I suggest that this model diverges significantly from extant models based in “collaboration and consultation” by shifting decision-making authority away from the federal government toward Native governments, centering Indigenous knowledge, and making space for polyvocal and multilateral decision-making processes to be designed in partnership between the federal government and Native nations.77 Chapter 6, Conclusion, draws lessons from the three previous chapters in order to suggest a path forward for environmental decision-making and public lands management. I argue that the BEITC’s management plan for the monument offers a model of environmental decision-making that rejects settler colonial knowledge hierarchies, power structures, and deliberative processes. I call for scholars and practitioners of environmental decision-making to learn from this model and suggest several tenets for future processes that emerge from this model. Finally, I call for a move to better incorporate the insights of NAIS into scholarship in rhetoric and environmental decisionmaking. The tenets I highlight in the conclusion are a starting point, but I argue settler 26 scholars must continue listening to, learning from, and transforming in response to, Indigenous critiques of settler colonialism if we wish to achieve a more just world. 27 Table 1 - Chronological timeline of key events mentioned in this chapter Date Event Time Immemorial Some Native nations have inhabited Bears Ears since time immemorial, while others came to the region later. Origin dates for the earliest artifacts found at Bears Ears Pueblo people organize a revolt against Spanish colonizers, forcing them out of the region for the following twelve years Mexico gains independence from Spain Increases in cattle ranching bring large numbers of White settlers to the region Brigham Young and his followers arrive in the Salt Lake Basin Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo transfers much of the four-corners region from Mexico to the United States U.S. Army Col. Kit Carson forces Diné people off their land in the “Long Walk” Diné Headman Manuelito’s resistance leads to the Treaty of Bosque Redondo, ending the “Long Walk” Standoff between the White River Ute community and the US army ends with the confinement of the Ute people Mormon settlers enter San Juan County via Hole-in-the-Rock Trail Utah gains statehood Antiquities Act passed to protect Native artifacts from looting Advent of nuclear weapons and power leads to a boom in uranium mining in the Bears Ears region First Sagebrush Rebellion begins Utah Diné Bikéyah established and conducts cultural survey of Bears Ears Region San Juan County publishes a land use proposal that excludes UDB plan Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition established BEITC submits proposal for Bears Ears National Monument to the Obama administration President Barack Obama issues a proclamation establishing Bears Ears National Monument President Donald Trump overturns Obama designation and shrinks the monument by roughly 85% President Joe Biden orders a review of Trump’s public lands decisions, including Bears Ears 11,000-6,000 BCE 1680 1821 1840s-1890s 1847 1848 1864-1866 1868 1879-1880 1882 1896 1906 1945-1970 1976 2010 2014 July 2015 October 2015 December 2016 December 2017 January 2021 28 1.4 Notes 1 Throughout this dissertation, I use the terms Native, Native American, and Indigenous largely interchangeably. As Bruyneel notes, the choice of terms is fraught with tension. When choosing terms, I generally echo the language used by the authors and organizations I cite. Similarly, I use the terms Tribe and Tribal to echo the language of the BEITC and also to recognize that some members of the BEITC (i.e. the Ute Indian Tribe and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe) share a broader community that has been fractured as a result of colonialism. I recognize that this terminology is contested, and in places where I am not referring to the five member Tribes of the BEITC or specific legal bodies that use the term Tribe, I use the term nation. Kevin Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous Relations (Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota Press, 2007). 2 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument,” October 15, 2015, http://www.bearsearscoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Bears-Ears-Inter-TribalCoalition-Proposal-10-15-15.pdf; U.S. President, “Proclamation, ‘Establishment of the Bears Ears National Monument, Proclamation 9558 of December 28, 2016,’” Federal Reigister 32, no. 3 (December 28, 2016): 1139–47. 3 U.S. President, “Proclamation, ‘Modifying the Bears Ears National Monument, Proclamation 9681 of December 4, 2017,’” Federal Register 32, no. 235 (December 4, 2017): 5808158087. 4 John E. Echohawk, “President Trump’s Bears Ears Order Is An Illegal Attack On Tribal Sovereignty,” Huffpost, December 4, 2017, sec. editorials, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-bears-ears-tribalsovereignty_b_5a25b663e4b03c44072fcc02. 5 Lee Davidson and Thomas Burr, “Trump Greeted by Cheers and Protests as He Visits Utah, Trims 2 Million Acres from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments - The Salt Lake Tribune,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 4, 2017, sec. Politics, https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2017/12/04/trump-is-coming-to-utah-toperform-dramatic-feat-monday-make-big-national-monuments-mostly-disappear/. 6 Ethel Branch and Daniel Cordalis, “The Unlawful Reduction of Bears Ears National Monument: An Executive Overreach,” American Bar Association, May 1, 2018, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/environment_energy_resources/publications/trends/ 2017-2018/may-june-2018/the_unlawful_reduction_of_bears_ears/. 7 Raymie E. Mckerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis,” Communication Monographs 56, no. 2 (1989): 91–111, https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758909390253. 8 Eve Tuck and K Wayne Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–40. 29 9 “Office of Outdoor Recreation,” Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development, accessed September 3, 2020, https://business.utah.gov/outdoor/. 10 Jeff Corntassel, “Indigenous Governance amidst the Forced Federalism Era,” Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy 19, no. 1 (2010 2009): 47–62. 11 Throughout this essay I oscillate between the use of the terms “public” and “publics” to describe the multiplicity of people and discourses that make up the American public sphere. While I recognize the multiplicity of overlapping and networked publics and counterpublics that cannot be condensed into a singular American public, the documents produced by the US federal government that govern public lands and public participation in environmental decision-making repeatedly use terms such as “the public,” “public good,” “public interests,” etc. These terms, along with implications within the documents that public lands benefit all members of the public equally, suggest that decision-making processes are de3signed via the rhetorical production of a singular and monolithic American public. For examples, see: “National Environmental Policy Act,” 42 U.S.C. § 4321-4370d (1969); “National Historic Preservation Act,” 16 U.S.C. § 470-470x-6 (1966); U.S. President, “Proclamation, ‘Establishment of the Bears Ears National Monument, Proclamation 9558 of December 28, 2016,’”; U.S. President, “Proclamation, ‘Modifying the Bears Ears National Monument, Proclamation 9681 of December 4, 2017,.’” 12 Hi’Ilei Julia Hobart, “At Home on the Mauna: Ecological Violence and Fantasies of Terra Nullius on Maunakea’s Summit,” Native American and Indigenous Studies 6, no. 2 (2019): 30–50, https://doi.org/10.5749/natiindistudj.6.2.0030; Taylor N. Johnson, “The Dakota Access Pipeline and the Breakdown of Participatory Processes in Environmental Decision-Making,” Environmental Communication 13, no. 3 (April 3, 2019): 335–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2019.1569544. 13 Nick Estes, Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (New York, NY: Verso, 2019). 14 Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Woman Native Other (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989). 15 “American Indians at Grand Canyon - Past and Present,” GrandCanyon.com, March 26, 2014, https://grandcanyon.com/planning/american-indians-at-grand-canyon-past-andpresent/; Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument”; Jim Enote, What the Bears Ears monument means to a Native American, interview by Hannah Nordhaus, October 18, 2018, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/bears-ears-monument-nativeamericans-photography/. 16 “Bears Ears,” Sacred Land (blog), accessed February 8, 2021, https://sacredland.org/bears-ears/. 30 17 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Bears Ears: A Native Perspective” (Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, March 7, 2016), https://bearsearscoalition.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/03/Bears-Ears-bro.sm_.pdf. 18 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Special Anniversary Edition Newsletter,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition Newsletter 1, no. 2 (Winter 2019), https://bearsearscoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Special-Edition-NewsletterWinter-2019.pdf. 19 “New Mexico: Zuni,” Partnership with Native Americans, accessed March 16, 2021, http://www.nativepartnership.org/site/PageServer?pagename=PWNA_Native_Reservatio ns_Zuni; “Pueblo History,” Zuni Pueblo Department of Tourism, accessed March 16, 2021, http://www.zunitourism.com/pueblo_history.htm. 20 “A Brief History of the Pueblo Revolt,” Indian Pueblo Cultural Center (blog), August 6, 2020, https://indianpueblo.org/a-brief-history-of-the-pueblo-revolt/. 21 Carmen Gabriela Tarcan, “Counting Sheep: Fauna, Contact, and Colonialism at Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, A. D. 1300-1900” (PhD dissertation, Burnaby, BC, Simon Fraser University, 2005), https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/56369704.pdf. 22 Rebecca M. Robinson, Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land (Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2018). 23 Robinson. 24 Charissa Jessepe, “Bears Ears Buttes,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, accessed February 11, 2021, https://bearsearscoalition.org/portfolio-items/bears-ears-buttes/; Robinson, Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land; “Utah Descendants of ‘the Long Walk’ Commemorate Long-Awaited Homecoming of the Treaty of 1868,” Utah Diné Bikéyah (blog), June 1, 2018, https://utahdinebikeyah.org/the-long-walk/. 25 Robert Silbernagel, Troubled Trails: The Meeker Affair and the Expulsion of the Utes from Colorado (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2011). 26 Silbernagel. 27 Silbernagel. 28 Robinson, Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land. 29 Robinson. 30 E. Richard Hart, Pedro Pino: Governor of Zuni Pueblo 1830-1878 (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2003). 31 31 “An Act to Authorize a Survey of Certain Lands Claimed by the Zuni Pueblo Indians, New Mexico, and the Issuance of Patent Therefor,” Pub. L. No. 825, 1509 (1931); Hart, Pedro Pino: Governor of Zuni Pueblo 1830-1878; “Pueblo History.” 32 Robinson, Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land; “Your Utah, Your Future - Background: Public Lands in Utah,” accessed February 11, 2021, https://yourutahyourfuture.org/topics/public-lands/item/69-background-recreation-inutah. 33 I highlight that opposition is made up of primarily settler audiences here in order to acknowledge that not all Native individuals or communities are in favor of federal control or ownership of public lands. While the governments, and many members, of the five member Tribes of the BEITC stand in support of public lands in the context of Bears Ears, even within these communities, support is not universal, as evidenced by the testimony provided by Suzette Morris of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in opposition to the establishment of Bears Ears National Monument. Jim Mimiaga, “Ute Mountain Utes Blast Member’s Testimony against Bears Ears,” The Durango Herald, 2018, https://durangoherald.com/articles/206478. 34 For a much more thorough discussion of the history of public lands controversies in the United States, see Michael J. Makley, Open Spaces, Open Rebellion: The War over America’s Public Lands (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2017). 35 Makley. 36 “Quick History of the National Park Service (U.S. National Park Service),” accessed February 11, 2021, https://www.nps.gov/articles/quick-nps-history.htm. 37 Makley, Open Spaces, Open Rebellion: The War over America’s Public Lands. 38 Robinson, Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land. 39 Makley, Open Spaces, Open Rebellion: The War over America’s Public Lands; U.S. President, “Proclamation, ‘Modifying the Bears Ears National Monument, Proclamation 9681 of December 4, 2017,.’” 40 Charles Davis, Western Public Lands and Environmental Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 21. 41 42 Corntassel, “Indigenous Governance amidst the Forced Federalism Era,” 48. Johnathan Thompson, “The First Sagebrush Rebellion: What Sparked It and How It Ended,” High Country News, January 14, 2016, https://www.hcn.org/articles/a-lookback-at-the-first-sagebrush-rebellion. 32 43 Jennifer Peeples, “Chapter One: Aggressive Mimicry: The Rhetoric of Wise Use and the Environmental Movement,” The Environmental Communication Yearbook 2 (January 1, 2005): 1–17, https://doi.org/10.1207/s15567362ecy0201_1. 44 Peeples. 45 Makley, Open Spaces, Open Rebellion: The War over America’s Public Lands. 46 Makley. 47 Makley. 48 Makley. 49 Hiroko Tabuchi, “Uranium Miners Pushed Hard for a Comeback. They Got Their Wish.,” The New York Times, January 13, 2018, sec. Climate, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/13/climate/trump-uranium-bears-ears.html. 50 Eric Lipton and Lisa Friedman, “Oil Was Central in Decision to Shrink Bears Ears Monument, Emails Show,” The New York Times, March 2, 2018, sec. Climate, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/02/climate/bears-ears-national-monument.html. 51 David Gessner, “Land Grab: Trump’s Campaign Against Bears Ears National Monument,” Sierra Club (blog), August 19, 2018, https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2018-4-september-october/feature/land-grab-trumpscampaign-against-bears-ears-national. 52 Joseph Bennion, “Op-Ed: Bears Ears Has Special Meaning for Mormons, Too,” The Salt Lake Tribune, May 7, 2017, https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=5239958&itype=CMSID. 53 Robinson, Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land. 54 Robinson. 55 David E. Miller, Hole-in-the-Rock: An Epic in the Colonization of the Great American West, 2nd edition (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1966). 56 This commitment to converting Native communities was in large part driven by the Mormon church’s explicitly racist and colonial teachings that Native people are “Lamanites,” descendants of a lost Tribe of Israel expulsion resulted in a darkening of their skin and who must convert to Mormonism in order to become “pure and delightsome.” Unsurprisingly, this doctrine has influenced both local and state politics in Utah. While the full scope of the influence of the church’s racism on Utah politics is beyond the purview of this project, it would be impossible to tell this story without some discussion of the Mormon church’s role. For a more thorough discussion of the influence of Mormon doctrine in politics in the region, see: Donna Deyhle, “Navajo Youth and 33 Anglo Racism: Cultural Integrity and Resistance,” Harvard Educational Review 65, no. 3 (Fall 1995): 403; Robinson, Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land. 57 Miller, Hole-in-the-Rock: An Epic in the Colonization of the Great American West. 58 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument”; Bennion, “Op-Ed.” 59 Robinson, Voices from Bears Ears: Seeking Common Ground on Sacred Land. 60 Kalyani Saxena, “How The Navajo Nation Helped Flip Arizona For Democrats,” NPR.Org, November 13, 2020, https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-2020-electionresults/2020/11/13/934591289/how-the-navajo-nation-helped-flip-arizona-for-democrats. 61 Jacqueline Keeler, Personal Communication, Zoom, July 2, 2020. 62 Utah Diné Bikéyah, “History,” accessed February 12, 2021, https://utahdinebikeyah.org////. 63 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Timeline,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, accessed February 12, 2021, https://bearsearscoalition.org/timeline/; Utah Diné Bikéyah, “Utah Diné Bikéyah.” 64 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument”; Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Timeline.” 65 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument”; Utah Diné Bikéyah, “Fact Sheet: A Majority of Residents in San Juan County Supports Bears Ears,” Utah Diné Bikéyah, May 2, 2019, https://utahdinebikeyah.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Fact-Sheet-SJCsupports-Bears-Ears-5-2-19r.pdf. 66 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Timeline.” 67 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. 68 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument.” 69 70 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. U.S. President, “Proclamation, ‘Establishment of the Bears Ears National Monument, Proclamation 9558 of December 28, 2016,.’” 34 71 Gessner, “Land Grab”; U.S. President, “Proclamation, ‘Modifying the Bears Ears National Monument, Proclamation 9681 of December 4, 2017,.’” 72 Brian Maffly and Zak Podmore, “President Joe Biden Has Opened the Door on Possibly Reversing Donald Trump’s Slashing of the Bears Ears and Grand StaircaseEscalante National Monuments in Utah. Some Are Pressing for a More Permanent, Legislative Solution.,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 25, 2021, https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2021/01/25/president-joe-bidens/. 73 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed. (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2012). 74 Naomi Klein, “Dancing the World into Being: A Conversation with Idle No More’s Leanne Simpson,” Yes! Magazine (blog), March 6, 2013, https://www.yesmagazine.org/social-justice/2013/03/06/dancing-the-world-into-being-aconversation-with-idle-no-more-leanne-simpson. 75 Karma R. Chávez, “Beyond Inclusion: Rethinking Rhetoric’s Historical Narrative,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101, no. 1 (January 2, 2015): 162–72, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2015.994908. 76 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, “The Place Where We All Live and Work Together: A Gendered Analysis of ‘Sovereignty,’” in Native Studies Keywords, ed. Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Andrea Smith, and Michelle H. Raheja (Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2015), 18. 77 U.S. President, “Executive Order 13175 of November 6, 2000, Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments,” Federal Register 65, no. 218 (November 6, 2000): 67249–52. CHAPTER 2 DECOLONIZING PUBLICITY IN ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION-MAKING This dissertation expands contemporary conversations in critical rhetoric by developing a framework for understanding public discourse through theories of settler colonialism and decolonization. Building on calls to re-think the centrality of citizenship to rhetoric, understandings of rhetorical publics must be re-worked to undermine the central role that citizenship and nationhood play in our understandings of civic discourse and public participation. 1 Thus, I argue for rhetoric to engage more thoroughly with decolonization. I draw here from Kirisitina Sailiata’s (Samoan) argument that “decolonization makes the positive intervention of ‘unsettling’ settler colonialism. 2 This project of unsettling is necessarily tied up with both the material return of Indigenous land to Indigenous governance and with epistemological orientation away from settler narratives. In shifting the field’s orientation toward publicity, I call for rhetoricians to develop ways of engaging with deliberation that reject the foundational frameworks through which our field perpetuates settler colonialism. I term this shift decolonizing publicity. 3 Much rhetorical scholarship is founded in an understanding of democratic deliberation as central to public discourse. 4 Originating with Habermas, public sphere 36 scholarship works to theorize the ways private individuals engage one another in rational discourse as a way of bearing on decisions made by the state. 5 Members of the public, Habermas argued, must participate in public discourse in order to prevent state tyranny. A number of scholars, however, have argued that Habermas’s conception of the public sphere excludes marginalized voices. 6 These scholars argue that Habermas’s conception of the public sphere assumes that all participants have equal footing in the discussion and brackets power imbalances. They criticize this assumption that having access to the public sphere is sufficient to overcome the factors that exclude marginalized groups from decision-making spaces. For example, Fraser argues that the form of the public sphere fails to account for the inequitable distribution of vocal space between groups. 7 While previous scholars conceptualize the public sphere as a neutral space, Fraser challenges this understanding. Women and People of Color, she argues, may continue to be underrepresented in the public sphere because White men are more likely to speak more frequently. She suggests that marginalized groups must form “subaltern counterpublics” through which they can make their voices heard in the face of discursive exclusion. Other scholars have taken up Fraser’s scholarship, studying the emergence of counterpublics, how counterpublics challenge hegemonic discourses, and how boundaries between public and counterpublic are blurred by particular discourses. 8 Despite this important work, there has been little study of the relationship between settler colonialism and the public sphere. In addition to the ambivalent positioning in relation to the American public that Indigenous people experience, structures of settler colonialism often contribute to an erasure of Indigenous concerns in the context of critical theory. A number of scholars have highlighted the ways that critical 37 theory derived from continental philosophy obfuscates settler colonialism. 9 Jodi Byrd (Chickasaw), in particular, argues that scholars must attend more closely to the specificities of marginalized experience within the context of settler colonialism. 10 To group Indigenous people with other marginalized groups, as a broad understanding of counterpublicity might, is to fail to recognize the particularities of coming-to-be-in-place that are central to settler colonial relations. Indeed, Tiara Na’puti (Chamoru) argues that, as rhetoricians move toward a reckoning with the Whiteness of our discipline, we must resist the urge to conflate Indigeneity with race. 11 Rather, she argues, rhetorical scholars should unsettle the narratives that naturalize non-Native claims to territory and erasure of Indigenous people. In the context of the public sphere, rhetoricians must ask what the goal of inclusion within a public or counterpublic is. Given the foundations of public sphere theory as a means of explaining how members of a society participate in the production of that society via discourse, we must question whether or not theories of publics and counterpublics are useful for understanding Indigenous resistance to settler society. If, drawing from Tuck and Yang, we understand the goal of these movements to be decolonization defined as “Native futures without a settler state,” then we must ask whether theories of publicity are truly equipped to account for movements whose ultimate goal is not the improvement of the settler state or settler society, but rather their dismantling. 12 I situate this decolonizing approach to rhetoric and publicity in the context of environmental decision-making by suggesting that attention to the structures of settler colonialism is essential for developing models of public participation in environmental decision-making that serve the aims of environmental justice for Indigenous peoples. 13 38 This approach, I argue, allows scholars to unsettle assumptions about who can or should lay claim to “public lands,” how extant structures for public participation in civic life (particularly in the context of environmental decision-making) produce metrics of inclusion or exclusion based on settler logics, and how formal channels for environmental decision-making can be revised to align more closely with the needs and values of Indigenous nations. Thus, this chapter develops in three parts. First, I turn toward scholarship on settler colonialism and decolonization in order to establish a framework for deploying rhetorical scholarship toward the goal of decolonization. Here, I argue that a dialectic of inclusion and exclusion is central to the colonial project of replacement. This focus highlights the ways that Indigenous studies scholarship can and should be engaged to expand rhetorical scholarship. Second, I highlight contemporary debates in critical rhetoric which can benefit from attention to theories of settler colonialism and decolonization. Here, I draw heavily from extant work on postcolonial and decolonial rhetoric in order to argue that decolonizing publicity is essential for developing a decolonizing orientation toward rhetoric. 14 Third, I turn toward environmental decisionmaking literature to suggest that centering theories of settler colonialism in this literature may re-invigorate scholarly understandings of the public and public participation, allowing for the development of different models for participation that challenge settler colonialism in environmental decision-making. 39 2.1 Settler Colonialism and Decolonization Scholarship on settler colonialism and decolonization works to both unveil the processes through which settler society works to eliminate and replace Indigenous peoples, and develop tactics for undermining these structures. 15 Patrick E. Wolfe argues that “settler colonialism destroys to replace” Indigenous people with settlers. 16 The settler colonial project, Wolfe argues, employs both genocide and assimilation to support settler replacement. 17 Genocide functions to eliminate Indigenous people to make way for settler occupation, while assimilation serves to incorporate Indigenous people into settler society, supporting settler claims of belonging. Thus, both exclusion and inclusion function as tools of settler colonialism; exclusion serves to mark Indigenous people as targets of genocide, while inclusion becomes justification for policies of forced assimilation. Scholars in Indigenous studies have taken up and expanded Wolfe’s concept of settler colonialism, which is widely recognized as an apt description of the form of colonization affecting Indigenous peoples in the North American continent. 18 Central to decolonization is the work of undermining these structures, seeking pragmatic strategies for returning colonized territories to Indigenous peoples, and restoring space for Indigenous people to engage in self-determination and cultural practice. 19 Thus, scholarship committed to decolonization must prioritize the production of approaches that can dismantle the structures of settler colonialism and bring about the end of settler occupation. One strategy for doing so is the unveiling of settler narratives that naturalize colonialism. A number of scholars thus work to highlight the centrality of settler colonialism to American society, and to de-naturalize settler narratives that obfuscate that centrality. Byrd, for example traces the rhetorical erasure and absorption of 40 Indigenous histories, identities, and presences that functions to legitimate settler presence. 20 She argues that the histories of transit through which we come to be in spaces are central to understanding our relationships to structures of settler colonialism, and thus our responsibilities in responding to settler colonialism. Similarly, Linda Tuhiwai Smith argues that reading history through an Indigenous lens is an essential project of decolonizing scholarship. 21 She suggests that these genealogies serve the purpose of destabilizing the rhetorics that enable settler colonialism to continue. Another strategy, which Leanne Betasamoke Simpson terms “generative refusal,” calls for the rejection of multicultural inclusion in the settler state, and suggests that scholars and activists invested in decolonization must demand that Indigenous knowledges and practices be central to all alternatives. 22 Likewise, Audra Simpson (Kahnawake Mowhawk) highlights Kahnawake refusal of settler authority as a productive tactic for establishing and maintaining Indigenous sovereignty in the face of attempted colonial incursions. 23 Refusal thus functions as a way of challenging the dialectic between inclusion and exclusion that supports settler colonial replacement. It functions to illuminate the ways that forced assimilation, imposed citizenship, and other apparently inclusionary policies serve not to protect Indigenous people but to further the project of elimination. Furthermore, refusal is a radical act of resistance against settler occupation of Indigenous territories that can contribute to decolonization via the return of Indigenous territories and restoration of Indigenous practices. 24 Centering Indigenous perspectives and refusing settler colonial metrics of inclusion and exclusion are valuable strategies for displacing colonial understandings of publics. By rejecting settler conceptualizations of publicity, rhetorical scholarship can 41 contribute to an expansion of what Kevin Bruyneel calls “the third space of sovereignty,” in which Indigenous agency is celebrated and settler colonial policies are challenged. 25 Both of these tactics provide frameworks for highlighting the ways that the production of an American public is predicated on settler colonialism. Additionally, these frameworks can contribute to other ways of organizing social relationships and structuring participation in environmental decision-making that do not rely on inclusion in a colonial public. 2.2 Decolonial Rhetoric A number of scholars have highlighted ways in which inclusion functions to uphold White settler modernity. Much of this work troubles the centrality of citizenship to rhetorical studies. Josue David Cisneros, for example, points to immigrant activists’ work to challenge citizenship discourses by positing themselves as neither wholly interior nor wholly exterior to the American public. 26 This work, he suggests, illuminates the fissures in colonial discourses of citizenship and undermines these rhetorics. Similarly, Ana Milena Ribero argues that citizenship is an inherently unstable category that morphs to support the needs of Whiteness in any given moment and calls for decolonial scholars to unsettle citizenship as a marker of national belonging. 27 Of particular note in this literature is Karma Chávez’s call to move “beyond inclusion,” which argues that rhetorical scholarship that treats inclusion within the American citizenry as the ideal outcome of social justice work is inherently flawed. 28 Chávez suggests that, if rhetorical scholarship is to undermine colonialism, it must not become more inclusive but instead become something entirely different. She calls for rhetoricians to challenge the 42 foundational assumptions of our field, and to pursue research that troubles the public/private dichotomy, seeks out understandings of rhetoric not rooted in persuasion, and recognizes that much important rhetorical resistance for marginalized groups occurs outside the bounds of formal spaces. It is particularly important that white scholars heed the calls of Chávez and other scholars of color in our work. Our continued domination of this field, and our overwhelming reliance on theoretical and methodological approaches that are rooted in whiteness, serve as tangible barriers to these necessary transformations. My goal in this dissertation is not to assert a definitive solution to the problems presented by inclusion and publicity in rhetoric, but rather to amplify the voices of scholars and communities of color – particularly the Native people and nations involved in the fight to protect Bears Ears – in order to highlight the possibilities for transformation that their work offers. This work highlights the necessity of moving beyond what has historically been central to rhetorical scholarship – normative notions of citizenship, inclusion, and persuasion as the sole focus of scholarship. Much of the rhetorical cannon is rooted in theories of the public sphere that often fail to account for the ways that inclusion and exclusion both serve settler colonialism. A number of scholars have highlighted the ways that both inclusion in and exclusion from the American public has functioned to undermine Indigenous sovereignty. Jason Edward Black, for example, highlights the way citizenship has been deployed to facilitate the seizure of millions of acres of Indigenous territory through the passage of the Dawes act. 29 Similarly, Danielle Endres, argues that when Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute people were lumped into the broader American public during the public comment period for the proposed Yucca Mountain 43 nuclear waste facility, their ability to participate fully was constrained. 30 Vine Deloria, Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux) suggests that this inclusion is used in conjunction with exclusion to fluidly re-define Indigenous people’s relationships to the American public in order to serve the whims of settlers. 31 Black identifies this “plenary rhetoric” as a process through which Indigenous people are repeatedly re-positioned by colonial society in order to deny both rights and protections granted by the colonial state and self-determination outside of the state. 32 Similarly, Bruyneel argues that conflict over Indigenous people’s relationship to the United States constitutes an attempt by the US government to constrain Indigenous political action, and that Indigenous resistance that simultaneously demands rights from the colonial government while also insisting on and enacting self-determination constitutes a “third space of sovereignty.” 33 This literature highlights the necessity of re-orienting rhetoric’s stance toward publicity. Rhetorical scholarship that is committed to decolonization, I argue, must begin by asking how the category of the public is rhetorically and materially constructed through settler colonialism, and pursuing alternative conceptualizations that unsettle the colonial nation-state as the organizing structure of political engagement and rhetorical agency. Rather than producing rhetorical theories that legitimate the governing bodies of the United States, we must look for ways that rhetoric might challenge the legitimacy of these structures. This involves de-centering citizenship, questioning the settler assumption of access to public space, and imagining modes of participation in public discourse that reject the structures of settler society. 44 2.3 Public Participation in Environmental Decision-Making The literature on public participation in environmental decision-making discusses ways in which formal decision-making processes include or exclude members of the public who are affected by the decisions being made. Much of this literature supports procedural environmental justice – justice at the level of the political processes surrounding environmental issues—as a key component for public participation. This scholarship begins from the standpoint that those affected by environmental decisions ought to have a role in the decision-making process. Scholars in this field thus critique barriers to public participation in environmental decision making, as well as to suggest alternative processes that could address these barriers. A substantial portion of this literature is concerned with the ways that systems of oppression manifest in environmental decision-making processes. Robert Cox, for example, highlights the way that marginalized voices are constructed as “indecorous” in public participation settings, thus justifying their exclusion from decision-making processes. 34 Thus, Cox connects procedural justice in environmental contexts to broader structures of Whiteness that depend on civility to be maintained. 35 Similarly, Susan Senecah deploys voice as a frame for understanding public participation, suggesting that participation processes must incorporate three elements, which she terms “the trinity of voice,” if they are to be just. 36 Participants, she argues, must have sufficient access to participation spaces and relevant information, standing to partake in relevant conversations in the eyes of decision-makers, and influence over process outcomes. Any of these three elements may be undermined by structures of oppression, resulting in unjust participatory processes. 45 In addition to broad questions of social justice, scholars of public participation in environmental decision-making attend to how specific frameworks may function to silence marginalized voices in decision-making processes. William Kinsella, for example, highlights the ways that educational access may constrain marginalized communities’ participation in highly technical discussions where expertise is prioritized. 37 Endres responds to Kinsella’s article by suggesting that community members participate in “public scientific argument,” which engages in the genre conventions of scientific argument produced by experts as a way of navigating public participation processes. 38 Similarly, Leah Sprain and Lydia Reinig argue that, while expertise discourses often contribute to hierarchies that constrain participation, lay publics may deploy expertise discourses to argue for local expertise as a deliberative resource. 39 Other scholars frame these processes not in terms of expertise, but in terms of neoliberalism. Cox, for example, traces the effects of NAFTA and other free trade agreements on environmental participation processes, suggesting that the prioritization of economic growth and international trade undermines meaningful public participation in decision-making processes. 40 Similarly, Peter Bsumek, Jennifer Schneider, Steve Schwarze, and Jennifer Peeples trace coal industry rhetoric in order to argue that neoliberalism has contributed to a “crisis of voice” in which corporations create the appearance of public support through advocacy campaigns. 41 A handful of environmental participation scholars question whether extant public participation structures even have the capacity for procedural justice. Judith Hendry, for example, suggests that the public comment periods frequently used to meet federal requirements for public participation often take on a “decide-announce-defend” model, in 46 which decision-makers use the public comment period to advocate for decisions that have already been made, rather than to engage public concerns and inform decisions. 42 Similarly, Gregg Walker questions whether public participation is even possible in the context of public hearings and public comment periods, arguing that public participation necessitates shared “decision space” in which members of the public are not merely involved by sharing opinions with decision-makers, but are actively included by being granted some level of decision-making authority. 43 I have argued elsewhere that extant regulatory frameworks are not sufficient to promote distributive or procedural justice, and that they may in fact encourage decision-makers to make unjust siting decisions. 44 While these scholars have made important moves to build a framework for public participation in environmental decision-making, this literature primarily assumes that all stakeholders in these decision-making processes share a position within the American public. This, however, ignores colonial nature of all environmental decision-making in the context of settler institutions. If the field of environmental communication is to commit to decolonization, Indigenous voices and concerns must be central to all decision-making processes. White scholars must recognize the ways that our work replicates settler colonialism and commit to an ongoing self-critical process of challenging colonial logics in the processes we study and in our own research practices. 45 This necessitates shifting our understanding of the public to account for the ways settler colonialism has obfuscated Indigenous perspectives and to re-center Indigenous authority. A decolonizing approach to environmental decision-making would necessitate not only inviting and attending to public input on environmental decisions but considering 47 the ways that environmental decisions contribute to settler destruction of colonized territories, harm Indigenous people’s health, safety, and ability to engage in cultural practices, and erase continued Indigenous presence in the face of centuries of colonial violence. While extant decision-making processes include requirements for considering environmental justice, those structures may also produce increased harm. For example, during the scoping process for the Dakota Access Pipeline, decision-makers responded to concern from residents of the primarily White city of Bismarck, ND, where the pipeline was originally planned to cross the Missouri River, by re-routing the pipeline to cross the river just outside of the Standing Rock Reservation. 46 This decision demonstrates the ways that extant public participation processes structure publicity in ways that prioritize the needs and desires of settlers. A decolonizing approach to this scoping process would have begun by consulting Indigenous nations whose territories the pipeline would pass through and prioritizing their recommendations for whether and how to engage with projects in those territories. The specific manifestations of a decolonizing approach to public participation in environmental decision-making must necessarily be contextual and particular. Central to any decolonizing approach must be first listening to the specific Indigenous peoples whose territories are affected by decisions. Thus, scholarship that takes up this framework must engage with Indigenous voices at a local level and prioritize processes that align with the specificities of those particular Indigenous nations. My work expands on scholarship in environmental justice and public participation in environmental decision-making by insisting on sustained attention to settler colonialism as a structure that constrains how we understand public good, public participation, and just decision-making. Many scholars have highlighted the 48 disproportional harm environmental degradation causes for Indigenous peoples.47 Others have highlighted the rhetorical processes through which Indigenous voices have been alternately excluded from participation processes and essentialized through the trope of “the ecological Indian.”48 However, my research project turns our attention to the ways that settler colonialism is built into the fabric of environmental decision-making processes, thus ensuring both procedural and distributive injustice for Indigenous peoples. A commitment to environmental justice necessitates attending to the structures of settler colonialism that contribute to environmental degradation of colonized territories and deny Indigenous people safe, healthy, and sustainable places to “live, work, and play” in their own territories.49 This dissertation, through analyzing the Bears Ears National Monument controversy, highlights the way public participation processes sustain settler colonialism and imagines modes of participation that contribute to decolonization and decolonizing publicity. 2.4 Critical Rhetoric and Decolonizing Methodologies In order to understand the ways that settler colonialism manifests and can be challenged in the context of public participation in environmental decision-making, this dissertation will employ textual analysis of the BEITC’s proposal for the monument and the Presidential proclamations establishing and reducing the monument. I approach textual analysis through a critical rhetorical lens, by which I mean I analyze the discourses produced through the interactions between myriad rhetorical fragments, attending to the construction of power relations at play in those discourses. 50 Additionally, in keeping with Ono and Sloop’s call for critical rhetoricians to produce 49 scholarship that works toward a teleological end, I work throughout my analysis to serve the goals of decolonization by imagining conceptualizations of the public and approaches to environmental decision-making that respect and create avenues for the practice of Indigenous sovereignty. 51 I will analyze three key texts in my dissertation: the BEITC’s website, including their proposal for a national monument, the Obama proclamation establishing the monument, and the Trump proclamation reducing the size of the monument. These texts provide a valuable window into the public discourse surrounding the Bears Ears controversy and offer useful insights for understanding how conceptualizations of the public, good ways of engaging with the Bears Ears region, and appropriate decision-making and management structures are constructed by discourses surrounding public lands designation and management. This project uses abductive reasoning, which Timmermans and Tavory describe as “a continuous process of conjecturing about the world that is shaped by the solutions a researcher has ‘ready to hand.’” 52 In other words, my analysis is a process of creating an emerging understanding of public participation processes that constantly oscillates between artifact and theory. I will engage the central questions of my research with a process that is guided by my reading of the artifacts, while embracing that the theoretical frameworks outlined above are central to that reading. Timmerans and Tavory argue that approaching research with an ethic of open-endedness that comes from induction and grounded theory approaches, while also recognizing the value that a cultivated knowledge base can provide in guiding research “provides a way to conceive of abduction as socially located, positional knowledge that can be deepened and marshaled for theory construction.” 53 Thus, theories of settler colonialism, decolonization, public 50 participation in environmental decision-making, and rhetoric serve as lenses that guide the kinds of questions my research seeks to answer, the texts that I choose, and the ways in which I engage those texts. In following with the calls of scholars of decolonization, my method begins by centering Indigenous voices of Bears Ears through the texts I analyze and the theories I use to guide my readings of those texts. Thus, my analysis works to listen to and understand the perspectives of Hopi, Diné, Ute, and Zuni people whose public activism must inform approaches to environmental decision-making at Bears Ears. As a part of this process, I sought permission from the Native authors and organizations whose texts I analyze in this dissertation and, when possible, engaged in conversation with those authors. This permission-seeking is one way in which I attempted to engage with the Native people whose work I study and attend to their needs and concerns, even in the face of barriers to collaboration posed by COVID-19. At the same time, seeking permission from Native authors allowed me the opportunity to have conversations with those authors that served important roles in understanding the political, social, and historical context of the fight to protect Bears Ears. Although the BEITC was not available to discuss the project (in large part because of the constraints on time and resources posed by the COVID-19 pandemic), Jaqueline Keeler (Diné/Dakota), editor of Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears, graciously agreed to discuss her book and my project via zoom. Ultimately, I do not include Edge of Morning in my analysis because I was not able to contact the other authors whose work is included in the book. However, my conversation with Jaqueline Keeler is cited throughout the dissertation, and provided valuable insight that was influential throughout the writing of 51 this project. 54 Additionally, I draw from Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies, engaging three of the projects that she argues are central to research that contributes to decolonization: Reading, Indigenizing, and Envisioning. 55 Reading, as a decolonizing research method, involves tracing a genealogy of Western society that highlights the role of settler colonialism in establishing the present. These historical accounts, Tuhiwai Smith argues, are crucial for understanding historical and contemporary manifestations of settler colonialism and challenging settler rhetorics. Thus, my dissertation seeks to trace a history of environmental decision-making in the United States that illuminates the ways public lands designations have been used to dispossess Indigenous people and have subsequently worked to preclude Indigenous participation in decision-making processes. Of Indigenizing, Smith writes: This project has two dimensions. The first one is similar to that which has occurred in literature with a centering of the landscapes, images, languages, themes, metaphors and stories in the indigenous world and the disconnecting of many of the cultural ties between the settler society and its metropolitan homeland. This project involves non-indigenous activists and intellectuals. The second aspect is more of an indigenous project. … The term centres a politics of indigenous identity and indigenous cultural action. 56 As a settler scholar, I am committed to producing work that amplifies the public activism and scholarship of Indigenous people working toward decolonization. I thus center the perspectives, needs, and desires of Hopi, Zuni, Ute, and Diné people in my analyses of the rhetoric surrounding the Bears Ears controversy. I do this in two ways. First, the documents produced by the BEITC are at the center of my analyses. While I include analysis of federal documents in order to highlights the machinations of settler colonialism in public lands and environmental decision-making processes, the central focus of this project is the work of the BEITC. Second, I have not included analyses of 52 any documents produced by Indigenous people or Indigenous-led organizations without first obtaining permission to analyze those documents. My analysis begins by establishing how the BEITC rhetorically constructs good relationships to land in relation to Bears Ears, and then moves to imagine how participation processes can be revised to align with these practices. I then turn to the question of publicity in order to illustrate how inclusion of Native people within an assumed monolithic public functions to uphold settler colonialism. I call for rhetorical scholarship that engages with the project of decolonizing publicity to attend to the work of Indigenous people both inside and outside of the academy to develop rhetorical understandings contrary to settler colonialism. Finally, I move on to questioning how the BEITC’s collaborative management plan imagines sovereignty through models that challenge settler ideologies of land ownership and settler control. Envisioning, for Tuhiwai Smith, is concerned with generating visions for the future that reject cynical or pessimistic views rooted in settler colonial narratives. Envisioning counters settler narratives such as the “vanishing race” myth that portray Indigenous people as an artifact of the past whose elimination is complete, and who thus pose no obstacle to settler belonging. 57 Envisioning works by believing decolonization is possible and developing concrete strategies for pursuing justice. In the case of this dissertation, I am concerned with envisioning alternative decision-making processes that open more avenues for Indigenous people to practice authority over their own territories. It is my goal that future environmental decision-making processes be rooted in Indigenous practices and respect the authority of Indigenous people over the desire of settlers to participate in and control decision-making processes. 53 This dissertation responds to calls from the BEITC and UDB for settlers to support Indigenous people’s efforts to protect Bears Ears by amplifying Indigenous voices and advocating for protection of the region. For this reason, I have chosen a research design that centers the public-facing work already done by the BEITC and individual members of the Five Tribes, highlighting how rhetorical research and formal processes for public participation in environmental decision-making can be altered to better attend to decolonization. By undertaking these projects, this dissertation engages with how environmental decision-making processes can support the ultimate project of “the returning of lands, rivers, and mountains to their indigenous owners.” 58 Strategies like co-management, strategic engagements with colonial frames of public participation, and participation through other extant formal avenues, such as lawsuits, are responses to settler colonialism that work through the channels currently in place to move toward decolonization. They are important tactics that chip away at the structures of settler colonialism. Together, the methodological and theoretical approaches outlined in this project lend themselves to analysis that begins from the position that Indigenous people should be the authorities on how to interact with their territories 54 2.5 Notes 1 Chávez, “Beyond Inclusion”; Josue David Cisneros, “(Re)Bordering the Civic Imaginary: Rhetoric, Hybridity, and Citizenship in La Gran Marcha,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 97, no. 1 (2011): 26–49, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2010.536564. 2 Kirisitina Sailiata, “Decolonization,” in Native Studies Keywords, ed. Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Andrea Smith, and Michelle H. Raheja (Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2015), 301. 3 It is important to note here the prominent critique of using terms like decolonization and decolonizing as a metaphor. I argue that “decolonizing publicity” is not a metaphor for merely inserting a discussion of settler colonialism and decolonization into conversations about publicity. Rather, I call for scholars to recognize and challenge the material ways in which settler notions of publicity contribute to the continued dispossession and disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples, and to develop ways of approaching decisionmaking the reject settler colonial publicity. Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” 4 Gerard A. Hauser, “Civil Society and the Principle of the Public Sphere,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 31, no. 1 (1998): 19–40. 5 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry Into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1989). 6 Robert Asen, “Seeking the ‘Counter,’ in Counterpublics,” Communication Theory 10, no. 4 (November 2000): 424–46, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2885.2000.tb00201.x; Seyla Benhabib, ed., Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996); Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56–80, https://doi.org/10.2307/466240; Iris Marion Young, “Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy.,” in Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, ed. Seyla Benhabib (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 120–35. 7 Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere.” 8 e.g. Asen, “Seeking the ‘Counter,’ in Counterpublics”; Phaedra C. Pezzullo, “Resisting ‘National Breast Cancer Awareness Month’: The Rhetoric of Counterpublics and Their Cultural Performances,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 89, no. 4 (November 2003): 345– 65, https://doi.org/10.1080/0033563032000160981. 9 Jodi A. Byrd, The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism (Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota Press, 2011); Walter D. Mignolo, “Delinking: The Rhetoric of Modernity, the Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of de-Coloniality,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2–3 (2007): 449–514, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601162647; Walter D. Mignolo, “Epistemic 55 Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom,” Theory, Culture & Society 26, no. 7–8 (December 1, 2009): 159–81, https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409349275; Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” Cultural Studies 21, no. 2/3 (March 2007): 168–78, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380601164353. 10 Byrd, The Transit of Empire. 11 Tiara R. Na’puti, “Speaking of Indigeneity: Navigating Genealogies against Erasure and #RhetoricSoWhite,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 105, no. 4 (October 2, 2019): 495– 501, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2019.1669895. 12 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” 13. 13 Kyle Powys Whyte, “Indigenous Experience, Environmental Justice and Settler Colonialism,” in Nature and Experience: Phenomenology and the Environment, ed. Bryan E. Bannon (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), 157–74. 14 I use the terms “decolonial” and “decolonizing” slightly differently throughout this project. I understand decolonial scholarship as primarily rooted in the work of Walter Mignlolo, Aníbal Quijano and other scholars of Latin American colonization, who understand resistance to colonization primarily through an epistemological lens. Much rhetorical scholarship is rooted in this decolonial framework. By contrast, I conceptualize of decolonization as being a project that primarily centers “the repatriation of Indigenous land and life,” primarily grounded in literature from Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) While there is certainly significant overlap between these two projects, I use these terms distinctly in order to distinguish between two bodies of literature with unique origins and political commitments, and in order to highlight the lack of attention to scholarship from NAIS in the field of rhetoric, even among prominent scholars of decolonial rhetoric. See: Mignolo, “Delinking”; Mignolo, “Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom”; Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor”; Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality.” 15 Eve Tuck and Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández, “Curriculum, Replacement, and Settler Futurity,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 29, no. 1 (June 18, 2013), https://journal.jctonline.org/index.php/jct/article/view/411; Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387–409, https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240. 16 Patrick Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (2001): 388, https://doi.org/10.2307/2692330. 17 18 Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference.” e.g. Scott Lauria Morgensen, Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization (Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota Press, 2011); Audra Simpson, “Settlement’s Secret,” Cultural Anthropology 26, no. 2 (May 2011): 205–17, 56 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2011.01095.x; Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández, “Curriculum, Replacement, and Settler Futurity,” June 18, 2013; Eve Tuck, Marcia McKenzie, and Kate McCoy, “Land Education: Indigenous, Post-Colonial, and Decolonizing Perspectives on Place and Environmental Education Research,” Environmental Education Research 20, no. 1 (January 2, 2014): 1–23, https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2013.877708; Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” 19 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” 20 Byrd, The Transit of Empire. 21 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies. 22 Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance (Minneapolis, MN: U of Minnesota Press, 2017), 233. 23 Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014). 24 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” 25 Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty. 26 Cisneros, “(Re)Bordering the Civic Imaginary: Rhetoric, Hybridity, and Citizenship in La Gran Marcha.” 27 Ana Milena Ribero, “Citizenship,” in Decolonizing Rhetoric and Composition Studies, ed. Iris D. Ruiz and Raúl Sánchez (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 31–45. 28 Chávez, “Beyond Inclusion.” 29 Jason Edward Black, American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment (Jackson, MS: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2015). 30 Danielle Endres, “The Rhetoric of Nuclear Colonialism: Rhetorical Exclusion of American Indian Arguments in the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Siting Decision,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6, no. 1 (March 1, 2009): 39–60, https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420802632103. 31 Vine Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988). 32 Jason Edward Black, “Plenary Rhetoric in Indian Country: The Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock Case and the Codification of a Weakened Native Character,” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 11–12, no. 1 (2008): 59–80, https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2009.10597380. 57 33 Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty. 34 J Robert Cox, “Reclaiming the ‘Indecorous’ Voice: Public Participation by LowIncome Communities in Environmental Decision-Making,” in Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial Conference on Communication and the Environment, 1999, 21–31. 35 Davi Johnson, “Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Birmingham Campaign as Image Event on JSTOR,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10, no. 1 (2007): 1–25. 36 Susan Senecah, “The Trinity of Voice: The Role of Practical Theory in Planning and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Environmental Participatory Processes,” in Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making, ed. Stephen P. Depoe, John W. Delicath, and Marie-France Aepli Elsenbeer (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004), 13–34. 37 William J Kinsella, “Public Expertise: A Foundation for Citizen Participation in Energy and Environmental Decisions,” in Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making, ed. Stephen P. Depoe, John W. Delicath, and MarieFrance Aepli Elsenbeer (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004), 83–98. 38 Danielle Endres, “Science and Public Participation: An Analysis of Public Scientific Argument in the Yucca Mountain Controversy,” Environmental Communication 3, no. 1 (2009): 53, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524030802704369. 39 Leah Sprain and Lydia Reinig, “Citizens Speaking as Experts: Expertise Discourse in Deliberative Forums,” Environmental Communication 12, no. 3 (April 3, 2018): 357–69, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2017.1394894. 40 J Robert Cox, “‘Free Trade’ and the Eclipse of Civil Society: Barriers to Transparency and Public Participation in NAFTA and the Free Trade Area of the Americas,” in Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision-Making, ed. Stephen P. Depoe, John W. Delicath, and Marie-France Aepli Elsenbeer (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), 201–22. 41 Peter K. Bsumek et al., “Corporate Ventriloquism: Corporate Advocacy, the Coal Industry, and the Appropriation of Voice,” in Voice and Environmental Communication, ed. Jennifer Peeples and Stephen Depoe (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014), 21– 43, https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137433749_2. 42 Judith Hendry, “Decide, Announce, Defend: Turning the NEPA Process into an Advocacy Tool Rather than a Decision-Making Tool,” in Communication and Public Participation in Environmental Decision Making, ed. Stephen Depoe, John W. Delicath, and Marie-France Aepli Elsenbeer (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004), 99–112. 43 Gregg B Walker, “The Roadless Areas Initiative as National Policy: Is Public Participation an Oxymoron?,” in Communication and Public Participation in 58 Environmental Decision-Making, ed. Stephen P. Depoe, John W. Delicath, and MarieFrance Aepli Elsenbeer (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2004), 119. 44 Johnson, “The Dakota Access Pipeline and the Breakdown of Participatory Processes in Environmental Decision-Making,” April 3, 2019. 45 George Yancy, ed., White Self-Criticality beyond Anti-Racism: How Does It Feel to Be a White Problem? (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015). 46 Johnson, “The Dakota Access Pipeline and the Breakdown of Participatory Processes in Environmental Decision-Making,” April 3, 2019. 47 e.g. Noriko Ishiyama, “Environmental Justice and American Indian Tribal Sovereignty: Case Study of a Land–Use Conflict in Skull Valley, Utah,” Antipode 35, no. 1 (January 2003): 119–39, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00305; Winona LaDuke, “Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Security: Challenges and Strategies for This Millennium.” (Bemidji State University, April 16, 2008); Jeremy John Escobar Torio and Chui-Ling Tam, “Indigenous Power Struggles in the Peruvian Amazon: A Spatio-Cultural Analysis of Communication,” Environmental Communication 12, no. 4 (May 19, 2018): 480–94, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2017.1371055; Tracy Brynne Voyles, Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015); Kyle Powys Whyte, “Justice Forward: Tribes, Climate Adaptation and Responsibility,” Climatic Change 120, no. 3 (2013): 517–30; Whyte, “Indigenous Experience, Environmental Justice and Settler Colonialism”; Eric K Yamamoto and Jen-L W Lyman, “Racializing Environmental Justice,” n.d., 51. 48 Endres, “The Rhetoric of Nuclear Colonialism”; Danielle Endres, “Sacred Land or National Sacrifice Zone: The Role of Values in the Yucca Mountain Participation Process,” Environmental Communication 6, no. 3 (September 2012): 328–45, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2012.688060; Danielle Endres, “Animist Intersubjectivity as Argumentation: Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute Arguments Against a Nuclear Waste Site at Yucca Mountain,” Argumentation 27, no. 2 (May 2013): 183–200, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-012-9271-x; Taylor N. Johnson, “‘The Most Bombed Nation on Earth’: Western Shoshone Resistance to the Nevada National Security Site,” Atlantic Journal of Communication 26, no. 4 (August 8, 2018): 224–39, https://doi.org/10.1080/15456870.2018.1494177; Shephard III Kretch, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999); Casey R. Schmitt, “Invoking the Ecological Indian: Rhetoric, Culture, and the Environment,” in Voice and Environmental Communication, ed. Jennifer Peeples and Stephen Depoe (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 66–87. 49 Patrick Novotny, Where We Live, Work and Play: The Environmental Justice Movement and the Struggle for a New Environmentalism (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2000), https://smile.amazon.com/Where-Live-Work-PlayEnvironmentalism/dp/0275960269. 59 50 Mckerrow, “Critical Rhetoric.” 51 Kent A. Ono and John M. Sloop, “The Critique of Vernacular Discourse,” Communication Monographs 62, no. 1 (March 1995): 19–46, https://doi.org/10.1080/03637759509376346. 52 Stefan Timmermans and Iddo Tavory, “Theory Construction in Qualitative Research: From Grounded Theory to Abductive Analysis,” Sociological Theory 30, no. 3 (September 1, 2012): 172, https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275112457914. 53 Timmermans and Tavory, 172. 54 Keeler, Personal Communication. 55 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies. 56 Smith, 146. 57 Elvira Pulitano, Toward a Native American Critical Theory (Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska Press, 2003); Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” 58 Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 155. CHAPTER 3 TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO SETTLER ENVIRONMENTALISMS Central to the conflict over Bears Ears National Monument is a difference in the fundamental worldviews that structure approaches to environmental issues. Understanding the ways in which settler conceptualizations of land diverge from those conceptualizations forwarded by Indigenous people is a prerequisite to developing ethical environmentalisms that divest from settler colonialism. In her introduction to Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears, Jaqueline Keeler writes, “In a colonial enterprise, profitability is the measure by which all endeavors and even the people and the land itself, are valued. In Dakota culture, it was our relationships that were the focus and considered the source of wealth, life, and, ultimately, true humanity.” 1 Throughout the book, Keeler returns to these diverging values to explain the barriers that Indigenous people fighting to protect Bears Ears have faced when attempting to work with local, state, and federal governments. She argues that the extractive industries that pose an existential threat to the Bears Ears landscape are rooted in settler logics of consumption and profit that are irreconcilable with Indigenous ways of knowing and being with land. These logics are rooted in an extracitivist mindset, which Naomi Klein defines 61 as a “nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship with the earth.” 2 Extractivism sets up a hierarchical relationship between humans and the natural world in which the natural world serves merely as a resource for human consumption, as opposed to a reciprocal relationship in which humans and the natural world care for one another. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson expands this concept, applying it not only to settler relationships with the natural world, but settler relationships with Indigenous cultures as well. She argues that the extractivist mindset treats Native cultures as a source of knowledge to be extracted without care for the people from whom that knowledge is derived. 3 Extractivism is inherently tied up with capitalist ideologies that value profit above the needs of people and the natural world. An extractivist settler orientation toward land is made visible in Utah Representative Rob Bishop’s statement that “People say public lands belong to all people. Well, I’d like them to tell me which part is mine because I want to sell it.” 4 Bishsop’s vehement opposition to public lands protection is underwritten by settler framing of land as individual property and resource that is at odds with the understandings of land forwarded by the BEITC and other Indigenous environmental organizations. His statements highlight the relationship between these settler logics and environmental degradation via extractive activities that center profit over the wellbeing of ecosystems, land, and people. 5 This is not to say, however, that settler logics of land as resource or property are unique to anti-environmentalist rhetorics. Settler environmentalist movements have a notable history of reifying settler colonialism in activism. 6 Indeed, Woody Guthrie’s “This land is your land” has become a kind of rallying cry for environmentalist and public lands advocates, including being featured in 62 the trailer for a recent Patagonia documentary about public lands, with very little analysis of the way Guthrie’s lyrics reproduce settler claims to belonging in colonized territories. 7 In the case of Bears Ears, this is perhaps most visible in the ways that White recreationalists have engaged in cultural destruction and settler ownership when visiting or talking about Bears Ears. 8 Many recreational activities – such as rock climbing at sacred sites or hiking with metal-tipped hiking poles (which contribute to soil erosion)—pose physical threats to Bears Ears. 9 Additionally, discourses surrounding recreation that posits Bears Ears as untouched and unclaimed wilderness that belongs to recreationalist members of “the public” reproduces settler logics of “terra nulius” which justify settler claims to belonging or ownership. 10 Furthermore, environmentalism rooted in recreational relationships to the natural world may actually fuel “green consumerism” that reproduces the environmental harms of capitalism. 11 Similarly, corporations may co-opt natural or historical sites with importance to Indigenous people as a way to sell products or experiences. 12 In this chapter, I argue that environmentalist scholars and activists must engage meaningfully with scholarship in Indigenous and settler colonial studies that theorize land outside of the settler property-resource-profit model. While models of participation that emphasize the collective benefits of protecting the environment and challenge the profit-driven approaches preferred by extractive industries are important, they are insufficient if they do not reckon with their own grounding in settler logics of land. Thus, this chapter proceeds in three parts. First, I examine extant scholarship in Indigenous studies on land. Here, I argue that settler rhetorics of land imbue land with death, thus justifying settler expansion, both through the development of extractive 63 industries and through destructive recreational practices. I juxtapose these rhetorics with Indigenous frameworks for understanding land that emphasize reciprocity and responsibility. Second, I analyze documents produced by the BEITC in order to highlight how Indigenous communities with ties to Bears Ears frame the region’s land as full of life. Finally, I suggest that unsettling the property-resource-profit conceptualization of land is a prerequisite for developing processes that result in longterm environmental protections. 3.1 Land and Settler Colonialism in Extractivist and Environmentalist Discourses Land is a central analytic for both Indigenous studies and settler colonial studies literature. As Stephanie Nohelani Teves (Kānaka Maoli), Andrea Smith, and Michelle H. Raheja (Seneca) argue, “Land has both material and metaphorical power for Native communities because many indigenous cosmologies are inextricably linked to their land bases. The importance of land stretches far beyond its role as the space on which human activity takes place; for Natives it is a significant source of literal and figurative power.” 13 Attending to conceptualizations of land is thus essential for engaging meaningfully with scholarship on settler colonialism and decolonization, as well as for understanding movements for decolonization. 14 Focusing on land is useful for highlighting the mechanisms through which settler colonialism and decolonization function. The occupation and claiming of land by non-Indigenous people is a central defining factor that delineates settler colonialism from other forms of colonialism and imperialism. 15 Indeed, Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang argue that, 64 within settler colonialism, the most important concern is land/water/air/subterranean earth (land, for shorthand, in this article.) Land is what is most valuable, contested, required. This is both because the settlers make Indigenous land their new home and a source of capital, and also because the disruption of Indigenous relationships to land represents a profound epistemic, ontological, cosmological violence. 16 Similarly, Patrick E. Wolfe locates land as the central mechanism through which settler colonialism occurs, arguing that “settler colonialism seeks to replace the natives on their land rather than extract surplus value by mixing their labor with a colony’s natural resources.” 17 This process of replacement involves both genocidal violence and assimilationism in order to facilitate settler claims of nativism and belonging. 18 Furthermore, attending to relationships to land is essential for understanding the specificities of decolonization. Tuck and Yang have defined decolonization as “the repatriation of Indigenous land and life.” 19 They argue that, in addition to the resurgence of Indigenous practices, the return of Indigenous territory to Indigenous people is an essential element of decolonization. Numerous scholars have expanded on Tuck and Yang’s argument, suggesting that decolonization necessitates attention to Indigenous people’s unique territorial claims, and that these claims differentiate decolonization from other movements for social justice. 20 Many have argued that repatriation of Indigenous life is impossible without the return of land, noting that relationships to land are central to Indigeneity itself. 21 Haunani-Kay Trask (Kānaka Maoli), for example, contextualizes Hawaiian Indigeneity as “characterized by an indigenous way of caring for the land, called mālama ‘āina” (emphasis original). 22 Similarly, Audra Simpson argues that accounts of land are central to Indigenous life, arguing that rhetorical formations of land constitute “a historical perceptibility that empowered possibilities of self- and territorial possession in the present.” 23 Thus, a 65 focus on land is crucial for understanding struggles for decolonization. For example, recent movements for decolonization have deployed social media as a site of resistance, utilizing the hashtag #LandBack to bring attention to the centrality of land to decolonization. 24 This is not to say that land is universally the focus of movements for or scholarship regarding decolonization. Numerous scholars have emphasized the necessity of attending not only to land but also to the resurgence of Indigenous lifeways. Scholars like Kevin Bruyneel, Gerald Vizenor (Anishinaabe), Joanne Barker (Lenape), Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith have highlighted Indigenous resurgence in the context of governance, kinship structures, interpersonal relationships, gender and sexuality, religion, and other practices as important elements of decolonization in addition to the return of land. 25 A number of scholars have highlighted how environmental decision-making processes that exclude Indigenous knowledge and practices reproduce both settler colonial violence and environmental harm. 26 Thus, resurgences of Indigenous lifeways are not mutually exclusive with (indeed, they are generally strengthened by) land repatriation, but they necessitate attending to the ways that settler colonialism functions both through dispossession and removal and through the criminalization and suppression of Indigenous life. 66 3.2 White Settler Colonial Studies, Land, and the Erasure of Settler Colonial Violence Tiffany Lethabo King, however, challenges the focus on land in settler colonial studies, arguing that terms related to land often function euphemistically to paper over the genocidal violence of settler colonialism. She suggests that, particularly in White settler colonial studies, “invocations of settlement, land, clearing, and territory efface the violence of conquest.” 27 This effacement, she argues, is an instantiation of what Tuck and Yang term “settler moves to innocence,” allowing White scholars to study settler colonialism without ever meaningfully contending with the death that enables settlement. 28 King writes that settler colonial studies “must contend with the ways that its own discourse of settler and settlement disavows the violent ways that settler human self-actualization depends on the most violent forms of Black and Indigenous death.” 29 Particularly in the context of North America, King suggests that settler colonial studies can be productively expanded by grappling with scholarship emerging from Black Studies on death and violence. She calls for this expansion to shift away from the analytic of settlement toward the analytic of conquest, writing “conquest is a larger conceptual and material terrain than settler colonialism and far more suited for the regional/hemispheric particularities of coloniality in the Americas… The uncritical adoption of settler colonial discourses from an oceanic context enacts a discursive shift that privileges a theoretical and ethical engagement with settlers, settlement, and settler colonial relations. Together, this works to displace conversations about genocide, slavery, and the violent project of making the human (humanism).” 30 King’s argument is a valuable reminder that a focus on land should not come at 67 the expense of attention to the death and violence faced by Indigenous people in settler colonial contexts. I argue, however, that these two foci are not mutually exclusive. White settler scholars certainly need to avoid de-centering or erasing the violence of settler colonialism in our work. At the same time, however, we must not ignore the calls of Indigenous scholars and organizers to attend to the centrality of land in the perpetration of that violence. In addition to the ways that movements for land repatriation and the resurgence of Indigenous life benefit one another, I suggest that settler colonial logics imbue land itself with death, and that this discursive death is tied up with the material death and violence faced by Indigenous people in settler colonial contexts. Settler colonialism justifies conquest through a network of discourses about human relationships to land rooted in Whiteness. The connection between settler colonial discourses of land as dead and settler colonial justification of Indigenous death is perhaps most visible in the context of extractivist discourses that justify exposing Indigenous people to health hazards and destroying Indigenous lands in the name of economic development. 31 However, I argue that these same logics are often at play in settler environmentalist discourses surrounding wilderness, public lands, and “back to the land” movements. These logics are diametrically opposed to Indigenous theories that center land as life and emphasize responsible reciprocal relationships between humans and land. In the remainder of this section, I will sketch the contours of settler logics of land as they relate to extractivist discourses and the above-mentioned environmentalist movements. 68 3.3 Settler Discourses of Land Perhaps the most prominent analytic guiding settler conceptualizations of land is property. Settler colonialism transforms land into property through rhetorical processes grounded in producing value for Whiteness. 32 This property-ing of land is central to the construction of settler society in the United States, given that the foundational understandings of inclusion within American settler democracy were premised on White male property ownership. 33 While much attention has been paid to the harmful effects of property-ing discourses within NAIS and Critical Race Theory, less scholarship on this topic has emerged in communication. 34 One notable example is the work of rhetorician Jason Edward Black, who has argued that logics that center relations to land as property have repeatedly been used to justify the violent dispossession of Indigenous people in order to make way for settler occupation and ownership. 35 This framework posits Indigenous land as inherently available for endless settler expansion; land that has not been propertied is coded as terra nullius, just waiting for settlers to impose frameworks of property and extraction onto it. 36 These logics are particularly visible in extractivist discourses, which center settler economic expansion as the ultimate good that outweighs any environmental harm that comes from extractive industries. The property-ing of land underpins broader logics of capitalist development that promote value-extraction as the most desirable way of relating to land. 37 Thus, violently removing Indigenous people from land to make way for settler claims to ownership and resource development functions both as an end in itself (as these claims support the settler project of replacement) and as a means to extract value from the land via settler frameworks of development. 38 69 Land itself in this framework is only valued via its capacity to support settler claims to belonging or provide resources for settler economic expansion. Thus, environmental destruction is infinitely justified by the need for continued resource extraction, regardless of the costs of that expansion. While some limits may be placed on harmful development projects to protect the environmental health and comfort of settlers, these limits typically do not bar environmentally harmful activities, but merely necessitate that they be relocated away from affluent White settler communities. For example, the Dakota Access Pipeline was relocated from its original route which would have crossed the Missouri River near primarily White Bismarck, ND to just outside the Standing Rock Reservation after concerns arose about the potential threat the pipeline might pose to Bismarck’s water supply. This example highlights the ways that processes designed to facilitate public participation in environmental decision-making may actively harm Indigenous communities while operating under the guise of environmental justice and responsible decision-making 39 This Not-In-My-Back-Yard (NIMBY) mentality is well-documented and results in significant inequities in the distribution of environmental hazards, with Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) communities being most impacted. 40 Indeed, Valerie Kuletz argues that Indigenous communities and their lands (including proximal lands ) become “zones of sacrifice” whose safety and wellbeing are the casualties of activities that maintain settler society. 41 Settler conceptualizations of land as property thus function not only to promote environmental destruction, but violence against Indigenous people at the scale of the body and the community as well. Although these logics are particularly visible in the context of extractivist 70 discourses, they are not unique to anti-environmental rhetoric. Indeed, the mainstream (or, as Sandy Grande (Quechua) calls it “whitestream”) environmentalist movement reifies the settler property-ing of land in a number of contexts. 42 In this chapter, I focus on the three contexts most closely related to settler advocacy for Bears Ears: wilderness movements, public lands advocacy, and back-to-the-land movements. These three subfields of the environmentalist movement are distinct but closely related movements that challenge the logics of extractivism by arguing that land should be protected from industrial development and that human health and wellbeing benefit from environmental protections. Nevertheless, they often couch their arguments within the same settler logics of land as merely an inanimate host for human activity or object for human ownership, implicitly affirming the logics that underpin settler colonialism. Many scholars in both environmental communication and NAIS have critiqued the colonial discourses at the center of the American settler wilderness movement. 43 Carolyn Merchant, for example, highlights the ways that settlers at the dawn of the conservationist era framed Indigenous people as wild, uncivilized, and subhuman in their discourse about the establishment of wilderness parks. 44 She argues that Indigenous people were framed either as merely another part of the landscape, fully exterior to White settler society, or as a barrier to the establishment of wilderness parks that White tourists could enjoy without encountering evidence of human interference with the natural world. Both of these frames relied on a false dichotomy between untouched wilderness and civilization (as defined by settler society), which left no room for Indigenous people’s interactions with land. Additionally, the very definition of wilderness within a settler framework 71 necessitates a lack of permanent human presence. As William Cronon argues, the wilderness movement is founded on an understanding of wilderness as some wild place unsullied by human habitation. 45 Similarly, Kevin Deluca and Anne Demo argue that this framework necessitates the erasure of both historical and contemporary Indigenous presence as part and parcel of establishing wilderness areas and reifies a separation between humans and land that normalizes settler development outside of wilderness areas as a natural counterpoint to the pristine preservation of apparently untouched wilderness areas, which may be visited but never inhabited. 46 Indeed, this push for pristine wilderness areas devoid of evidence of human presence has manifested in active opposition to Indigenous movements for the repatriation of land. For example, primarily White American environmentalists have fought against movements by Bikinian communities to return to the Bikini Atoll in the 21st century after their forced removal from Bikini to make way for the US government’s cold-war atomic testing program. 47 They have framed Bikini as an empty and remote location, free from human interference since the end of the atomic testing program, that should be preserved as wilderness, rather than being returned to the Bikinian people. Ironically, it is these same rhetorics of emptiness and remoteness that the US government used to justify Bikinian removal and atomic testing in the first place. Furthermore, the early wilderness movement was heavily rooted in eugenicist ideologies, which held that the preservation of wilderness was essential for creating conditions conducive to the growth of an imagined superior Nordic race. 48 These logics tied environmentalist discourses directly to racist and colonial rhetorics aimed at fueling White supremacy. These foundations are inextricable from contemporary wilderness 72 movements; many of the proponents of these racist and colonial ideas are still held in high regard in today’s wilderness movement. For example, Edward Abbey – a proponent of wilderness preservation and anti-development “mokey-wrenching,” was known for his virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric, while at the same time referring to the dessert landscapes he was most actively associated with protecting as “Abbey’s country,” making claims to belonging and ownership that effaced his position as a settler. 49 This valorization of figureheads with records of deeply racist and colonial perspectives is one of the many shared elements of the wilderness movement and advocacy for public lands. Perhaps the most well-known, and often revered, patrons of the public lands movement in the United States is U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was highly invested in establishing a system of national parks and public lands in the United States. His commitment to public lands was intimately tied to colonial narratives about American identity rooted in the myth of the frontier. 50 Like Abbey, Roosevelt’s environmental rhetoric was deeply entrenched in racism and colonialism, and his fascination with the “frontier” was steeped in anti-Indigenous violence. Indeed, in an 1899 speech, Roosevelt stated “the chief feature of frontier life was the endless warfare between the settlers and the red men,” going on to argue that settler violence against Indigenous people was an inevitability that would be resolved only when “civilized races” (i.e. White settlers) won out. 51 Roosevelt’s dedication to creating a system of national parks, then, was not borne merely out of a desire to establish public lands as a way of protecting the environment from development, but instead an expansion of the broader settler colonial discourse of manifest destiny 73 designed to benefit settlers at the expense of Indigenous people. Public lands advocacy also frequently reproduces colonial discourses of property ownership, as evidenced by documentaries like Patagonia’s recent Public Trust, in which settler environmentalists repeatedly refer to state/federal ownership of public lands as an important mechanism for preventing industrial development. 52 While framing public lands as collectively owned may be strategic in crafting arguments against industrial development, it also replicates logics of ownership and property that ultimately continue to posit land as valuable only as it can benefit settlers. The argument merely substitutes a warrant of economic growth for a warrant of recreation or public health. This property-ing logic is ultimately not only a reproduction of settler colonial discourses, but an unsuccessful advocacy approach, as it can be re-appropriated by anti-environmentalists, as evidenced by Rob Bishop’s demand to “tell me which part is mine because I want to sell it.” 53 Additionally, public lands debates in the United States posit collective ownership as a function of the colonial state, merely re-locating ownership away from individuals or corporations to another settler institution. A number of scholars have problematized state-based solutions in the context of settler colonialism, arguing that this kind of advocacy legitimizes the settler state as a rightsgranting institution.54 Indeed, Audra Simpson demonstrates the reliance of the settler state on violence against Indigenous women and argues that the reliance on the settler state, like reliance on fossil fuels, ensures continued violence against Indigenous people and land. 55 Naomi Klein and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson make similar arguments about the relationship between fossil fuel capitalism and settler colonialism, both suggesting that a move away from economic systems that rely on extractivist 74 approaches is a necessary element of decolonization. 56 These settler logics can also be observed in the resurgence of settler back-to-theland movements, many of which claim to be radically exterior to settler society. Many of these movements have emerged in the form of 21st-century “homesteading” – both in the context of urban homesteading and in the migration of primarily upper-middle class White individuals and families from cities to rural areas to establish small farms and communes. 57 Tuck and Yang highlight the colonial underpinnings of these movements, writing “Urban homesteading, for example, is a practice of re-settling urban land in the fashion of self-styled pioneers in a mythical frontier. Not surprisingly, urban homesteading can also become a form of playing Indian, invoking Indigeneity as ‘tradition’ and claiming Indian-like spirituality while evading Indigenous sovereignty and modern presence of actual urban Native peoples.” 58 Similarly, Scott Lauria Morgensen explores the rhetorics of Queer White back-to-the-land movements, arguing that they often appropriate Indigeneity, framing Queer settlers as the rightful inheritors of Indigenous spirituality and land. 59 Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) also highlights this issue with settler back-to-the-land movements, celebrating the work of the Unsettling Klamath River project in Northern California for “blowing the lid off myriad unspoken assumptions about what it means to ‘go back’ to a land that was stolen to begin with,” and exposing “the ways in which even the most progressive and antiestablishment countercultures are rooted in white supremacy and settler privilege.” 60 These movements highlight the ways that settler conceptualizations of land permeate not only extractivist and anti-environmental rhetorics, but settler 75 environmentalist spaces as well. The failure of White environmentalists to meaningfully confront and unsettle colonial discourses in movements ultimately contributes to the continuation of the same systems that create the conditions for the environmental destruction those movements seek to challenge. Naomi Klein argues that these settler logics are inextricably linked to capitalism, so much so that environmental crisis itself is seen not as a sign of the need for radical change, but instead as an opportunity to profit. Thus, settler environmentalist movements become the homes of disaster capitalists and sustainable development programs that are doomed to fail from their inception. 61 3.4 Decolonization and Environmental Resillience Numerous scholars and activists have argued that decolonization must be an integral part of any movement that seeks to address contemporary environmental issues. Many of them suggest that centering Indigenous sovereignty, attending to Indigenous epistemologies, and transforming in response to Indigenous critique are crucial steps toward more productive environmental approaches. 62 Indeed, Traci Brynne Voyles (Diné) writes, “settler colonialism is so deeply about resources that environmental injustices, whether on Native lands or lands of other others, must always be viewed through the lens of settler colonialism. … In the context of extreme and ongoing environmental violence, decolonization cannot be imagined outside of environmental justice, and vice versa. They are twinned projects.” 63 Voyles calls for readers to understand environmental destruction as a fundamentally settler colonial project, and thus to understand decolonization as absolutely crucial to environmental movements, particularly those invested in environmental justice. Similarly, Dina Gilio-Whitaker 76 calls for decolonization to be foregrounded in environmental movements, stating “Native resistance is inextricably bound to worldviews that center not only the obvious life-sustaining forces of the natural world but also the respect accorded the natural world in relationships of reciprocity based on responsibility toward those life forms.” 64 Adopting a decolonial lens for environmental justice thus necessitates rejecting settler understandings of land that center property and resources in favor of developing responsible and reciprocal relationships with land and ecosystems, led by Indigenous people. Kyle Powys Whyte (Potawatomi) also calls decolonization a necessity of environmental justice, arguing that settler colonialism actively commits environmental injustice by disrupting human relationships with the environment rooted in Indigenous knowledge and traditions. 65 These calls to center decolonization in environmental movements aligns with the work of Indigenous scholars who call for the broader application of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). 66 TEK centers understandings of land rooted in Indigenous experience and long-term observation and develops approaches to engaging with land that emphasize responsibility and reciprocity in relationships between humans and land. As Robin Wall Kimmerer (Potawatomi) writes: traditional knowledge is woven into and is inseparable from the social and spiritual context of the culture. Traditional knowledge can rival Western science as a body of empirical information, but traditional knowledge may also extend its explanatory power beyond the strictly empirical, where science cannot go. TEK is laden with associated values, while the scientific community prides itself on data that are “value free.” TEK includes an ethic of reciprocal respect and obligations between humans and the nonhuman world. In indigenous science, nature is subject, not object. Such holistic ways of understanding the environment offer alternatives to the dominant consumptive values of Western societies. 67 Thus, centering Traditional Ecological knowledge functions both as a method of 77 survivance for Indigenous people and as a method for collecting data about the environment that is inherently rooted in an ethics of care. 68 Like Kimmerer, Vine Deloria, Jr. and Daniel Wildcat (Yuchee Creek) emphasize decolonization and Indigenous resurgence as a method for addressing environmental destruction. They critique the fetishization of “value-free, neutral, objective science of things,” arguing that Western science effaces the relationships between humans and land that are needed to establish ethical and sustainable behaviors. 69 This chapter builds on the rich and flourishing body of literature that calls for a greater emphasis on TEK in environmental movements and policy. I argue that centering Indigenous leadership and TEK is essential for moving meaningfully toward decolonization and environmental justice. 70 While there has been some study of the relationship between settler colonialism and environmental rhetorics in communication studies, I argue that more attention to this topic is needed. Furthermore, I suggest that the BEITC’s focus on Traditional Ecological Knowledge functions both as a way of centering Indigenous voices in the creation and management of the monument and as an essential corrective to settler environmental discourses rooted in the logics of property and development. The BEITC makes clear that violence against the land in the Bears Ears region is also violence against the Indigenous people with relationships to the land. Thus, their proposal for Bears Ears National Monument highlights the necessity of maintaining a focus on land as a core mechanism through which settler colonial violence occurs and can be challenged. 78 3.5 Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the BEITC’s Model for Land Management The BEITC centers Indigenous understandings of land in their call for a national monument. Their justifications for the protection of the Bears Ears landscape emphasizes life – both human life and the life of the landscape itself – as the central reason that a monument should be designated. The proposal, alongside other documents on the BEITC’s website, highlight the necessity of centering Indigenous people in the monument designation and planning process by illuminating the life that is present within the landscape, highlighting the spiritual connection between the five Tribes and Bears Ears, and insisting on the importance of TEK in caring for Bears Ears. 3.5.1 Land as Life At the center of the BEITC’s rhetoric about Bears Ears is life. The BEITC understands Bears Ears itself to be alive, an entity with as much agency and deserving of as much respect and care as any human. Indeed, in celebrating the second anniversary of the monument’s designation, Shaun Chapoose, a co-representative of the Ute Indian Tribe for the coalition, stated of Bears Ears, “it’s a living landscape. It has a pulse, it has a heartbeat.” 71 Furthermore, the BEITC highlights the lives of past, present, and future Indigenous people with ties to Bears Ears, highlighting the ways that settler destruction of Bears Ears is harmful to the ancestors who still inhabit Bears Ears, the contemporary Indigenous people who visit Bears Ears, and the future Indigenous people whose access to Bears Ears is endangered by current settler activity. In Bears Ears: A Native Perspective, Hopi Vice Chairman Alfred Lomahquahu states “It’s not just 79 because it’s land. It’s our heritage, it’s our elders. We’ve created a family based on trust. We’re working collaboratively now. It’s not just for each tribe, it’s for everyone, for next generations, for what we leave for them.” 72 This focus on life rejects settler colonial notions about land as merely a blank canvas for human activity, and also unsettles the idea that past and future humans need not be considered when making decisions about contemporary land use. The BEITC’s focus on the life within the Bears Ears landscape itself highlight the importance of developing reciprocal relationships with the land, rather than following the settler trajectory of taking from the land without regard for the possible consequences. In Bears Ears: A Native Perspective, the BEITC tells readers, “We understood this place and cared for it, relating to the earth literally as our mother who provides for us and the plants and animals to which we are related. The Bears Ears landscape is alive in our view, and must be nourished and cared for if life is to be sustained.” 73 Protecting Bears Ears, then, is not merely a utilitarian good, but instead an ethical obligation to care for the Earth as the Earth cares for people. This understanding of Bears Ears itself as alive and agentic also radically unsettles colonial understandings of land as property. Later in the same document, Ute elder Billy Mike is quoted, stating “Older Utes would say that all of San Juan County was special. That is why they never left this area. A lot of the Ute families roamed the whole county. No one really owned the land. It was as if the land owned us – the Ute people.” 74 This important connection between the Bears Ears region and the Ute people illuminates the impossibility of creating meaningful protections for the area without centering Indigenous voices. Settler understandings of land as property cannot account for Indigenous relationships 80 to land. Furthermore, to attempt to create environmental protections at Bears Ears without centering Indigenous people with connections to the area risks reifying settler colonial violence against Indigenous people by further obfuscating those connections or creating barriers to Indigenous practices within the monument. The BEITC highlights the importance of maintaining Indigenous access to the area in their mission statement, writing that their goal is: To assure that the Bears Ears area will be managed forever with the greatest environmental sensitivity and healing of the land to make it fully a place where we can be among our ancestors and their songs and wisdom and our deepest values, where the traumas of the past can be alleviated, where we can connect with the land and be healed. Protecting Bears Ears, then, is essential both for protecting the life of the land itself, and for protecting the power that the land has to heal and sustain human life. Furthermore, protecting Bears Ears is essential not only because of its importance for contemporary Native people, but past and future Indigenous people as well. The actions of settler looters and polluters responsible for destruction at Bears Ears (both extant and potential) are rooted in a worldview that attends only to the present. To steal from or vandalize ancestral sites is to treat them as devoid of life, treating the ancestors who built those sites as absent. In their proposal for the monument, the BEITC write, “the depth of our spiritual connection to these places is not widely understood, but it is true that these desecrations to our homeland, structures, implements, and gravesites – insults to the dignity of our societies and Traditional knowledge as well – wound us physically. By visiting Bears Ears, giving our prayers, and conducting our ceremonies, we heal our bodies and help heal the land itself.” Bob Manuelito, son of Headman Manuelito – whose leadership was crucial in resisting 81 settler violence in the mid-nineteenth century – expands on this idea, remembering his father’s statement that “I made a speech at Fort Sumner about ‘Iind [Life]. ‘Iind doonti’da [Life does not end, it goes on]. I wanted to teach my people to hold on to the future with all of our strength.” 75 Manuelito’s statement highlights the interconnectedness of the past, present, and future, characterizing life as a binding force between the three, rather than as a discreet phenomenon that is disconnected from other times. This focus on past and future lives is an important tool for explicating settler looting and polluting in the Bears Ears region as what Rob Nixon refers to as “slow violence” – violence that is often ignored because it occurs in a temporal scale that does not align with colonial decision calculus. 76 3.5.2 Culture as Life In addition to emphasizing the life inherent to the Bears Ears region, the BEITC also emphasizes the spiritual connection shared between the five Tribes and Bears Ears. They challenge the settler notion that looting and polluting at Bears Ears have no consequences for contemporary humans, arguing that, in addition to the harm caused to past and future Indigenous people by settler destruction of the region, contemporary Indigenous people are facing significant harm as a result of the lack of protection for Bears Ears. They argue that protecting Bears Ears is crucial for both the cultural survival of the five Tribes and for the physical survival of many Indigenous people living in the area. The BEITC frames Bears Ears as a “cultural landscape” 77 in which Indigenous people and land are inexorably connected. From this perspective, protecting Bears Ears 82 is essential for the cultural survival of the Indigenous people with ties to the region. In the BEITC’s Spring 2020 newsletter, Betsy Chapoose, the Ute Indian Tribe’s Cultural Rights and Protection Director, states that “The Ute Tribe’s culture, traditions, language, values, and world-views are born from their homelands. The water and the lands it flows through created an innate identity for the Ute people that is essential to conserving their cultural patrimony. This in turn produces an intimate and insightful connection between the Ute Tribe and the cultural landscape they live in.” 78 The newsletter goes on to argue that co-management of Bears Ears is crucial for protecting both the landscape and the cultural survival of the five Tribes. Elsewhere on their website, the BEITC expands on this argument, stating that the Bears Ears region is made up of “Native American ancestral lands that remain integral to our history, identity, and cultures today. Many Native people continue to hunt, gather medicinal herbs, and conduct ceremonies in the Bears Ears, as our ancestors have done since time immemorial.” 79 This focus on cultural survival frames the destruction at Bears Ears as violence not just against land but against people as well. The destruction of delicate ecosystems and sacred sites reproduces historical settler colonial assimilationist policies designed to suppress Native culture as a way of integrating Native people into settler society and undermining Native territorial claims. 80 In this instance, rather than imposing policies aimed at criminalizing Native religious practices, looting and pollution at Bears Ears threaten to make Native practices impossible by destroying the plants, animals, and spaces necessary for those practices. The BEITC’s work to protect Bears Ears can thus be understood as part of a larger fight for survivance. 81 The threat to Native people’s lives posed by destruction in the Bears Ears region 83 is not limited to cultural survival but extends to physical survival as well. The BEITC emphasizes the ways that some Native communities in the area rely on Bears Ears for basic necessities. On their website, the BEITC tells audiences that “because of these ongoing traditional uses, proper management of Bears Ears’ native plants and wildlife is paramount to Native American people. Tribal people depend on the Bears Ears region as both their medicine cabinet and their pantry – for food, shelter, and healing, as well as for their spiritual sustenance.” 82 This passage highlights the danger that continued destruction at Bears Ears poses: the loss of Bears Ears means the loss of essential resources that sustain the lives of Native people in the area. The website expands on this argument, noting that: Native American connections to Bears Ears aren’t just about protecting the past. Many Native Americans visit the area on a regular basis for ceremonies and to connect with their ancestors. The Navajo Nation and the White Masa Ute reservation border Bears Ears on the south and east, respectively. Navajo and Ute people frequent the land to collect herbs and medicine, forage for food (such as piñon pine nuts), gather firewood for heating and ceremonial use, and to hunt game. 83 Again, this quote highlights the importance of Bears Ears not only for the spiritual wellbeing of the five Tribes, but the physical wellbeing of local Native communities as well. These passages illustrate an important distinction between settler understandings of Bears Ears and Native perspectives. Whereas settlers – even pro-environmental settlers – might primarily understand Bears Ears as merely an empty landscape available for use (whether that use be industrial development or recreational activity), for the Native communities with ties to the region, Bears Ears is much, much more. Violence against the land at Bears Ears is thus inseparable from violence against Indigenous people. They are one and the same. To allow continued destruction of Bears 84 Ears is to ensure continued settler colonial violence against Native people in the area. In an essay published on the BEITC’s website, Robin Wall Kimmerer expands on this idea, “let us acknowledge that what we call ‘public land’ is also ancestral land, the source of life and well-being for indigenous peoples who played an integral role in maintaining its ecological vitality, producing not a ‘wilderness’ but a cultural landscape, a home.” 84 The fight to protect Bears Ears, then, highlights the necessity of maintaining a focus on land in discussions about settler colonialism. To ignore land is to ignore the spiritual and physical connections that Native peoples have with their territories, and to obfuscate the mechanisms through which settler violence occurs. Settler violence against land is violence against Native people. Furthermore, protection of land must be rooted in Indigenous relationships to land in order to overcome the threats posed both to land and people by settler colonialism. 3.5.3 Knowledge as Life These arguments about the necessity of understanding land through an analytic of life support the BEITC’s insistence on a co-management plan for the monument that centers TEK. Indigenous knowledge is essential for establishing responsible, reciprocal, and respectful approaches to caring for the land within the monument. In a particularly powerful passage of the proposal for the monument, the BEITC writes: Importantly, this proposal also requests that the President proclaim the Bears Ears National Monument to honor the worldviews of our ancestors, and Tribes today, and their relationships with this landscape. It is not a matter of romanticism or political correctness. Native people always have, and do now, conceive of and relate to the natural world in a different way than does the larger society. This subject, as personified and enriched by the Native experience at Bears Ears, has every opportunity to lead to excellent public programs and outreach as well as outstanding opportunities for scientific, historical, and 85 philosophical research by both Native and non-Native scholars and experts. 85 Co-management of the monument presents an important opportunity, the BEITC argues, for Western science to be enriched by TEK, and is a chance for the Native communities with ties to Bears Ears to share their knowledge with others who also care for the landscape. This centering of Indigenous knowledges is crucial both to counteract the violence faced by Indigenous people and to create more desirable futures in the Bears Ears region. In the Spring 2020 newsletter, Talia Boyd (Diné) argues that: The recognition and inclusion of traditional knowledge systems are needed in land management and planning, because it is nature based. Since time immemorial Indigenous peoples have found sustainable effective solutions from generations of living with the natural world. Traditional knowledge and science recognizes the interconnectedness to the natural world and is embedded in our cosmologies, ceremonies, oral traditions, etiquette, and traditional environmental knowledge. 86 Boyd’s statement emphasizes the benefits of TEK for managing the monument sustainably. Indigenous people’s knowledge of the area has been accumulated over the course of centuries, and is rooted in values that can ensure the continued wellbeing of land and people into the future. Foundational to a sustainable management plan drawn from TEK is reciprocal relationships between humans and the land. The BEITC defines their approach to land management through this relationality, stating that “beyond just protection, these lands will be managed in an entirely new way incorporating Native American traditional knowledge as an intellectual partner to western science, where the land and all its component parts are the mentor, the teacher, the healer, and where all our other-thanhuman relatives are honored and respected in a dance of reciprocity.” 87 This emphasis on reciprocity undermines settler colonial anthropocentrism, instead grounding management in an Indigenous worldview that values land and ecosystems as relatives 86 rather than resources. Foregrounding this perspective is an important step forward, they argue, toward counteracting the damage that has been done by settler colonialism in the Bears Ears region. In Bears Ears: A Native Perspective, the BEITC states that “this is a land with natural as well as cultural resources. We believe that if we treat the land with respect, care for it, and act as good stewards, its resources can enrich and enhance our lives. But we must not just take, we must act with care, and also give back.” 88 Care for the land, they argue, is an obligation that arises from the care the land has provided, and will continue to provide, for humans. By forwarding an approach rooted in Traditional Knowledge, the BEITC envisions a future for Bears Ears in which land and people are healed from the traumas of settler colonialism and life can flourish. Bears Ears: A Native Perspective tells readers that: Navajo people have a term for such places of ecological rejuvenation: we call them Nahodishgish, or “places to be left alone.” These intact landscapes are thought to be the healthiest of all lands, from which plants and animals spread and repopulate surrounding lands. There are few places left on earth that the hand of man has not scarred. Bears Ears is one such place, where healing of the earth can begin. The scars and wounds of industrial exploitation will be smoothed over. (emphasis original) 89 TEK thus provides a hopeful framework through which to understand the fight to protect Bears Ears. While settler development has damaged the area, the landscape is resilient and can heal the harms caused by settler colonialism given the opportunity. Centering Indigenous people in the management of Bears Ears National Monument thus becomes a crucial mechanism for this healing. Only by cultivating relationships to the land rooted in reciprocity and responsibility – values that are central to the traditional knowledges of the Native communities with ties to Bears Ears – can the harms of settler colonialism be reversed. 87 3.6 Indigenous Understandings of Land and Environmental Decision-Making Centering Indigenous understandings of land is essential for counteracting settler colonial violence. The connections that settler colonial logics draw between land and death justify genocide against Indigenous people and ensure ongoing environmental destruction. In the context of decision-making processes regarding public lands, this means that Indigenous people must be at the forefront of any designation process or management plan. Silencing or marginalizing Indigenous voices in these processes not only reifies settler colonial violence, but also ensures that the logics that justify environmental destruction remain largely unchallenged. The BEITC’s work to protect Bears Ears develops a detailed and nuanced plan for caring for the land, grounded in TEK and rooted in an understanding of land as the source of life. These themes of responsibility and reciprocity are abundant in NAIS scholarship but have been less central to settler environmental studies. I argue that they must be central to any environmental project that is invested in decolonization. Throughout the remainder of this dissertation, I return to the concept of relationality as a guiding principle for understanding the environmental futures made possible by the BEITC’s work. Different forms of environmental decision-making must begin from a place of developing relationships grounded in responsibility and reciprocity. Centering Indigenous people in the fight for Bears Ears is not merely a matter of representation, rather it is a crucial step for undoing the harms caused by settler colonialism and for developing approaches to environmental decision-making that contribute to more just and sustainable futures for all. 88 3.7 Notes 1 Jacqueline Keeler, “Introduction,” in Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears, ed. Jacqueline Keeler (Salt Lake City, UT: Torrey House Press, 2017), 1–2. 2 Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2014), 169. 3 Klein, “Dancing the World into Being”; Simpson, As We Have Always Done. 4 Nan Chalat Noaker, “New Robert Redford-Produced Documentary Highlights Critical Struggle over Public Lands,” September 23, 2020, https://www.parkrecord.com/entertainment/new-robert-redford-produced-documentaryhighlights-critical-struggle-over-public-lands/. 5 Joshua Smith, “The Moving Boundaries of Bears Ears: Ecological Rhetorics and the Shrinking of a Monument,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 50, no. 5 (October 19, 2020): 352–67, https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2020.1813323. 6 Morgensen, Spaces Between Us. 7 This Land Is Your Land - Braison Cyrus [Public Trust: The Fight for America’s Public Lands], 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T38bypYdmA. 8 Erin Monahan, “The Bears Ears: Cultural Appropriation in the Outdoor Industry and Why ‘Public’ Lands Are Not Public,” Terra Incognita Media, August 10, 2017, https://www.terraincognitamedia.com/features/cultural-appropriation-in-the-outdoorsbears-ears2017. 9 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Threats,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, accessed November 30, 2020, https://bearsearscoalition.org/threats/. 10 Yogi Hendlin, “From Terra Nullius to Terra Communis in Advance,” Environmental Philosophy 11, no. 2 (2014): 141–74, https://doi.org/10.5840/envirophil20143205. 11 Phillip A. Wight, “The Countercultural Roots of Green Consumerism,” ed. Louis Hyman and Joseph Tohill (Ithica, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017), 161–72. 12 Elizabeth Dickinson, “(Re)Appropriating The Petroglyphs: Commercial Representations of a Cultural Landscape,” Journal of Consumer Culture 12, no. 2 (July 1, 2012): 117–36, https://doi.org/10.1177/1469540512446875. 13 Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Andrea Smith, and Michelle H. Raheja, eds., Native Studies Keywords (Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2015), 59. 14 This is not to suggest that land is the only analytic of importance in attending to settler colonialism. For example, Na’Puti and Rohrer highlight the ways that oceanic perspectives emphasize water as a source of connection that plays an important role in 89 Indigenous relationships to other communities and the natural world. Tiara R. Na’Puti and Judy Rohrer, “Pacific Moves Beyond Colonialism: A Conversation from Hawai’i and Guåhan,” Feminist Studies 43, no. 3 (2017): 537, https://doi.org/10.15767/feministstudies.43.3.0537. 15 Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” 16 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” 5. Like Tuck and Yang, I use the term “land” as a shorthand to refer to the network of material more-than-human geographies that are central to settler colonial violence. 17 Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference,” 868. 18 Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” 19 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” 21. 20 Na’puti, “Speaking of Indigeneity”; Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States; Marcia Stephenson, “Forging an Indigenous Counterpublic Sphere: The Taller de Historia Oral Andina in Bolivia,” Latin American Research Review 37, no. 2 (2002): 99–118; Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai?I (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 1999). 21 Elizabeth Hoover, The River Is in Us: Fighting Toxics in a Mohawk Community (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017); Voyles, Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country. 22 Trask, From a Native Daughter, 4. 23 Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States, 100. 24 Ronald Gamblin, “LAND BACK! What Do We Mean?,” 4Rs Youth Movement (blog), accessed February 16, 2021, http://4rsyouth.ca/land-back-what-do-we-mean/. 25 Joanne Barker, ed., Critically Sovereign: Indigenous Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (Durham ; London: Duke University Press, 2017); Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty; Simpson, As We Have Always Done; Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies; Gerald Vizenor, Survivance: Narratives of Native Presence (Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska Press, 2008). 26 Hoover, The River Is in Us; Endres, “Sacred Land or National Sacrifice Zone”; Endres, “Animist Intersubjectivity as Argumentation”; Kyle Whyte, “Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice,” Environment and Society 9, no. 1 (September 1, 2018): 125–44, https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2018.090109. 90 27 Tiffany Lethabo King, The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), 20. 28 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” 9. 29 King, The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies, 19. 30 King, 65. 31 Klein, “Dancing the World into Being”; Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate; Naomi Klein, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists (Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2018); Simpson, As We Have Always Done. 32 Cheryl I Harris, “Whiteness as Property,” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (1993): 1707–91; Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty, Indigenous Americas (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015). 33 Harris, “Whiteness as Property”; Mishuana Goeman, “Land as Life: Unsettling the Logics of Containment,” in Native Studies Keywords, ed. Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Andrea Smith, and Michelle H. Raheja (Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2015), 71–89. 34 Harris, “Whiteness as Property”; Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive. 35 Black, American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment; Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation,” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1, no. 1 (January 1, 2015): 52–72, https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649214560440. 36 Klein, “Dancing the World into Being”; Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate; Klein, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists. 37 Lauren Kepkiewicz and Bryan Dale, “Keeping ‘Our’ Land: Property, Agriculture and Tensions between Indigenous and Settler Visions of Food Sovereignty in Canada,” The Journal of Peasant Studies 46, no. 5 (July 29, 2019): 983–1002, https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2018.1439929. 38 Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1999); Lee Schweninger, Listening to the Land: Native American Literary Responses to the Landscape (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2008). 39 Taylor N. Johnson, “The Dakota Access Pipeline and the Breakdown of Participatory Processes in Environmental Decision-Making,” Environmental Communication 13, no. 3 (April 3, 2019): 335–52, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2019.1569544. 91 40 Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality, 3rd ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000); Hoover, The River Is in Us; Voyles, Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country. 41 Valerie L. Kuletz, The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West (New York, NY: Routledge, 1998), 7. 42 Sandy Grande, “Whitestream Femiism and the Colonalist Project: A Review of Contemporary Feminist Pedagogy and Praxis,” Educational Theory 53, no. 3 (September 2003): 329–46, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2003.00329.x. 43 William Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996); William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” Environmental History 1, no. 1 (1996): 7–28, https://doi.org/10.2307/3985059; Philippa Spoel, “Preserving Wilderness or Protecting Homelands? Intersections and Divergences in Activist Discourses About Mining in Ontario’s Far North,” Environmental Communication 12, no. 3 (April 3, 2018): 295–300, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2017.1394895. 44 Carolyn Merchant, “Shades of Darkness: Race and Environmental History,” Environmental History 8, no. 3 (2003): 380–94, https://doi.org/10.2307/3986200. 45 Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness.” 46 Kevin DeLuca and Anne Demo, “Imagining Nature and Erasing Class and Race: Carleton Watkins, John Muir, and the Construction of Wilderness,” Environmental History 6, no. 4 (2001): 541–60, https://doi.org/10.2307/3985254; Spoel, “Preserving Wilderness or Protecting Homelands?” 47 Jeffrey Sasha Davis, “Representing Place: ‘Deserted Isles’ and the Reproduction of Bikini Atoll,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95, no. 3 (September 2005): 607–25, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00477.x; Taylor N. Johnson, “Tension and Complexity in Decolonial Advocacy: A Rhetorical Analysis of Situated Approach in Western Shoshone, Bikinan, and Hawaiian Resistance to Militarized Colonialism” (Harrisonburg, VA, James Madison University, 2017), https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/master201019/496/. 48 Garland Lee Allen, “‘Culling the Heard’: Eugenics and the Conservation Movement in the United States, 1900-1940.,” Journal of the History of Biology 46 (2012): 31–72, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-011-9317-1; Melissa Michelle Parks, “From Redwoods Preservation to Genomic Restoration: Genocentric Ecologies in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries” (PhD dissertation, Salt Lake City, UT, University of Utah, 2020). 49 Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang (New York, NY: Rosetta Books, 1975); Amy Irvine, Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness (Salt Lake City, UT: Torrey House Press, 2018); Michael Potts, “Wildness and Wilderness: Anti-Pastoralism 92 and the Problematic Politics of Edward Abbey,” Austrailian Literary Studies 30, no. 2 (2015): 105–16. 50 Leroy G Dorsey, We Are All Americans, Pure and Simple: Theodore Roosevelt and the Myth of Americanism (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2007). 51 Theodore Roosevelt, “Expansion and Peace,” https://www.bartleby.com/58/2.html. 52 Robert Redford and Yvon Chouinard, Public Trust (Patagonia, 2020), https://www.patagonia.com/films/public-trust/. 53 Noaker, “New Robert Redford-Produced Documentary Highlights Critical Struggle over Public Lands.” 54 Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill, “Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy,” Feminist Formations 25, no. 1 (2013): 8–34; Trask, From a Native Daughter. 55 Audra Simpson, “The State Is a Man: Theresa Spence, Loretta Saunders, and Hte Gender of Settler Sovereignty,” Theory & Event 19, no. 4 (2016), https://muse.jhu.edu/article/633280. 56 Klein, “Dancing the World into Being”; Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate; Klein, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists; Simpson, As We Have Always Done. 57 Marianne Kirby, “Co-Opting the Coop: What’s the Real Cost of Homesteading’s New Hipness?,” Bitch Media, November 21, 2012, https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/co-opting-the-coop; Virginia A Smith, “21stCentury Homesteading,” https://www.inquirer.com, August 15, 2010, https://www.inquirer.com/philly/living/20100815_21st-Century_Homesteading.html. 58 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” 28. 59 Morgensen, Spaces Between Us. 60 Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2019), 159. 61 Klein, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists; Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. 62 Elizabeth Ammons and Modhumita Roy, eds., Sharing the Earth: An International Environmental Justice Reader (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2015); GilioWhitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock; Melissa K. Nelson, “Getting Dirty: The Eco- 93 Eroticism of Women in Indigenous Oral Literatures,” ed. Joanne Barker (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017), 229–60; Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011). 63 Voyles, Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country, 23. 64 Gilio-Whitaker, As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock, 13. 65 Whyte, “Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice.” 66 Goeman, “Land as Life: Unsettling the Logics of Containment”; Corbin Harney, The Way It Is (Nevada City, CA: Blue Dolphin Publishing, 1995); Soren C. Larsen and Johnson, Being Together in Place: Indigenous Coexistence in a More than Human World, n.d.; Simpson, As We Have Always Done; Whyte, “Indigenous Experience, Environmental Justice and Settler Colonialism.” 67 Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Weaving Traditional Ecological Knowledge into Biological Education: A Call to Action,” BioScience 52, no. 2 (2002): 434. 68 Vizenor, Survivance. 69 Vine Deloria and Daniel R. Wildcat, Power and Place: Indian Education in America (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Resources, 2001), 33. 70 This is not to say that merely acknowledging TEK is sufficient to achieve environmental justice. As has been noted elsewhere in this chapter, the propensity to extract Indigenous knowledge without attending to the needs of Indigenous communities reproduces settler violence. This project calls for a model that rejects these extractivist approaches in favor of centering Indigenous leadership in decisions about Indigenous territories. Klein, “Dancing the World into Being.” 71 Kyle Renninger, “Second Anniversary of Bears Ears Monument Designation,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, December 28, 2018, https://bearsearscoalition.org/secondanniversary-of-bears-ears-monument-designation/. 72 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Bears Ears: A Native Perspective,” 4. 73 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 9. 74 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 15. 75 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 15. 76 Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. 77 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Bears Ears: A Native Perspective,” 3. 94 78 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Spring Newsletter,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition Newsletter 2, no. 1 (Spring 2020): 4. 79 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “About the Monument,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, accessed October 30, 2020, https://bearsearscoalition.org/about-themonument/. 80 Margaret D. Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 18801940 (Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska Press, 2009). 81 Vizenor, Survivance. 82 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Native American Connections,” Bears Ears InterTribal Coalition, accessed February 16, 2021, https://bearsearscoalition.org/ancestraland-modern-day-land-users/. 83 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. 84 Robin Wall Kimmerer, “Traditional Knowledge and Bears Ears,” Bears Ears InterTribal Coalition, December 10, 2016, https://bearsearscoalition.org/traditionalknowledge-and-bears-ears/. 85 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument,” 2. 86 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Spring Newsletter,” 4–5. 87 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Our Mission,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, accessed February 16, 2021, https://bearsearscoalition.org/. 88 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Bears Ears: A Native Perspective,” 10. 89 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 13. CHAPTER 4 INDIGENOUS PUBLICITY IN AMERICAN PUBLIC LANDS CONTROVERSIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL DECISION-MAKING The fight to protect Bears Ears points toward fundamental challenges to the logics that govern environmental decision-making and public lands usage in the United States. As Jacqueline Keeler argues, Bears Ears represents a struggle over the foundational values that steer decisions. 1 Who and what is valued – and therefore which voices are heard, understood, and heeded – is a question of vital importance for anyone invested in struggle over land, environmental policy, and Indigenous rights. Through a rhetorical analysis of the BEITC’s proposal and the presidential proclamations establishing and shrinking the monument, this chapter argues that Native people are often positioned as simultaneously within and outside of the American public sphere by government officials, agencies, and policies central to environmental decision-making processes. As such, Native voices are often excluded in the context of public participation in environmental decision-making. The BEITC’s proposal for Bears Ears National Monument highlights the ways that Native people and governments navigate this territory by strategically deploying publicity to gain access to deliberative processes. This pursuit of access, however, is distinct from inclusion in the American body politic – which I argue is tied up with “settler futurities” – primarily because it centers Indigenous 96 sovereignty/separateness from the colonial state while still making space for decisionmaking processes where all of the sovereign nations with ties to Bears Ears are participants. 2 I argue that this maneuvering points toward a need for rhetorical scholars to reorient toward publicity in a way that accounts for decolonization. Rather than pursuing a more inclusive standard of publicity (i.e., who counts as public), scholars must ask whether inclusion within the public sphere as it stands is even desirable in the first place. As I argue later in this chapter, public sphere scholarship’s focus on the ways that marginalized counterpublics participate in the production of political discourse, while valuable, has not sufficiently questioned the incommensurability of decolonization – which Eve Tuck and Wayne Yang conceptualize as “Native futures without a settler state” – and inclusion within a public sphere centered around the settler state. 3 Understanding Indigenous publicity in the context of American environmental decisionmaking processes necessitates thinking of the public sphere not merely as a place where discourse coalesces to inform a singular coherent political sphere, but rather a space in which the political sphere itself is challenged and may become fractured. Indeed, it may even be more useful in the context of decolonization to imagine multiple distinct but related public spheres coalescing around sovereign nations and overlapping when international decision-making takes place. Whereas publics and counterpublics are typically understood to be working toward the improvement of the same political sphere (even when they have differing positionalities and approaches toward the political), decolonization calls for the divestment of power from the political institutions around which the public and political spheres are generally understood to be organized. 4 This 97 necessitates centering the agency of Indigenous nations not as a subset of the United States, but rather as sovereign entities. As environmental activist and executive director of Honor the Earth Winona LaDuke (Ojibwe) has stated, “we don’t want a bigger piece of the pie. We want a different pie.” 5 4.1 Public Lands, Settler Colonialism, and “The American Public” Bears Ears presents an opportunity to consider the complicated relationships that Native Americans have to American publicity, and to question how Native people strategically navigate decision-making processes in ways that affirm Native sovereignty and challenge colonialism. While both presidential proclamations frame their decisions regarding the monument in terms of public goods, their interpretations of public goods differ radically. While the Obama proclamation devotes significant attention to the historical and cultural significance of Bears Ears for Native peoples, the text still centers understandings of the monument as a public good for a primarily non-Indigenous American public. The Trump proclamation, on the other hand, makes no mention of the significance of the site for Indigenous people, instead focusing on the scientific and natural resources at Bears Ears. In both cases, I argue that settler colonialism underpins the logics at play, serving to elevate the desires of settlers over Native people. At the same time, the BEITC makes use of regulations and norms surrounding public participation in environmental decision-making in order to gain access to decisionmaking spaces and authority regarding the monument. Debates about Bears Ears, then, highlight Native people’s complicated relationships to American publicity. This chapter analyzes the ways that settler colonialism positions Native people as simultaneously 98 within and outside the bounds of the American public, and explores how Indigenous people and nations strategically navigate these tensions to call for specific outcomes, such as the protection of Bears Ears. This project draws from definitions of settler colonialism as an ongoing process or structure of invasion in which non-Native settlers arrive with the goal of replacing Native peoples. 6 In this definition, elimination of Native peoples – through genocide, erasure, and assimilation – is a necessity of settler colonialism, because for settler colonialism’s project to become complete, settlers must replace Native people and assume their own claims to belonging in the territories which they have colonized. Thus, Native people’s continued presence, their refusal to engage in the structures of settler colonial society (for example, through refusing citizenship from settler governments), and their continued participation in traditional practices all function as forms of resistance to settler colonialism and highlight the failure of the settler colonial project to reach completion. 7 Indigeneity, in this framework, is best understood as an analytic. As Tiara Na’puti notes, Indigeneity as analytic centers questions of ancestry/kinship as distinct from “the logics of blood quantum, race, ethnicity, or nationality.” 8 Approaching Indigeneity as an analytic allows scholars to recognize the ways that processes of racialization and colonialism are intertwined and appreciate the importance of Indigeneity as identity, while also acknowledging the unique territorial claims of Indigenous people that are obfuscated by centering frames like race or nationality. In the context of environmental policy, approaching Indigeneity as analytic requires thinking through not only the national affiliations of Indigenous people, but also through the ways that publics are rhetorically constructed by the colonial state to 99 privilege settlers’ territorial claims over those of Native people. I turn toward theories of the public sphere, then, to understand the rhetorical production of belonging and inclusion that governs access to participatory processes that define communities via more expansive criteria than citizenship. While citizens are often centered in public participatory processes, the regulatory frameworks that govern these processes do not define publicity merely as a function of citizenship (in fact, these regulatory frameworks provide very little, if any, definition of publicity at all). 9 Access to participation, then, is not necessarily premised on legal inclusion in the colonial state, but rather on membership in broader discourse communities with assumed shared values and goals tied to the colonial state. Given this expansive rhetorical construction of publicity, the question becomes one not only of legal citizenship status, but of how Native people position themselves and are positioned by colonial institutions in relation to deliberative processes, and how these processes become complicated when scholars dispense with the assumption that all participants in these processes are invested in “settler futurities” in which the colonial state asserts sovereign authority over colonized territories. 10 If participatory processes rely on monolithic conceptualizations of the American public whose existence is rooted in ties to the colonial state, as I argue extant processes do, they will either assimilate Indigenous people as merely a subset of the broader public or ignore Indigenous concerns as exterior to the interests of “the public.” This, in turn, will obfuscate or marginalize Native people’s territorial claims. If, however, we dispense with the notion that all participants in public discourse are invested in the same political futures, then we can begin to conceive of counterpublicity not only as a democratizing force, but as a 100 decolonizing one as well. From this perspective, Indigenous counterpublics pursuing access to decision-making spaces are not necessarily pursuing inclusion within a public sphere that has marginalized them, but rather represent distinct and separate publics calling for the settler public sphere to be altogether dismantled in favor of unimpeded Indigenous sovereignty. Thus, the remainder of this chapter is organized in three sections. First, I develop a framework for understanding the relationship between Native sovereignty and the public sphere. Second, I analyze the BEITC’s proposal, the Obama proclamation, and the Trump proclamation to tease out the varied and juxtaposed portrayals of Native people’s relationships to the United States with a particular focus on how they are constructed as publics in these documents. I highlight the varied ways that Indigenous people are positioned in relation to American publicity in these documents in order to suggest that federal government processes for designating and managing public lands are ill-suited for recognizing Native people’s territorial claims or facilitating Native governance over public lands. Finally, I argue that the BEITC’s proposal navigates the constraints of settler colonial decision-making processes by strategically deploying the oftencontradictory rhetorics through which settlers position Native people in relation to American publicity as a tool for framing Bears Ears National Monument as a public good. Although this rhetorical maneuvering is a useful approach for Native people working to protect land in the context of decision-making processes controlled by the colonial government, I suggest that it also exposes the tensions of representative democracy, citizenship, and publicity in the context of environmental decision-making and points toward a need to reject settler-defined notions of publicity as an organizing 101 force for access to participatory processes. I argue that Native relationships to territory are rendered illegible in extant settler logics of public participation in public lands designation and management, as can be particularly seen in the presidential responses to the monument plan. 4.2 Public Participation, Citizenship, Nationhood, and the Public Sphere The official federal processes for public participation central to environmental decision-making are built on the foundational assumption that there is a singular and achievable “public good” that benefits a monolithic “American public.” This assumption is reflected in secretary Zinke’s statement that “public lands are for public use and not for special interests,” and codified in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA). 11 For example, NEPA, which is the regulatory foundation of much of the participatory process in environmental decisionmaking, frames public participation as a tool to “assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, and aesthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings.” 12 Similarly, the NHPA, which mandates the preservation of lands and structures considered historically or culturally valuable, asserts the importance of historical preservation by stating, “the historical and cultural foundations of the Nation should be preserved as a living part of our community life and development in order to give a sense of orientation to the American people,” and, “the preservation of this irreplaceable heritage is in the public interest so that its vital legacy of cultural, educational, aesthetic, inspirational, economic, and energy benefits will be maintained and enriched for future generations of Americans.” 13 Federal rhetoric thus constructs American publicity as central to 102 environmental and historical preservation, while simultaneously constructing a singular and monolithic “public interest” that assumes a universalist understanding of the public. The metrics that determine inclusion in this monolithic public are not explicitly laid out in these documents, but rather function enthymematically to point vaguely toward members of communities with ties to American identity who are affected by issues of environmental and historical preservation. These vague yet universalist references toward “the public,” are crucial for understanding who has meaningful access to decision-making spaces. While much of the extant literature on public participation in environmental decision-making utilizes the vocabulary of citizenship to discuss participant communities, the regulatory frameworks that govern the processes do not include explicit references to citizenship as a determinant of membership in “the public”. 14 Access to participation, then, is not necessarily premised on legal inclusion in the colonial state via citizenship but rather on stakeholder status. Nevertheless, the question of citizenship has been crucial in shaping the relationships of Native nations to the US federal government and cannot be ignored when considering Native participation in federal decision-making processes. Thus, I turn both toward theories of citizenship/sovereignty and theories of publics/counterpublics to tease out the relationship between publicity and access to deliberative processes. Numerous scholars, both within the field of rhetoric and in other fields, have studied the role of citizenship in shaping relationships between Native people and the US government. These scholars highlight the ways that citizenship rhetorics alternately include or exclude Native people in federal conceptions of the “American public,” serving the needs of the US government to both constrain Indigenous people’s self- 103 governance and deny access to funding and resources from the federal government. 15 These scholars have highlighted the ways that the US government has alternately imposed or denied citizenship to Native peoples to further the colonial project. Others have noted the importance of treaties for shaping relationships between the US and Indigenous nations, arguing that treaties and treaty violation have similarly functioned to construct Native people as alternately within or outside of the U.S. body politic depending on the strategic goals of the U.S. government at any given time. 16 At the same time, scholars note that Native people have navigated these constraints, strategically engaging with colonial rhetorics of citizenship and inclusion in order to access decisionmaking power, practice inherent sovereignty, and/or demand benefits from the government that enable continued Native survival in the face of colonial constraints. 17 Perhaps most notable in this body of literature is the work of Kevin Bruyneel, who argues that colonial discourses posit a false dichotomy between insider and outsider status for Native people that “represents an effort to constrain tribal sovereignty, treaty rights, indigenous identity, and indigenous political expression through the imposition of the spatial and temporal boundaries of modern American politics.” 18 He argues that Indigenous people resist this false choice, carving out “a ‘third space of sovereignty’ that resides neither simply inside nor outside the American political system but rather exists on these very boundaries, exposing both the practices and the contingencies of American colonial rule.” 19 This third space is constituted as Indigenous people reject the false binary presented by colonial discourses and instead demand rights and resources from the US government while simultaneously insisting on self-determination. This chapter expands on Bruyneel’s argument and the work of other scholars who 104 have studied the relationships between citizenship, nationhood, and settler colonialism, by considering the ways in which public participation processes – which have historically been invested in reproducing the colonial state – can become spaces for the expansion of sovereignty for Native nations. I turn now toward theories of the public sphere in order to understand how discourses emerging from the US government structure public participation processes in ways that reify settler colonialism. Theories of the public sphere provide powerful analytic tools for understanding the communicative processes through which private individuals come together to produce discourse that coalesces to inform the political sphere. 20 As numerous scholars have noted, the public sphere is characterized by multiplicity, agonistic engagement, and interconnected networks of relationships. 21 These scholars argue both that a singular monolithic public is impossible to achieve and that the presence of a plurality of interconnected publics signifies a move toward representative democracy in which a multiplicity of voices are represented. 22 Much of this literature focuses on what Nancy Fraser terms “subaltern counterpublics,” made up of individuals and groups engaging with the public sphere in the face of discursive exclusion and marginalization from more dominant publics. 23 This is not to suggest that the public sphere is made up of a binary of a singular dominant public and marginalized counterpublics. Indeed, a number of scholars have highlighted the overlapping nature of publics and counterpublics and have argued that we should instead understand the public sphere as being made up of a network of relationships connected via discourse. 24 Additionally, scholars have highlighted the ways that these networks have become increasingly interconnected in the digital era. 25 105 While this focus on the plurality of the public sphere is valuable for understanding the ways that marginalized groups pursue representation in spaces where they are often excluded, the relationship between settler colonialism and the public sphere raises distinct issues of exclusion, inclusion, and the potential for collaboration. The incommensurability of decolonization with “settler futurities” poses a challenge for theories of counterpublic activism that center inclusion as the corrective to marginalization. 26 Much public sphere scholarship still centers inclusion as the primary goal of counterpublics, even as it recognizes that counterpublics may sometimes articulate themselves as explicitly separate from wider publics. Robert Asen, for example, locates the “counter” of counterpublics in the identification of exclusion and the “resolve… to overcome exclusion.” 27 Similarly, Marcia Stephenson theorizes Indigenous counterpublics as discourse communities characterized both by opposition to systematic domination and by the centrality of land claims and struggle for self-determination. 28 She argues that “Indigenous movements for self-determination and autonomy are directly contesting the policies and practices of neoliberal reform and resisting a ‘single relationship between the state and its citizens,” but she does not challenge the notion that inclusion in the national body politic (either through citizenship or some other metric) is central to publicity itself as extant literature conceptualizes it. 29 To be clear, my intent here is not to merely reverse the inclusion-exclusion binary to posit exclusion as desirable and inclusion as undesirable. Indeed, the BEITC’s proposal repeatedly highlights the problems of exclusion as well as inclusion. Rather, I seek to complicate the relationship between inclusion, exclusion, and access in order to tease out the productive tensions between publicity and sovereignty. Inclusion, I suggest 106 is not the only, or perhaps even the best, corrective to exclusion, as it necessitates the continued legitimation of the settler state. Rather than understanding counter-public critiques of exclusion as calls for inclusion, it may be more valuable to consider, at least in the case of decolonial rhetorics, critiques of exclusion as critiques of the system itself. I argue that the BEITC not only rejects the notion of a singular relationship between state and citizens, as Stephenson suggests, but also reveals the contradictions of public lands designation processes that rely on the production of an American public rooted in settler identity and settler histories. The very notion of a public sphere brought to fruition via democratic deliberation necessitates an assumption that all participants are invested in the futurity of public institutions that are apparently improved through that discourse. Theories of the public sphere, after all, emerged to explain how individuals participate in the production of society. From a decolonial perspective, however, the goal may not be the improvement or revision of the state – the organizing force of settler society – but rather the dismantling of settler institutions. Thus, rhetoricians invested in decolonization must revisit publicity and evaluate whether or not it can be revised to serve decolonial goals, rather than functioning primarily as a tool for investing in settler futurities. 30 I argue that access to deliberative spaces and decision-making authority has historically been predicated on inclusion within a public sphere invested in the reproduction of settler futurities. Exclusion has thus been used as a way to deny access to decision-making spaces and inclusion has been the most viable in-road for achieving access. This, however, undermines Native nations’ sovereignty, predicating Native participation in decision-making processes on acceptance of these settler foundations for 107 publicity. It may be more useful to understand environmental decision-making processes as spaces where individuals and nations engage in a relational practice of sovereignty in which decision-making authority is shared between distinct nations without the assumption of shared publicity. 31 From this perspective, the question of inclusion or exclusion becomes secondary to the question of access. Rather than seeking inclusion within the settler state or the American public sphere, the BEITC seeks access to decision-making spaces that have for too long been open only to those invested in settler futurities. Thus, I argue that the BEITC’s proposal offers a model for collaboration between Native nations and the US government in which access to and participation in decision-making spaces is severed from assumptions about inclusion within an American public that centers settler futurities. As an interdisciplinary field that is deeply invested in the discourses that circulate through the public sphere, rhetoric is uniquely positioned to interrogate settler colonialism’s role in the production of publicity. This move is particularly important given the growing contingent of rhetorical scholars calling for attention to the role of settler colonialism in producing rhetorical narratives. 32 Additionally, this is a question that must be addressed as we take up Chávez’s call to move “beyond inclusion” in our work. 33 Scholars of environmental participation, in particular, must reckon with settler colonialism’s role in determining how deliberation and management processes are structured and whose interests are prioritized in decision-making processes. By examining the rhetorics of publicity through which public lands, public participation, and public good are constructed and contested, environmental communication scholars can better contribute to goals of environmental justice and decolonization. 108 4.3 Decolonizing Publicity in the BEITC’s Proposal The documents surrounding the creation of the monument highlight the tensions and contradictions inherent in extant environmental decision-making processes, demonstrating a need for frameworks that can more meaningfully account for the ways in which settler colonialism produces metrics of inclusion and exclusion that preclude Native access to deliberative processes. The BEITC’s proposal weaves together separate and sometimes contradictory views of Native people’s relationship to American publicity in order to call for significant Indigenous oversight of land management practices at Bears Ears. This approach centers Indigenous sovereignty and epistemologies, crafting a rhetoric of decolonization in the context of public participation and public lands management that unsettles extant processes. The Obama and Trump proclamations reproduce the contradictions of settler colonial governance, often failing to meaningfully grapple with the underlying logics that drive the BEITC’s proposal. This portion of the chapter teases out the rhetorical de/construction of American publicity in these documents in order to illustrate the need for frameworks to address settler colonialism in environmental decision-making contexts. 4.3.1 Inclusions and Exclusions from “The Public” The BEITC’s proposal traces the historical and contemporary rhetorics through which Native people have been excluded from both rhetorical constructions of “the public” as a means of denying access to participation in decision-making processes. One coalition member recalls visits to the Bears Ears region when White settlers would tell their family to “go back to the reservation.”34 Another section of the proposal highlights 109 the exclusion of Native people from decision-making processes regarding the region, stating “during the 19th Century and much of the 20th, we were kept down, treated by the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] as if we were children.”35 Through these statements, the proposal highlights the ways that both individual settlers and the settler government have used exclusion from the public to preclude Indigenous participation in decisionmaking processes. These moves frame Native people as beyond the realm of the public (and therefore not entitled to participation in decision-making processes), either by imposing spatial boundaries that govern belonging (e.g., attempting to confine Native people to reservations understood to be spatially separate from apparently American spaces) or by treating Native people as intellectually inferior and incapable of participating in public discourse. The proposal further highlights how decision-making bodies have attempted to preclude consideration of Native proposals for the monument. At one point, the proposal states that the BEITC made its submission to the county, proposing with extensive research and detailed mapping, the creation of a Bears Ears National Conservation Area, to be comanaged by the Tribes. The County never responded. In 2014, the County completed an eighteen-month public land planning process that essentially ignored Native Americans. 36 The proposal, then, becomes a document in which the BEITC can establish this history of exclusion, tracing the ways in which Native people have been excluded from the public sphere and thus access to decision-making processes. This history becomes justification for Native leadership in the monument-creation process. Continuing the discussion of the 2014 decision from San Juan County, the proposal states: 110 This in spite of the fact that Native people, by 2014 U.S. Census Bureau statistic, comprise almost half of the County’s population. Toward the end of the process, the county put up various proposals for public comment but refused to include the Navajo-UDB proposal on the survey. Despite not even being on the survey, the Native American proposal received 64% of the vote. The well-stated views of the county’s Native American citizenry continued to be of no matter to the County. 37 Despite being actively silenced, the BEITC argues, Native people still participate vigorously in deliberative processes. By excluding the land use proposal developed by the BEITC from the public comment process, the county actively denied Native communities access to the decision-making space. Nevertheless, Native people living in the county continued to pursue participatory access in whatever ways were available to them. 38 Thus, the proposal argues for Native communities’ place in decision-making processes by demonstrating the determination of Native communities to participate in deliberation even in the face of active marginalization. This is not to say, however, that the BEITC is entirely uncritical of moves to include Native people in the American public as it is constructed by the regulations that govern environmental decision-making. Throughout the proposal, the BEITC emphasizes that the five Tribes are not merely a subset of a broader American public, but are sovereign nations that cannot and should not be subsumed under settler-centered understandings of American-ness, stating “the Tribes are sovereign governments and possess solid land management capabilities.” 39 The proposal argues that the federal government alone cannot serve Native needs, and that “the effort to preserve Bears Ears has always been premised on Collaborative Management between the Tribes and the federal government. Only then will we Native people have real influence on how this sacred land is managed.” 40 These statements highlight the inability of the federal government – an entity with an apparent commitment to serving the U.S. public – to 111 address Native concerns without collaboration from Native people or governments. While the federal government might be able to address the needs of non-Native American publics, the unique position of Native people in relation to the public makes such representative governance impossible for them without collaboration. The solution, then, cannot merely be inclusion within the public, as extant regulatory frameworks would encourage, but rather collaboration between groups who might share goals in the context of the Bears Ears National Monument, but who are not necessarily invested in the same political futures outside of that collaboration. The presidential proclamations, however, fail to grapple with these nuances, instead re-producing rhetorics that impose boundaries on the public that marginalize Native concerns. For example, while the Obama proclamation does not explicitly frame the BEITC as either within or outside of the public, it does argue that the national monument designation is not intended solely – or even perhaps primarily – to benefit Native communities. The proclamation states that Protection of the Bears Ears area will preserve its cultural, prehistoric, and historic legacy and maintain its diverse array of natural and scientific resources, ensuring that the prehistoric, historic, and scientific values of this area remain for the benefit of all Americans. 41 This statement simultaneously serves to incorporate the BEITC into a monolithic conception of the American public by emphasizing the benefit of the designation for “all Americans,” and to argue that the designation is not meant primarily to benefit Native communities. In this move to highlight the universal benefit of establishing a monument, the proclamation erases the Tribes’ unique relationships to Bears Ears and minimizes the particular concerns of Native people in favor of justifying the designation as beneficial to non-Native Americans. 112 Furthermore, the Obama proclamation historicizes Native presence at Bears Ears, functionally relegating Native people to the past and therefore erasing their continued presence and participation in deliberative processes. Throughout the first several pages of the proclamation, Obama states that “native peoples lived in the surrounding deep sandstone canyons, desert mesas, and meadow mountaintops,” that “native peoples left traces of their presence,” and that many sites at Bears Ears “tell the story of the people who lived here.” 42 These statements center the past presence of Native people in the Bears Ears region, erasing or minimizing the vibrant lives of contemporary Native people. This historicization imposes a temporal boundary that precludes contemporary Native people’s participation in deliberation, instead relegating their role in justifying the monument to the past. Native people, from this perspective, become relics of a past that informs, but is not actively a part of, contemporary public good. Similarly, the Trump proclamation actively severs modern-day Native practices at Bears Ears from arguments about the value of a monument. Trump’s proclamation states that “the Antiquities Act requires that any reservation of land as part of a monument be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects of historic or scientific interest to be protected.” 43 By centering “objects of historic or scientific interest,” the Trump proclamation argues that modern-day religious and cultural practices cannot serve as justification for the creation of a monument. Like the Obama proclamation, then, the Trump proclamation imposes temporal boundaries designed to de-center Native concerns in the deliberative process. Additionally, in defining the new boundaries of the monument, the Trump proclamation implicitly argues that any areas of significant value to Native people outside of the newly-defined spatial 113 boundaries are not of interest significant enough to warrant federal protection via monument status. In other words, the landscapes, historic dwellings, grave sites, and places where traditions are still practiced that fall outside of the new boundaries may be significant to Native communities, but they are not of import to the American public, for whom the monument exists. 4.3.2 Re-imagining Publics Beyond Inclusion In the face of these arguments, the BEITC calls for environmental decisionmaking processes in which Native people can fully participate. These arguments call not for decision-makers to merely listen to Native people as members of the American public, but instead to recognize the multiplicity of relationships to the region held dear both to Native communities and to non-Native Americans. In addition to highlighting sovereignty in their discussion of why Native communities must be participants in the decision-making process without being subsumed into the public, the proposal emphasizes justifications for the monument which center Native voices. One Diné coalition member, for example, argues that the region must be preserved in order to allow the continued practice of Native traditions. He states, We go with offerings to our sites. We knock on that wall and say our names – just like you should – you make your entry properly, and address those that reside there as grandmothers and grandfathers as they are. There is no dimension of time in the spirit world. It’s good to come here to the sites, to your grandmothers’ homes, you remember how it was to be there. With an offering, perhaps some corn meal, you identify yourself, you sing a song and the children dance, and we just speak our language. Your name, your clan, your kiva. 44 This passage highlights a unique relationship between Native people and the Bears Ears region and challenges the idea that public good as a justification for the monument must include or center non-Native people, instead premising the reasoning for the monument 114 on the specific needs of Native people whose lives are intimately tied to the area. The primary reason for establishing a monument is made even more explicit when the proposal states, “wondrous though the natural formations are, the most profound aspect of Bears Ears is the Native presence that has blended into every cliff and corner. This spirit is the beating heart of Bears Ears.” 45 The desire to protect the monument, from this perspective, has very little to do with non-Native members of the American public. Rather, it is Native histories in particular that must be preserved. Nevertheless, the proposal does not seek to preclude non-Native access to deliberation about the site in the way that the presidential proclamations marginalize Native concerns. Instead, the proposal recognizes and embraces the multitude of relationships people hold with the Bears Ears region, constructing a deliberative model in which the juxtaposed Native and colonial histories of the site can simultaneously support creating a monument. The proposal carefully navigates the tensions of local settler histories of the region that celebrate pioneering without acknowledging the colonial violence inherent to that settlement by re-telling an origin story held dear by many nonNative descendants of Mormon settlers. 46 The proposal states, In 1880, intrepid Mormon pioneers came through this rugged, slickrock country on the historic Hole-in-the-Rock Trail in their horse-drawn wagons and then travelled down to Cedar Mesas to reach Bluff, where they established the first Mormon settlement in the region. 47 In framing the area in this way, the BEITC simultaneously highlights the draw of the monument for non-Native American citizens whose historical connection to the region is founded in pioneering while subtly rejecting versions of that narrative that would posit Mormon pioneers as the first inhabitants of the region by emphasizing that Bluff was “the first Mormon settlement in the region.” 115 The celebration of pioneering history in this paragraph feels almost out of place in a document otherwise so committed to centering Native perspectives on the site – indeed, a document that explicitly notes the harm done by settlers only a few pages later. The passage highlights, however, the ways in which decision-making processes premised on “public good” are fraught with tensions in the context of settler colonialism. Rather than attempting to either to achieve inclusion within “the public” for Native people or invert the hierarchy of participation by including only Native perspectives, the BEITC’s proposal embraces this tension and offers a model for decision-making in which shared publicity is not the metric for access. In the BEITC’s model, even when groups are invested in incommensurable histories and futurities, they can still share decision-making space. 4.3.3 Centering Collaboration In addition to highlighting the need to move beyond inclusion in the public as the metric for access to participatory spaces, the BEITC also emphasizes the need for collaboration that embraces polyvocality. Rather than attempting to pursue a singular public good that assumes shared investment in the same futurities, the BEITC calls for a process that can simultaneously embrace the exteriority of Native people to the American public and create space for Native participation in decision-making. The BEITC calls for collaborative management, which necessitates the involvement of all five Tribes in managing the monument. The proposal states, This monument, owned though it is now by the United States, will consist of our ancestral lands. Those lands and our physical legacy in them have been treated badly – horridly, in many instances. The United States has a trust relationship with our sovereign governments. The Tribes, through their deep knowledge of 116 this land, their scientists, their land managers, and their artists and poets, and songs, will help present this sacred area to the world in a way that cannot possibly be done without their partnership. 48 The call for collaborative management serves as a way for the BEITC to demand access to decision-making processes. Spaces reserved for the American public too often ignore Native voices. However, processes that emphasize sovereignty may fail to account for the inevitable impacts of public policy and public land management practices on Native people who, though external to the American public in many ways, are still affected by the decisions made by the US government. The BEITC’s proposed management plan diverges significantly from extant processes for consultation or collaboration between the US and Native governments, which have typically been primarily bilateral affairs. The BEITC calls for the creation of a commission that includes representatives from each of the five Tribes alongside representatives from the three federal agencies responsible for managing national monuments (the Parks Service, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Land Management). This commission would have decision-making authority over the monument, thus centering Native voices without flattening Native experience by privileging one Tribe over another. While the BEITC celebrates the coalitional relationships between the five Tribes that emerged as a result of working to protect Bears Ears, the proposal is also careful to remind readers that each of the five Tribes are separate entities. Just as the BEITC and non-Native members of the American public may not always be invested in the same futures, the five Tribes may also not always share the same investments. Thus, traditional government-to-government relationships between the federal government and the Tribes would be insufficient to address the plurality of investments in Bears Ears or the 117 complexity of relationships between the five Tribes. Merely understanding each of the five Tribes as a sovereign entity with a relationship to Bears Ears beyond that of nonNative Americans would therefore be a misstep. The proposal extrapolates on the need for collaboration, writing: Federal Indian policy, including the trust relationship, is based on bilateral relationships between recognized sovereign Tribes and the United States. Indian Tribes each have their own individual histories, cultures, and concerns. It is rare that Tribes work together in this fashion, but all the circumstances were right in the case of Bears Ears. ‘The idea of being a family, all together, one direction, is stronger than individual efforts. The unity of the group fuses all Tribes in the future. Our lifestyle, our food, our way of life seems to be the cornerstone for our position, and I’d like to express my support for that’ (Willie Greyeyes, Navajo). 49 This passage demonstrates the difficulty of understanding Native participation in decision-making spaces within the context of the publics/counterpublics framework. While the five Tribes have all been historically denied access to US deliberative processes, they occupy distinct positions that may sometimes align and sometimes diverge. Although Willie Greyeyes argues that cooperation over the monument has resulted in entanglements between the five Tribes that extend beyond the bounds of this struggle, that does not mean that all five Tribes can be flattened into a singular public or counterpublic. The Trump proclamation, in particular, highlights the failure of federal processes to address the complexities of collaboration between the federal government and multiple Native governments. In addition to shrinking the monument by roughly 85%, the Trump proclamation separated the monument into two sections – the Indian Creek unit and the Shash Jáa unit. Furthermore, the proclamation revised the management plan from the Obama proclamation (which had already reduced the decision-making authority of the commission proposed by the BEITC significantly), stating “the Bears Ears Commission 118 shall be known as the Shash Jáa Commission, shall apply only to the Shash Jáa unit as described herein, and shall also include the elected officer of the San Juan County Commission.”50 This change precludes Native oversight of the Indian Creek unit of the monument, which encompasses the Canyonlands Research Center and a number of important rock art sites – including the famous Newspaper Rock, a collection of petroglyphs created by members of numerous Native communities over the course of centuries – and weakens Native agency within the Shash Jáa unit by adding a representative from the San Juan County Commission – the agency responsible for the 2014 exclusions discussed earlier in this essay. 51 4.4 Lessons on Publicity from Bears Ears The fight for Bears Ears offers important insights about the public sphere, Native rhetorics, and environmental decision-making. The rhetorics deployed in the BEITC’s proposal and the presidential proclamations highlight the complexities and contradictions of representation and participation in deliberative democracy in the context of settler colonialism. The BEITC’s proposal challenges extant decision-making processes’ construction of a monolithic American public by highlighting historical and contemporary settler colonial violence that both functions to exclude Native people from the public and to provide reasons that Native people might not find inclusion within the public desirable. Whereas much extant literature on publics and counterpublics theorizes counterpublicity as a means of overcoming exclusions, the BEITC instead seeks access to deliberative spaces from a place of exteriority. 52 Rather than relying on commonplace colonial discourses to highlight the need for 119 a national monument, the BEITC repeatedly highlighted Native people’s relationships to the region, emphasized the importance of sovereignty, and linked the need for protecting the site to colonial histories that constrained Native control over and access to the region. While doing all of these things, however, the BEITC also highlighted the historic exclusion of the five Tribes from the American public, emphasized the necessity of maintaining separation via sovereignty, and made arguments about why Native voices must be a part of the decision-making processes. The tensions inherent in this straddling of the boundaries between interiority and exteriority challenge normative settler conceptions of publicity by demanding access to public participation processes without premising that access on inclusion within a public sphere invested in settler futurities. 53 This insistence on centering Indigenous relationships to territory and the history of colonial violation of those relationships presents a radical challenge to settler notions of publicity. The BEITC’s proposal develops a framework for participation in the designation of public lands that refuses to allow settler colonial narratives about public good to take center stage, but still makes space for settler relationships to land. Rather than calling for expansion of the American public to include Native concerns, the proposal highlights settler colonial exclusion of Native people as an important impetus for Native leadership in the creation and management of the monument. This framing rejects colonial notions of public good that center extractive processes, recreation, and national identity, and instead emphasizes the unique relationships Native people have with the Bears Ears region, the importance of protecting sacred sites and artifacts from looters and polluters, and the necessity of Native leadership for both protecting Bears Ears and strengthening Native self-determination. 120 Thus, the responses provided by the presidential proclamations fail not only to account for the demands presented in the BEITC’s proposal, but fundamentally fail to engage with the grammar of publicity produced in the proposal. The proclamations treat Native people either as a mere subset of the American public or as entirely external to the concerns of the public. They maintain a commitment to notions of public good that are unable to grapple with the radical change the BEITC calls for. Alternative models of publicity that address this tension must be developed. These models might build on extant government-to-government models for relationships between the U.S. federal government and Native governments but must also recognize that decision-making processes like the decision to designate Bears Ears as a national monument affect Native communities as much or more than they affect non-Native members of the American public. Thus, decision-making processes must jettison approaches that prioritize the needs and desires of a settler American public in favor of a more trans-national approach that considers the effect of decisions for other communities outside of the American public. In the chapter that follows, I discuss how sovereignty might function relationally to develop collaborative models that meet this need. Here, I outline two necessary changes that emerge from the failure of settler understandings of publicity to address decolonizing rhetorics. First, extant environmental policy’s approach to public lands designation and public participation in environmental decision-making cannot function as a meaningful tool of decolonization without a radical re-imagining of publicity. Understandings of public good that rely on investments in settler futurities are diametrically opposed to the goals of decolonization. 54 The logics of cost and benefit that are applied in debates about 121 designating and managing public lands, the frameworks through which we understand stakeholder positions in debates about environmental decision, and the structures of participatory processes serve to protect settler interests in colonized territories over the interests of Native people. Second, rhetorical studies must question our investment in the public sphere as a way of framing rhetoric’s place in the production of society. Publicity, as we often approach it, offers a useful way of understanding how individual fragments of discourse exchanged between individuals coalesce into a broader patchwork that contributes to the creation and maintenance of a society. If the goal of that exchange, however, is the improvement and maintenance of the settler state, then thinking through discourse at the level of the public sphere may be unproductive for scholars invested in decolonization. If inclusion within the public necessitates that Native people acquiesce to the violences of settler colonialism, and exclusion from the public means Native voices are silenced or marginalized in conversations about environmental policy, then the framework of publicity becomes a tool of settler colonialism. Thus, we must seek a way of approaching public discourse, public policy, public good, public participation, and public lands that rejects inclusion in the settler public sphere as the organizing force for access to decisionmaking processes. 122 4.5 Notes 1 Keeler, “Introduction.” 2 Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández, “Curriculum, Replacement, and Settler Futurity,” June 18, 2013. 3 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” 13. 4 Aimee Carrillo Rowe, “Settler Xicana: Postcolonial and Decolonial Reflectiosn on Incommensurability,” Feminist Studies 43, no. 3 (2017): 525–36; Aimee Carrillo Rowe and Tuck, Eve, “Settler Colonialism and Cultural Studies: Ongoing Settlement, Cultural Production, and Resistance,” Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies 17, no. 1 (2017): 3–13, https://doi.org/10.1177/1532708616653693; Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” 5 LaDuke, “Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Security: Challenges and Strategies for This Millennium.” 6 Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” 7 Barker, Critically Sovereign; Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty; Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States; Vizenor, Survivance. 8 Na’puti, “Speaking of Indigeneity,” 497. 9 National Environmental Policy Act. 10 Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández, “Curriculum, Replacement, and Settler Futurity,” June 18, 2013. 11 Davidson and Burr, “Trump Greeted by Cheers and Protests as He Visits Utah, Trims 2 Million Acres from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments - The Salt Lake Tribune”; National Environmental Policy Act; National Historic Preservation Act. 12 National Environmental Policy Act. 13 National Historic Preservation Act. 14 For example: Council on Environmental Quality, “A Citizen’s Guide to NEPA: Having Your Voice Heard,” 2007; Kinsella, “Public Expertise: A Foundation for Citizen Participation in Energy and Environmental Decisions”; Louise Phillips, Anabela Carvalho, and Julie Doyle, eds., Citizen Voices: Performing Public Communication in Science and Environment Communication (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2012); Sprain and Reinig, “Citizens Speaking as Experts.” 123 15 For example: Black, “Plenary Rhetoric in Indian Country: The Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock Case and the Codification of a Weakened Native Character”; Deloria, Custer Died for Your Sins; Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States; Alexandra Witkin, “To Silence a Drum: The Imposition of United States Citizenship on Native Peoples,” Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques 21, no. 2 (1995): 353–83; Jeanette Wolfley, “Jim Crow, Indian Style: The Disenfranchisement of Native Americans,” American Indian Law Review 16, no. 1 (1991): 167–202, https://doi.org/10.2307/20068694. 16 Vine Deloria and David Eugene Wilkins, Tribes, Treaties, & Constitutional Tribulations (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1999). 17 Black, “Plenary Rhetoric in Indian Country: The Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock Case and the Codification of a Weakened Native Character”; Black, American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment; Endres, “The Rhetoric of Nuclear Colonialism”; Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States. 18 Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty. 19 Bruyneel. 20 Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. 21 Asen, “Seeking the ‘Counter,’ in Counterpublics”; Benhabib, Democracy and Difference; Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere.” 22 Asen, “Seeking the ‘Counter,’ in Counterpublics”; Benhabib, Democracy and Difference; Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere”; Gerard A. Hauser and Thomas W. Benson, Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric of Publics and Public Spheres (Columbia, SC: Univ of South Carolina Press, 1999). 23 Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere.” 24 Asen, “Seeking the ‘Counter,’ in Counterpublics”; Robert Asen, “Public: A Network of Relationships,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2018): 297–305, https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2018.1454216; Pezzullo, “Resisting ‘National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.’” 25 Lewis A. Friedland, Thomas Hove, and Hernando Rojas, “The Networked Public Sphere,” Journal of the European Institute for Communication and Culture 13, no. 4 (2006): 5–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/13183222.2006.11008922; Damien Pfister, Networked Media, Networked Rhetorics: Attention and Deliberation in the Early Blogosphere (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014). 26 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” 124 27 Asen, “Seeking the ‘Counter,’ in Counterpublics,” 441. 28 Stephenson, “Forging an Indigenous Counterpublic Sphere: The Taller de Historia Oral Andina in Bolivia.” 29 Stephenson, 114. 30 Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández, “Curriculum, Replacement, and Settler Futurity,” June 18, 2013. 31 I discuss this relational understanding of sovereignty in more detail in Chapter 5. 32 For example: Ellen Cushman et al., “Decolonizing Projects: Creating Pluriversal Possibilities in Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Review 38, no. 1 (January 2, 2019): 1–22, https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2019.1549402; Margret McCue-Enser, “Genocide in the Sculpture Garden and Talking Back to Settler Colonialism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, April 12, 2020, 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2020.1744181; Na’puti, “Speaking of Indigeneity”; Valerie N. Wieskamp and Cortney Smith, “‘What to Do When You’re Raped’: Indigenous Women Critiquing and Coping through a Rhetoric of Survivance,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 106, no. 1 (January 2, 2020): 72–94, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2019.1706189. 33 Chávez, “Beyond Inclusion.” 34 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument,” 12. 35 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 14. 36 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 15. 37 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 15–16. 38 I do not mean to argue here that inclusion of the proposal within the County’s survey is the same as inclusion of Native communities in the settler public. Instead, I suggest that adding the proposal to the survey would be a means of recognizing and addressing the affects of the Bears Ears decision for Native communities within the decision-making process without subsuming Native people into the broader American public. 39 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument,” 2. 40 41 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 21. U.S. President, “Proclamation, ‘Establishment of the Bears Ears National Monument, Proclamation 9558 of December 28, 2016,’” 7. 125 42 U.S. President, 2–3. 43 U.S. President, “Proclamation, ‘Modifying the Bears Ears National Monument, Proclamation 9681 of December 4, 2017,’” 2. 44 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument,” 9. 45 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 8. 46 Keeler, Personal Communication. 47 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument,” 7–8. 48 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 28. 49 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 18–19. 50 U.S. President, “Proclamation, ‘Modifying the Bears Ears National Monument, Proclamation 9681 of December 4, 2017,’” 8. 51 U.S. National Park Service, “Newspaper Rock - Petrified Forest National Park,” National Park Service, August 8, 2018, https://www.nps.gov/pefo/learn/historyculture/newspaper-rock.htm. 52 Asen, “Seeking the ‘Counter,’ in Counterpublics”; Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere.” 53 Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández, “Curriculum, Replacement, and Settler Futurity,” June 18, 2013. 54 Tuck and Gaztambide-Fernández; Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” CHAPTER 5 RELATIONAL PRACTICES OF SOVEREIGNTY IN THE BEITC’S COLLABORATIVE MANAGEMENT PLAN The model of participation offered by the BEITC radically re-orients decisionmaking processes in order to more fully support Indigenous sovereignty, undermine attempts by the US government to marginalize Indigenous voices, and build lasting relationships between Indigenous nations. The BEITC’s website states of the monument, “Beyond just protection, these lands will be managed in an entirely new way incorporating Native American traditional knowledge as an intellectual partner to western science, where the land and all its component parts are the mentor, the teacher, the healer, and where all our other-than-human relatives are honored and respected in a dance of reciprocity.” 1 This quote embodies the commitment to decision-making as a reciprocal and equal partnership in which all nations with commitments to the Bears Ears region can exercise meaningful decision-making authority and the land itself is understood as a participant in the planning and management process. The BEITC’s monument proposal calls for a system of collaborative management in which all five Tribes and the US federal government are partners in planning, developing, and implementing policies for the monument. This is distinct from extant models for cooperation between the U.S. federal government and Native governments, 127 which has been defined by the “meaningful consultation and collaboration” standard since 2000. 2 This standard, established by Bill Clinton via executive order, requires the U.S. government to consult with Indigenous governments on “the development of any Federal policies that have Tribal implications.” 3 However, this standard lacks clear definitions of consultation and collaboration, resulting in consultation processes that involve minimal input from Indigenous governments and that fail to meaningfully incorporate that input into final decisions. 4 Additionally, this standard has typically been implemented via bilateral relations between the US government and individual Tribes, rather than via multilateral engagement between numerous Tribes and the US government. The BEITC’s model for collaborative management of the monument offers an example of what engagement based on reciprocity and mutual respect, rather than the mere meeting of regulatory standards, could look like in the context of U.S. decisionmaking processes. In this chapter, I examine documents from the BEITC’s website and the federal government in order to illustrate the ways in which the BEITC rejects settler colonial decision-making processes and constructs a rhetoric of decolonization for participation in environmental decision-making. I begin by exploring critiques of sovereignty as a frame for understanding Indigenous self-determination alongside calls for models that address the need for solidarity between Native nations. Then, I outline the problems that scholars and activists have identified with the “meaningful consultation and collaboration” standard. Next, I analyze documents published on the BEITC’s website to show how the BEITC’s collaborative management plan both addresses the problems inherent to extant U.S. decision-making processes and offers a model of sovereignty as relational practice 128 that accounts more meaningfully for shared commitments to place between distinct Indigenous nations. Finally, I point toward lessons that scholars and practitioners of environmental decision-making who are invested in decolonization can take from the BEITC’s collaborative management plan in moving toward improved decision-making processes more broadly. 5.1 The Challenge of Sovereignty The theorization of sovereignty has been a perennial consideration of NAIS for some time. Sovereignty is an important and useful concept for understanding the struggles of Indigenous people to engage with and resist colonial institutions. 5 Numerous scholars have theorized sovereignty as it relates to territory 6, self-governance 7, and recognition from the state. 8 Additionally, many scholars note that sovereignty is not necessarily a resource to be granted by settler institutions, but instead something inherently held and/or practiced by Indigenous nations. 9 Most generally, scholars in NAIS define sovereignty as a nation’s ability to self-govern. 10 NAIS theories of sovereignty run counter to theories of sovereignty rooted in Western International Relations (IR) theory. Western conceptions of sovereignty have frequently been used to justify colonial violence and occupation; colonizing governments have used violence as a tool for asserting and expanding their own sovereignty at the expense of the sovereignty of those they colonize. Antony Anghie argues that colonialism fundamentally structures Western IR’s conceptions of sovereignty, and that these conceptualizations serve not to support equal access to self-governance, but instead to justify colonialism and the imposition of White/Western European rule. 11 These theories 129 tend to conceptualize of sovereignty as “the institutionalization of authority within mutually exclusive jurisdictional domains.” 12 In other words, Western notions of sovereignty rely on a singular government having singular jurisdiction over a singular territory. Thus, in the context of settler colonialism, sovereignty enforced through violence becomes a tool for the settler state’s project of supplanting Indigenous sovereignty. This understanding, however, makes no space for multiple nations with overlapping territorial commitments or for Indigenous conceptions of sovereignty that reject colonial rule. Native nations’ sovereignty thus illuminates the fractures within Western conceptions of sovereignty, both in instances where multiple Native nations’ territories overlap, and in the tensions between self-governance and access to resources from the settler state, which might appear mutually exclusive within Western IR’s theories of sovereignty. While there have been significant debates about the meaning of sovereignty, this thread of self-governance as a means of resisting settler colonialism is central to discussions about sovereignty. 13 Of recent note, Kevin Bruyneel, theorizes sovereignty as a “third space,” neither wholly within the settler state nor wholly detached from it. 14 He argues that sovereignty functions as an Indigenous practice of both demanding resources from the colonial state that facilitate Indigenous people surviving and thriving in the face of colonial oppression and refusing to relinquish the right to self-govern to the colonial state. This approach to sovereignty is useful for understanding how Native nations navigate the obstacle course of exercising self-determination in the context of colonialism that constrains access to the resources necessary to sustain communities. Bruyneel’s conceptualization of sovereignty is particularly useful in highlighting 130 how Indigenous nations work toward the wellbeing of Indigenous communities in the process of negotiating relationships with the settler state. However, in this chapter, I am particularly interested in how sovereignty functions in the context of multilateral relationships between multiple Indigenous nations. In the context of Bears Ears, the five Tribes must negotiate sovereignty not only as a factor in their relationships with the US federal government, but also in their relationships with one another. Thus, I am interested in developing an understanding of sovereignty as a relational practice in which Indigenous nations engage as a way of refusing bi-lateral and hierarchical conceptualizations of sovereignty rooted in Western political theory. I draw heavily here from Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s definition of sovereignty as “the place where we all live and work together.” 15 Simpson tells the following story to explain this theorization: A few years ago, I asked an Elder Gidigaa Migizi from Waashkigamaagki the word for “nation” or “sovereignty” or even “self-determination” in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe language). He thought for a long time, and then he told me that he remembered his old people saying “Kina Gchi Anishinaabeogaming,” which was understood to mean, “the place where we all live and work together.” 16 Simpson’s theorization of sovereignty in this essay centers reciprocal relationships between individuals, the collective, the land, traditions, and distinct nations. She provides a way of thinking about sovereignty that scales – from the autonomy of individual bodies to the self-governance of distinct nations to the practice of relational decision-making between nations. This way of conceptualizing sovereignty is particularly useful when considering governance practices in territories that are shared between nations. Simpson writes, an example of these understandings can be seen in examining how indigenous 131 nations relate to each other. Borders for indigenous nations are not rigid lines on a map but areas of increased diplomacy, ceremony, and sharing…. These areas of overlap are not seen as a threat to individual nations’ sovereignties because neither nation ‘owns’ the land in a Western sense of the word, and no one believes they have the right to interfere with the political processes of the other nation. Instead, the focus is on our joint responsibilities for caretaking of the land and ensuring that coming generations inherit healthy and clean lands so that life, all life, may perpetuate itself. Our idea of sovereignty accommodates separate jurisdictions and separate sovereignties over a shared territory as long as everyone is operating in a respectful and responsible manner. 17 Thinking of sovereignty not in terms of hierarchical and absolute power over singularly controlled territories, but rather as a relational practice of responsibility, emphasizes the connections between Native nations without sacrificing the autonomy or selfdetermination of individual nations. It recognizes that no sovereign entity makes decisions in a vacuum. Those decisions affect and are affected by the actions of other nations. This is also in line with the work of scholars like Tol Foster (Muscogee Creek) and Robert Warrior (Osage), both of whom argue that sovereignty is not about escaping external influence but rather about asserting the power of communities to selfdetermine. 18 I argue that the BEITC’s coalitional work is a valuable example of this relational approach to sovereignty in practice. The BEITC recognizes that none of the five member Tribes can or should exercise total sovereignty over Bears Ears, but must instead engage in a partnership that recognizes both the value and autonomy of each individual Tribe and the collective impacts of decisions regarding Bears Ears. While the BEITC’s collaborative management plan is certainly not the first or only governing structure created by Indigenous people to accommodate inter-Tribal relations, it is uniquely situated as a structure for the exercise of multi-Tribal sovereignty in the context of US environmental decision-making processes. The collaborative management plan produces 132 a framework for Tribes to exercise sovereignty in partnership with one another as well as the U.S. federal government in order to care for shared territory in a meaningful way. It produces a decision-making process unique from any extant structure used in U.S. environmental decision-making, which emphasizes cooperation, collaboration and consensus, and in which knowledge is shared, decisions are carefully debated and explored, and no single nation is prioritized over another. This model for understanding sovereignty may be particularly useful for decentering the settler state, as it emphasizes Indigenous governance practices and describes sovereignty as a network of relationships, rather than as a struggle for control between the settler state and Indigenous nations. This is especially important for understanding decolonization efforts, which necessitate dismantling the settler state. Thus, the stakes of conceptualizing sovereignty in this way go beyond the question of how governance occurs in spaces where multiple Indigenous nations have investments; questions of sovereignty are also central to understanding decolonization and delineating the struggles of Native communities from those of other oppressed groups in colonial society. As a number of scholars have argued, conflating struggles for decolonization with other movements for social justice runs the risk of obfuscating the unique territorial claims of Indigenous peoples and nations and reifying the violence of the colonial state. 19 The naturalization of settler institutions’ authority is an integral tool of settler colonialism, as it normalizes settler control of Indigenous people and land. 20 Sovereignty is therefore a valuable tool of decolonization as it rejects the authority of the colonial state, instead insisting that Indigenous nations are the rightful decision-makers in Indigenous territories. 133 This is not to say, however, that there have not been important critiques of sovereignty as a guiding concept. Glen Coulthard (Yellowknives Dene), for example, has challenged the focus on sovereignty, arguing that it too often centers struggles for recognition from the colonial state. 21 He argues instead for a focus on models of governance that seek to dismantle the colonial state and exercise Native selfdetermination, rather than merely calling for the colonial state to grant or recognize Indigenous sovereignty. Other scholars, however, have argued that this critique of recognition politics is not mutually exclusive with a focus on sovereignty. Numerous scholars have theorized inherent sovereignty, arguing that sovereignty is not merely a legal status granted or recognized by the colonial state, but rather a practice or right inherently held by Indigenous nations. 22 From this perspective, a focus on sovereignty does not center recognition from the colonial state, but instead emphasizes Native practices of self-determination in defiance of colonial oppression. Indeed, Audra Simpson defines Native sovereignty as being in direct opposition to the colonial state, writing, “Indigenous sovereignties and Indigenous political orders prevail within and apart from settler governances.” 23 She argues that Indigenous nations practice sovereignty by engaging in refusal, rejecting the authority of the colonial state to grant rights or recognition. These practices may become especially visible at sites where multiple Native nations negotiate decision-making authority and outcomes, as the focus shifts away from the settler state toward relational practices of sovereignty and Native governance. Taikake Alfred (Mohawk, Bear Clan) takes a different approach to critiquing the concept of sovereignty, arguing that sovereignty itself is rooted in Western conceptions of governance that consolidate power into the hands of a few. 24 This approach to 134 governance, he argues, is incompatible with Native forms of governance that respect the autonomy of individuals rather than subjecting individuals to the decision of the collective. He suggests that models of governance based on respect for the individual and oriented toward consensus are distinct from sovereignty, which he suggests is rooted in coercive practices. 25 While this critique is certainly a reason to be skeptical of conflating sovereignty with self-determination, a number of scholars have theorized sovereignty in ways that address the problems Alfred identifies. Vine Deloria, Jr., for example, frames sovereignty not as a process of consolidating power in the hands of a few, but rather of tying decision-making power to responsibility toward the community. 26 From this perspective, sovereignty orients power toward maintaining the existence and wellbeing of Indigenous communities, rather than merely allowing a few individuals to make decisions on behalf of broader communities. When sovereignty is framed through this light, it becomes a way of recognizing and addressing the dangers that Alfred points out. This focus on the wellbeing of communities, I argue, is well-served by a relational model of sovereignty, which decenters the settler state and instead emphasizes shared responsibilities and mutual care between Indigenous nations. A relational model of sovereignty allows for attention to governance and land management and protection practices in places where Indigenous sovereignties overlap. At the same time, understanding sovereignty as relational may also be valuable for considering relationships between Indigenous nations and the settler state, as normalizing this model demands that the settler state engage meaningfully with Indigenous nations in decision-making processes, rather than dictating decisions and then engaging in minimal consultation. Thus, I turn now to critiques of extant consultation and 135 collaboration processes in order to highlight the necessity of a model of environmental decision-making rooted in relational practices of sovereignty. 5.2 The “Meaningful Consultation and Collaboration” Standard Developing a robust understanding of sovereignty is particularly important in the context of conversations regarding federal consultation with Native nations. Federal policy regarding consultation with Native nations is part of a broader doctrine that posits the federal government and Native nations as having a trust relationship, in which Native nations are sovereign entities that are entitled to certain rights and protections from the federal government. Since the mid-19th century, the trust doctrine has been used by the federal government to guide relations with Native nations, although interpretations of the relationship have shifted significantly depending on the goals of the federal government (often at the expense of Native nations). 27 Since the 1970s, the trust relationship has been defined by congress to entail three responsibilities for the federal government: first, the federal government is obligated to provide federal services (such as healthcare and education) to Tribal members; second, the federal government has a responsibility to protect Tribal sovereignty from violation by U.S. States and citizens; third, the federal government must protect Tribal resources from destruction as a result of federal action. 28 These responsibilities necessitate federal consultation with Native governments in order to determine what services are needed, what threats to sovereignty exist, and whether federal actions will negatively affect Tribal resources. Even given this interpretation, federal requirements for consultation remained relatively minimal throughout the 1970s and 1980s. A patchwork of policies required 136 consultation in specific instances, but there was no universal federal requirement for consultation with Native governments. 29 Requirements for consultation became more solidified in 2000 with the implementation of Executive order 13175. Signed by President Bill Clinton, this executive order requires federal agencies to engage in “regular and meaningful consultation and collaboration” with Tribal governments regarding any federal action that might affect Tribal governments in any way. 30 This standard ostensibly ensures that Federal policies likely to affect Native communities and governments are developed alongside Tribal governments and account for the input of Indigenous people. However, the executive order that establishes this standard does not define “meaningful consultation and collaboration,” rather leaving the logistics of implementing this requirement up to individual agencies. While this ambiguity could serve to allow for flexibility in processes in order to meet the needs of each Indigenous community more precisely, in practice it more often means that processes approach engagement with Native communities as a mere procedural requirement and involve only minimal consultation. 31 Shortly after Clinton signed EO 13175, the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council’s Indigenous Peoples Subcommittee published a report in which they argued that consultation is typically understood in legal settings to require ongoing two-way communication, rather than merely informing a community about a planned action and then opening the action to public comment. 32 Collaboration, they argued, is more involved and reciprocal than (and therefore preferable to) consultation. The problem of developing meaningful collaboration and consultation processes has been particularly troublesome in the context of environmental decision-making, not 137 only in regards to federal consultation with Tribal governments, but also in terms of agencies engaging in public participatory processes more broadly. Numerous scholars have highlighted agency practices that minimize public engagement in favor of brief and unilateral processes. For example, Judith Hendry identifies a process she calls “Decide, Announce, Defend” in which federal agencies treat public input periods not as opportunities to listen and adapt to public concerns, but rather as platforms to advocate for decisions that have already been made to the public. 33 Additionally, this lack of concern for public input is often exacerbated when the communities primarily affected by a decision are low-income communities and/or communities of color. 34 For Native communities, these issues intersect with settler colonial erasure of Indigenous knowledge and resistance to sovereignty to create even greater injustices. 35 Thus, the stakes of decision-making process design are particularly high for Native communities, for whom decisions affect not only community health and resources, but also the ability to practice self-governance without interference. The requirements of EO 13175 are amplified in the case of development projects, which are also subject to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA), and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). These acts require that federal agencies account for the effects of proposed projects on Indigenous communities and culturally significant sites before issuing permits for those projects. 36 Like EO 13175, however, these statutes do not clearly define the expectations for consultation processes, leaving the implementation up to individual federal agencies. In most cases, Indigenous people and governments are granted only a consulting or advisory role in decision-making processes, rather than 138 sharing decision-making power with federal agencies. 37 This version of consultation is, at best, an instantiation of what environmental justice scholars refer to as procedural justice. Procedural justice refers to systems that create space for communities to participate in the decision-making processes leading up to decisions that are likely to affect them and is only one facet of environmental justice. In addition to procedural justice, environmental justice scholars and activists work toward distributive justice – the fair distribution of benefits, risk, and harm so that no community receives benefits from development while offloading the harm or risk of that development onto other communities. While inclusion in decision-making processes may (when undertaken by federal agencies in good faith and not merely as a procedural requirement) contribute to procedural justice, it does not necessarily result in distributive justice. Furthermore, these processes do not reach what Kyle Powys Whyte and Elizabeth Hoover (Mohawk/Mi’kmaq) term “recognition justice.” 38 Hoover writes that “being included in the procedures is irrelevant to community health and safety when the system in which these procedures are embedded is designed to exploit some members of the community for the benefit of others.” 39 Rather than merely including Native governments in consultation processes, Hoover calls for an overhaul of the entire system rooted in recognition justice, which she conceptualizes as “the affirmation of group identity and acknowledgement that as a distinct and sensitive group they do not want to receive the same treatment as, for example, white middle-class suburbanites.” 40 She argues that processes must be designed with the specific needs of Indigenous communities in mind, including following decision-making procedures that align with the expectations of the 139 communities implicated by decisions and investing actual decision-making power in Indigenous governments (rather than merely consultative or advisory roles). This recognition element of environmental justice is essential for decolonization, as it emphasizes Native self-governance and de-naturalizes the authority of the settler state to make decisions that do not align with the perspectives of Native nations. While consultation (as most often practiced in extant processes) may allow Indigenous communities to participate in discussions regarding decisions, the final decision is ultimately left entirely to the colonial state, which reproduces settler colonial relations even in the most involved of consultation processes. 41 The regulatory frameworks like NEPA, the NHPA, and the EO 13175 that govern consultation processes are, at their core, designed to maintain colonial relations and invest in “settler futurities.” 42 As Bonney Hartley (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican) writes, “the tensions [in consultation processes] are rooted in the inherent contradiction between two sovereignties, one based on preservation of indigenous culture and history, the other aimed at settler pride and state-building. The success of the latter seems to necessitate the containment or even erasure of the former.” 43 Indeed, the environmental review processes for many development projects are governed by NEPA, which explicitly outlines the goals of environmental review, including to “assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, and aesthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings.” 44 Although a set of criteria for defining “culturally pleasing surroundings” is not provided in the statute, this phrasing points toward settler nation-building as a core goal of environmental review as required by federal law. Furthermore, consultation processes often fail to even reach the level of 140 procedural justice, instead approaching consultation as a mere box to be checked in the permitting process and involving an absolute minimum of communication between agencies and Tribal governments. Federal agencies may cherry-pick community members who support projects to act as consultants regardless of the desires of the broader community or Tribal government. In some instances, consultants may not even be members of the affected communities, but rather academics or contractors who claim to have expertise on Native American cultures. For example, during the permitting process for the Dakota Access pipeline, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the agency responsible for issuing permits for the pipeline to cross the Missouri River at Lake Oahe) hired archaeologists to evaluate the site who had no ties to the Standing Rock community and lacked the necessary knowledge to accurately identify important sites. 45 As Chip Colwell – an anthropologist who has worked for over a decade with Native communities to document significant sites in danger of destruction from development projects – writes, archaeologists tend to view the world through the lens of science and history. They search out buried villages, pottery shards, bones, broken stone tools. Yet in my experience, they rarely have the expertise and knowledge to identify traditional cultural properties, which are grounded in identity, culture, spirituality, and the land’s living memory. 46 Although archaeologists who are not members of affected communities may be able to identify significant sites where physical evidence is present, they cannot identify spiritually or culturally important places that are not marked by physical evidence without the involvement of community members. Even when consultation processes avoid these shortcomings, processes which rely on Indigenous people sharing knowledge with federal agents who are then tasked with 141 making decisions still reify settler colonial relations in a number of ways. First, as Youdelis argues, these processes locate decision-making power solely with the federal government, rather than in collaboration with Indigenous people/governments. 47 Second, consultation processes assume that all of the knowledge needed to make an appropriate decision regarding policies or projects that will affect Indigenous communities can be ethically and feasibly shared with a federal agent. This assumption is flawed, both because the potentially vast volume of relevant knowledge held by Indigenous people is often too great to share within the time constraints of federal decision-making processes, and because, as outsiders to the communities affected by decisions, federal agents are often not appropriate recipients of important knowledge relevant to their decisions. For example, Justin Richland, a legal scholar who has worked extensively with the Hopi Nation, notes that navoti (traditional Hopi knowledge), which is “deeply tied to social relations, wiwta (connections, or kinship) insofar as knowledge authority, and the limits imposed on its distribution to noninitiates and nonclan members, defines and delimits how people understand their obligations (economic, ceremonial, and ethical) to each other. Access to navoti is thus strictly controlled not only by Hopi against non-Hopi, but also by and between Hopi themselves.” 48 Thus, consultation processes that rely on Indigenous people sharing information with federal agents (even in the extremely rare cases where those federal agents are themselves community members) may not be able to account for the vast and dispersed knowledge that is needed to contribute to a fullyinformed decision. Without tailoring decision-making processes to the specific Indigenous communities affected by decisions, and locating decision-making power in those communities, consultation and collaboration processes function more as tools of 142 continued settler colonialism than as ways to respect Indigenous self-determination or move toward environmental justice. In the section that follows, I analyze documents produced by the BEITC alongside federal documents in order to argue that the model offered by the BEITC unsettles the extant consultation and collaboration model. While I suggest that each decision-making process must be specifically designed to meet the needs to affected communities, I argue that the model proposed by the BEITC presents several feasible and productive alternatives to extant processes that can be used to design decolonizing decision-making processes in the future. Their model centers a relational practice of sovereignty in which consultation is not merely a regulatory requirement designed to ensure the settler state is upholding its obligations within the trust relationship but is rather a practice of sharing knowledge and responsibility in the pursuit of mutual care between distinct and sovereign Native nations, the federal government, and non-human members of ecological communities. 5.3 The BEITC’s Decision-Making Model The BEITC’s proposal offers a model for collaborative management of the monument rooted in Indigenous perspectives and committed to reciprocal and responsible relationships. They call for a model of planning and management where authority is shared equally between the federal government and each of the five Tribes, where Indigenous perspectives are centered, and where deliberation and collaboration are prioritized. This model stands in direct opposition to models of environmental decisionmaking and collaboration rooted in unilateral and top-down consultation processes. The 143 model rejects the assumed authority of the federal government to make decisions with only cursory input from Indigenous communities, and instead insists on cooperation between Native nations and the federal government at every step of the process. In this way, the collaborative management plan projects a relational model of sovereignty rooted in collaborative and multilateral relations and driven by a multiplicity of commitments to place. The proposal indicts the bilateral approach to Tribal consultation typically practiced by the US government, framing all of the five Tribes as inherently interconnected, and suggesting that the work of the BEITC to fight for the monument is a starting point for closer relationships moving forward, despite historic tensions between some Tribes. The proposal states, This July 2015 meeting [when the BEITC was formed] was a major milestone. Federal Indian policy, including the trust relationship, is based on bilateral relationships between recognized sovereign Tribes and the United States. Indian Tribes each have their own individual histories, cultures, and concerns. It is rare that Tribes work together in this fashion, but all the circumstances were right in the case of Bears Ears. “The idea of being a family, all together, one direction, is stronger than individual efforts. The unity of the group fuses all Tribes in the future. Our lifestyle, our food, our way of life seems to be the cornerstone for our position, and I’d like to express my support for that.” (Willie Greyeyes, Navajo). 49 Thus, the proposal centers an alternative set of relations between the Tribes and the federal government that recognizes the distinct sovereign position of each Tribe individually while also addressing the need for collective action to protect Bears Ears. The BEITC further emphasizes this goal in their naming of the proposed monument – the choice to use the English name “Bears Ears,” rather than the name used by any one Tribe with ties to Bears Ears, was made intentionally in order to avoid centering any one Tribe’s voice in the naming and planning of the monument. 50 144 This commitment to collaboration in the planning and management of the Monument points toward the BEITC’s desire to develop longstanding relationships between the Tribes and the federal government that can contribute to the wellbeing of Native communities beyond the borders of the monument itself. They offer a model for decision-making that engages in sovereignty as a relational practice where multiple sovereign governments share responsibilities to care for place and community. This model is rooted in three primary principles: the sharing of decision-making authority, care for both the individual and the collective, and rejection of Western hierarchical boundaries. Thus, this section maps out the model of relational sovereignty posited by the BEITC in order to illustrate what decision-making processes rooted in relational approaches to sovereignty might look like. 5.3.1 Shared Decision-Making Authority The BEITC’s model for collaboration is rooted in a commitment to Native sovereignty that requires decision-making authority to be shared among all five Tribes and the federal government. Throughout their documents, the BEITC indicts the federal government’s previous failures to share decision-making authority with Tribes regarding the monument, highlighting both the legal requitements for collaboration that stem from US policy and the ethical requirements for cooperation rooted in the connections multiple Native peoples have to Bears Ears. For example, in a press release responding to the introduction of H.R. 4532, which would further shrink the monument and reduce the requirements for Native representation on the Monument’s planning commission the BEITC wrote: 145 “H.R. 4532 undermines and violates the United States’ treaty, trust, and government-to-government relationship with our Tribes. It would create a socalled ‘Tribal Management Council’ that has nothing to do with true tribal management,” said Carelton Bowekaty, Zuni councilman. “It would cut out three of our five tribes with ancestral ties to Bears Ears, require three representatives that have no ties whatsoever to our sovereign governments, and all appointments would be made by the president instead of our tribes. Even the name, ‘Shash Jáa Tribal Management Council’ is problematic,” Bowekaty continued. “By using the Navajo language, they are trying to divide us, but they will not succeed. We are united in our opposition to this bill and committed to the defense of the Bears Ears National Monument.” 51 This press release highlights the necessity not only of including Tribes in the planning of the monument, but equally including all five Tribes. Bowekaty denounces the federal government both for failing to meet their legal consultation requirements and for centering one Tribe at the expense of the other four. The BEITC offers an alternative to this unilateral and unidirectional process, writing that, “Through an Inter-Tribal coalition, five area tribes are proposing the Bears Ears Monument that would be managed by the tribes and the federal government, where planning, authority, and decision-making are shared equally.” 52 They expand on this call for shared decision-making authority in their proposal: In long, focused, and well-attended deliberations over this proposal, we have concluded that this new monument must be managed under a sensible, entirely workable regime of true Federal-Tribal Collaborative Management. We know that this has never been done before. But most great breakthroughs in public policy have no direct precedent. We want to work with you on this. We have reflected long and hard to come up with the right words to install Collaborative Management in this particular place and circumstance, and believe in our suggested approach, but we welcome your thoughts on how to improve our formulation. Like you, we want to make the Bears Ears National Monument the shining example of the trust, the government-to-government relationship, and innovative, cutting-edge land management. But whatever the specific words might be, for the Bears Ears National Monument to be all it can be, the Tribes must be full partners with the United States in charting the vision for the monument and implementing that vision.53 Here, the BEITC touts the benefits of collaborative management, both as a way to set a 146 precedent for more robust government-to-government relations in the future and as a necessity for caring for Bears Ears. The description of collaborative management as a partnership emerges throughout the proposal and other documents on the BEITC’s website, highlighting a commitment to a reciprocal relationship based in mutual care and responsibility that runs counter to the federal government’s typical approach of engaging in minimal, unilateral, and unidirectional consultation. This commitment to partnership is also closely linked to the BEITC’s emphasis on Tribal sovereignty. They write, “At its core, this is an issue of tribal sovereignty, tribal self-determination. The Five Tribes that advocated tirelessly to create this monument did so to protect their ancient and modern cultural and spiritual importance. The fact that it is being revoked without any consultation, or even concern, for the Tribes is offensive.” 54 While many of the documents on the BEITC’s website emphasize the argument that consultation alone is insufficient, this press release also highlights the federal government’s failure to engage in even minimal consultation as a direct violation of Tribal sovereignty. Thus, the calls for shared decision-making authority function not only as a demand for Tribal oversight of Bears Ears, but also as a call for greater respect for Tribal sovereignty broadly. At the same time, however, the BEITC does not call for the elimination of federal decision-making authority at Bears Ears. Indeed, the calls for an equal partnership outlined above indicate a willingness to share sovereignty over Bears Ears, even in the face of prior federal failures to respect Tribal sovereignty. The BEITC frames shared decision-making authority as a healing process, both for people and for land. They suggest that settlers must take responsibility for caring for land alongside Indigenous 147 people. In an essay on the relationship between land and culture written for the BEITC’s website, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes: This action [designating Bears Ears National Monument] can aid in healing the land and healing relationship (sic) among peoples by restoring rights of native peoples to jointly care for their homelands. Protecting this cultural landscape also invites settler society; today’s citizens of the United States, to recognize that one day, they will also be named among the ancestors of these lands. They have a choice as to what kind of ancestors they wish to be. May we humans live in such a way that the land for whom we are grateful, will be grateful for our presence in return. Kimmerer’s essay calls for a practice of mutual care for the land in which all people – Native and settler – recognize and embrace their responsibilities toward the land and future generations. When paired with the calls for shared decision-making authority from the BEITC, this approach offers a model of land management that draws from a relational approach to sovereignty in which decision-making authority is shared and the monument is cared for by a collective of equal partners fulfilling their responsibilities to the land. 5.3.2 Collaboration between Tribes The BEITC’s model for collaboration moves beyond shared decision-making authority between the federal government and individual Tribes to call for collaborative relationships between Tribes that set aside inter-Tribal conflicts in favor of presenting a unified front to protect Bears Ears. This call for unity does not, however, undermine the individual sovereignty of each Tribe. Indeed, the proposal reminds readers that “Indian Tribes each have their own individual histories, cultures, and concerns. It is rare that Tribes work together in this fashion, but all the circumstances were right in the case of Bears Ears.” 55 Elsewhere, the proposal emphasizes the distinct status of each Tribe, noting that “The creation stories of our individual Tribes – the Hopi, Navajo, Uinta & 148 Ouray Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, and Zuni – tells us that our Tribes came to Bears Ears country at different times.” 56 Documents across the website emphasize the distinct and sovereign status of the Tribes by including the individual names of all five Tribes, acknowledging their individual histories, and including numerous references to each Tribe’s sovereignty. This emphasis on individuality serves to underscore the need for a decision-making process that involves all five Tribes equally, rather than engaging only in bi-lateral relations between the federal government and a single Tribe. At the same time, the documents on the website also call for collective unity between Tribes, arguing that the collective benefit of protecting Bears Ears necessitates moving beyond differences at the individual or Tribal level. Willie Greyeyes (Diné), the chairman of Utah Diné Bikéyah, calls for cooperation even between Tribes with historical disputes or between Native people and settlers, writing, “Protecting Bears Ears is not just about healing for the land and Native people. It’s for our adversaries to be healed, too. I truly believe we can all come out dancing together.” Similarly, Octavius Seowtewa, a Zuni Elder, is quoted in Bears Ears: A Native Perspective, arguing for the value of uniting to protect Bears Ears. He states that: The cultural resources here, the petroglyphs, the structures, all of this, is evidence of the Native people who lived in and passed through Bears Ears. It provides a link to our ancestors, from long ago. This cultural information is important for all Native people. This is why tribes have set aside any differences and come together: if this information is lost, it’s lost forever. It is devastating to think of that loss. We must protect Bears Ears. These calls for unity and collective care at Bears Ears respond to historical and contemporary disputes between the Tribes (for example, historic conflicts between Diné and Ute peoples or more recent land disputes between the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe). 57 They recognize the Tribes as distinct sovereign entities with individual (and 149 sometimes conflicting) goals, but also call for collaboration and mutual care between Native nations even in the face of these disputes. Thus, they produce a model of cooperation that does not require the erasure of differences or the production of a singular and monolithic pan-Native community, but instead prioritizes cooperation between distinct and sovereign nations who share responsibilities toward Bears Ears, a place where they all live and work together. Alfred Lomahquahu, Vice Chairman of the Hopi Tribe, describes this collaborative relationship in Bears Ears: A Native Perspective, stating “we’ve created a family based on trust. We’re working collaboratively now. It’s not just for each tribe, it’s for everyone, for the next generations, for what we leave them. We need to unite in sovereignty.” 58 Lomahquahu points toward a model of sovereignty in which Tribes work together, not for individual gain, but instead for the collective benefit that comes from protecting Bears Ears. When read together with the BEITC’s emphasis on individual Tribal sovereignty, this quote suggests that sovereignty in the context of Bears Ears aligns with a relational practice of cooperation between Indigenous nations, rather than a vacuous political concept that treats each Tribe’s decisions as entirely separate from the actions or experiences of other Tribes. The BEITC explains how this relational approach to sovereignty might work in practice, explaining that “Each Tribe will work to complete their own piece of the plan while also collaborating with each other in this effort to create a wholly new and innovative strategy for protecting cultural landscapes.” Thus, decision-making rooted in a relational practice of sovereignty involves each Tribe making their own decisions, but doing so in a way that attends to the needs of the other Tribes. The model relies on each 150 Tribe contributing suggestions drawn from their own traditions and knowledge systems and attentive to the needs of their own people, but also collaborating to produce a management plan that works for all five Tribes collectively. The constant back-and-forth of individual and collective planning produces a decision-making structure that rejects the top-down, unilateral approach most often seen in U.S. environmental decisionmaking in favor of a model rooted in Indigenous knowledge and practice. 5.3.3 Rejecting Western Hierarchies and Boundaries In their calls for shared decision-making authority and collaboration between Tribes, the BEITC also challenges the Western hierarchies and boundaries that often function as barriers to collaborative management. They reject the legitimacy of settler borders that have been used to justify excluding Native voices in conversations about the Bears Ears region and challenge the boundaries between TEK and Western science that have been used to undermine Indigenous leadership in the context of land management. In the proposal the BEITC traces the years of intense political struggle over Bears Ears between the Tribes, San Juan County, and the State of Utah that preceded the submission of the proposal to the Obama administration. They emphasize the numerous attempts to cooperate with state and local governments in the development and implementation of more robust protections for the region that were repeatedly met with resistance or outright refusal to cooperate. 59 Many of these conflicts centered on settler claims that Native people who live outside the state of Utah or who do not pay property taxes in the state of Utah should not be allowed to participate in decisions about Bears Ears. 60 These claims were rooted in incorrect assumptions about Native communities (for 151 example, the assumption that all Native people live on reservations, which erases the significant presence of Native people in off-reservation communities in San Juan County), and prioritized the desires of settler locals over Native people with historic and contemporary ties to Bears Ears. 61 An editorial shared on the BEITC’s website rejects these claims, arguing that Native people with ties to Bears Ears – even those who live outside of San Juan County or the state of Utah – have a right to participate in decisions about the region. The editorial states: [D]ecisions made about this and other national monuments, parks, and wilderness areas aren’t about Utah. They aren’t about the few who rule over the many in the Legislature or on the San Juan County Commission. They aren’t even really about the United States of America. They are about natural and cultural heritage and treasures that belong to all humanity. That the United States, by accidents of history and geography, happens to own that land and owns the duty to care for it in ways that make it available, first to the descendants of those who lived there millennia ago, then to the rest of us. The borders on the white man’s maps – counties, states, nations – matter little except to assign responsibilities. They do not convey or imply the right of those who happen to live on one side of those borders to covet and exploit these lands for their own short-term political and economic gain. 62 In refusing to accept the settler logics that posit borders as tangible realities that determine eligibility to participate in decision-making processes, this press release challenges Western notions of sovereignty rooted in ownership and borders in favor of a model of sovereignty rooted in relationships between people and responsibilities toward place. In addition to rejecting Western political boundaries that would obstruct collaboration over Bears Ears, the BEITC also challenges the hierarchical valuing of Western science over TEK. They argue that a management plan which robustly incorporates both TEK and Western science can contribute to a more equitable 152 meaningful partnership between the Tribes and the federal government. The inclusion of TEK thus functions not only as an important tool for successfully caring for the Bears Ears region, but also as a vital source of strength for relationships between the numerous sovereign nations cooperating over the monument’s management. TEK functions as a site of cooperation where Native people from different nations can share knowledge, collaborate to care for the land, and reject colonial hierarchies that value Western science over Indigenous epistemologies. In a letter responding to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s disregard for Native Communities and support for the Trump administration’s plan to shrink the monument, the BEITC writes: Traditional knowledge and science need to be included in land management planning and Tribes need to be involved in the decision-making processes related to cultural landscapes from identification and description of the cultural values, to the nomination, implementation, and integrative approach to stewardship by maintaining stable and regenerative relationships with the natural world. It is important to recognize how results differ between consultation and involvement with Indigenous peoples – when we listen to the concerns, values, needs, priorities, and ambitions of Indigenous communities there is ample potential to bridge and shape robust working partnerships that are authentic, equitable, and inclusive. 63 This letter simultaneously challenges the notion that the monument can be adequately managed using only Western Science without TEK and demands decision-making processes that emphasize cooperation between the federal government and Tribes. The letter distinguishes between consultation – a process that is typically bilateral and often unidirectional, with mandates being handed down from the federal government with little or no concern for Native interests – and real involvement – a process that emphasizes collaboration and amplifies the voices of Indigenous people with ties to the region. The BEITC expands on this argument in their proposal, arguing that the process 153 of finding a plan that incorporates both TEK and Western Science is in itself a valuable relational practice. They write: We think of it this way. It’s not a matter of deciding which approach toward cataloguing is better or worse. What we believe is that there will be a powerful constructive vitality and sense of searching for the right answers when the two groups work together in Collaborative Management, beginning with the management plan. We think it will result in as good a monument as there has ever been. And that’s consistent with our fondest goal in this proposal. 64 They thus emphasize the benefits of cooperation not just in terms of shared knowledge that can improve the management of the monument, but also in terms of processual benefits. Working together to combine TEK and Western Science becomes a site of collaboration that can contribute to the development of the kind of partnership the BEITC calls for throughout the documents on the website. 5.4 Collaborative Management and Relational Sovereignty The BEITC’s collaborative management plan offers a tangible model for decision-making processes that meaningfully engage Indigenous sovereignty and that addresses the need for shared decision-making authority in territories that have significance to multiple Indigenous nations. Although the collaborative management plan has not yet been tested in practice, the BEITC offers compelling arguments for collaborative management as a valuable alternative to extant models for decision-making that often involve the federal government gathering only minimal input from Native communities and making decisions that often ignore even that input. In framing Indigenous governments as collaborative partners in land management, rather than as consultants or advisors whose involvement in decision-making processes is a mere regulatory requirement, the plan proposed by the BEITC radically alters the decision- 154 making landscape in favor of relational Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. Practitioners of environmental decision-making invested in decolonization can take a number of lessons from the work of the BEITC. First, federal regulations should revise the “meaningful consultation and collaboration” standard to adopt the collaborative principles modeled in the BEITC’s plan. Indigenous governments should be included at every step of the decision-making process; from the earliest instances of imagining a project through the day-to-day management of the project. This is crucial for addressing the perfunctory consultation processes that have been standard operating procedure in US decision-making processes, and for meaningfully incorporating traditional knowledge that can significantly improve environmental practices. Second, Indigenous people must have actual decision-making power in these processes, rather than merely advisory roles. This may involve establishing commissions with representatives from Indigenous nations, as the BEITC’s management plan proposes, or it may involve other approaches, such as appointing Indigenous project managers, committing to making decisions that align with the recommendations of existing Indigenous governments, or reconfiguring jurisdiction to grant Indigenous governments full decision-making authority over projects. The specifics of how to accomplish this re-distribution of decision-making power will need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. Thus, the third lesson for decision-makers: decision-making processes must be designed in partnership with Native governments in order to meet the needs presented insitu. There can be no blanket solutions in designing decision-making processes because 155 every territory, every nation, and every specific circumstance is unique. Policies must be adapted to require that decision-making processes (not just outcomes) be designed in partnership with Native governments. Finally, this model must hold space for multilateral and polyvocal processes. The very assumption that territories can or should be governed entirely by a single sovereign body is, in many cases, rooted in colonial understandings of nationhood and governance that cannot adequately accommodate the practice of Indigenous sovereignty. Furthermore, consultative or collaborative models that adhere to strictly bilateral relations run the risk of precluding the productive and powerful outcomes that emerge when numerous communities work together to move toward solutions. By making space for multilateral engagement, decision-making processes can better support sovereignty for all Indigenous nations and result in better management strategies rooted in the diverse knowledges of distinct Native communities. 156 5.5 Notes 1 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “About the Monument.” 2 U.S. President, “Executive Order 13175 of November 6, 2000, Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments,” 67249. 3 U.S. President, 67249. 4 Colette Routel and Jeffrey Holth, “Toward Genuine Tribal Consultation in the 21st Century” 46, no. 2 (2013): 417–75. 5 Barker, Critically Sovereign; Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty; Vine Deloria, “Intellectual Self-Determination and Sovereignty: Looking at the Windmills in Our Minds,” Wicazo Sa Review 13, no. 1 (1998): 25–31, https://doi.org/10.2307/1409027; Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive; Stephanie N. author Teves, Andrea Smith, and Michelle H. Raheja, “Sovereignty,” in Native Studies Keywords, ed. Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Andrea Smith, and Michelle H. Raheja (Tuscon, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2015), 3–17. 6 Robert A. Fairbanks, “Native American Sovereignty and Treaty Rights: Are They Historical Illusions?,” American Indian Law Review 20, no. 1 (1995): 141, https://doi.org/10.2307/20068787; Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive; Trask, From a Native Daughter. 7 James Robert III Allison, Sovereignty for Survival: American Energy Development and Indian Self-Determination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015); Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty; Amanda J. Cobb, “Understanding Tribal Sovereignty: Definitions, Conceptualizations, and Interpretations,” American Studies 46, no. 3/4 (2005): 115–32; Deloria, “Intellectual Self-Determination and Sovereignty.” 8 Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty; Wallace Coffey and Rebecca A. Tsosie, “Rethinking the Tribal Sovereignty Doctrine: Cultural Sovereignty and the Collective Future of Indian Nations,” Stanford Law & Policy Review 12, no. 2 (2001): 191–221; Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States; Audra Simpson, “On Ethnographic Refusal: Indigeneity, ‘voice’ and Colonial Citizenship,” Junctures 9 (2007): 67–80. 9 John J. Borrows, “A Genealogy of Law: Inherent Sovereignty and First Nations SelfGovernment,” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 30, no. 2 (1992): 291–354; Coffey and Tsosie, “Rethinking the Tribal Sovereignty Doctrine”; Randall A Lake, “Enacting Red Power: The Consummatory Function in Native American Protest Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69, no. 2 (1983): 127–42, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335638309383642; Scott Richard Lyons, “Rhetorical Sovereignty: What Do American Indians Want from Writing?,” College Composition and Communication 51, no. 3 (2000): 447–68, https://doi.org/10.2307/358744; Trask, From a Native Daughter. 157 10 Cobb, “Understanding Tribal Sovereignty.” 11 Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook?sid=71cab07b -6f2f-46e3-928a-012473819cd6%40sessionmgr4006&vid=0&format=EB. 12 John Gerard Ruggie, “Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Toward a Neorealist Synthesis,” ed. Kenneth N. Waltz, World Politics 35, no. 2 (1983): 275, https://doi.org/10.2307/2010273. 13 Allison, Sovereignty for Survival: American Energy Development and Indian SelfDetermination; Deloria, “Intellectual Self-Determination and Sovereignty”; Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” 14 Bruyneel, The Third Space of Sovereignty. 15 Simpson, “The Place Where We All Live and Work Together: A Gendered Analysis of ‘Sovereignty,’” 18. 16 Simpson, 18. 17 Simpson, 19. 18 Tol Foster, “Of One Blood: An Argument for Relations and Regionality in Native American Literary Studies,” in Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective, ed. Craig S. Womack, Daniel Heath Justice, and Christopher B. Teuton (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 265–302; Robert Allen Warrior, “Intellectual Sovereignty and The Struggle for An American Indian Future. Chapter 3 of Tribal Secrets: Vine Deloria, John Joseph Mathews, and the Recovery of American Indian Intellectual Traditions,” Wicazo Sa Review 8, no. 1 (1992): 1–20, https://doi.org/10.2307/1409359. 19 Na’puti, “Speaking of Indigeneity”; Stephenson, “Forging an Indigenous Counterpublic Sphere: The Taller de Historia Oral Andina in Bolivia”; Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” 20 Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States. 21 Glen S. Coulthard, “Subjects of Empire: Indigenous Peoples and the ‘politics of Recognition’ in Canada,” Contemporary Political Theory 6 (2007): 437–60. 22 Cobb, “Understanding Tribal Sovereignty”; Coffey and Tsosie, “Rethinking the Tribal Sovereignty Doctrine”; Angelique Townsend EagleWoman, “Bringing Balance to MidNorth America: Re-Structuring the Sovereign Relationships between Tribal Nations and the United States,” North America 41, no. 1 (2012): 671–707; Fairbanks, “Native American Sovereignty and Treaty Rights”; Hurst Hannum, “Sovereignty and Its 158 Relevance to Native Americans in the Twenty-First Century,” American Indian Law Review 23, no. 2 (1998): 487–95, https://doi.org/10.2307/20068898. 23 Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life across the Borders of Settler States, 11. 24 Taiaiake Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009). 25 Alfred. 26 Vine Deloria, We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1970). 27 Black, “Plenary Rhetoric in Indian Country: The Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock Case and the Codification of a Weakened Native Character”; Jason Edward Black, “Native Resistive Rhetoric and the Decolonization of American Indian Removal Discourse,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95, no. 1 (2009): 66–88, https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630802621052; Black, American Indians and the Rhetoric of Removal and Allotment; Routel and Holth, “Toward Genuine Tribal Consultation in the 21st Century.” 28 Routel and Holth, “Toward Genuine Tribal Consultation in the 21st Century.” 29 Policies that required consultation included the 1975 Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, which transferred control of some programs from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to Tribal governments and required consultation in its implementation; the Education Amendments of 1978, which required Tribes to be consulted in developing educational programs for Native children; the 1979 Archaeological Resources protection act, which required consultation with Tribes to identify key Tribal archaeological sites; the 1990 American Graves Protection and Repatriation act, which required consultation to identify, protect, and repatriate Native grave sites, and the 1992 Amendments to the National Historic Preservation Act, which required consultation with Tribes to identify and protect sites of historical significance. For a more detailed history of federal consultation policy, see: Routel and Holth. 30 U.S. President, “Executive Order 13175 of November 6, 2000, Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments,” 67245. 31 Megan Youdelis, “‘They Could Take You out for Coffee and Call It Consultation!’: The Colonial Antipolitics of Indigenous Consultation in Jasper National Park,” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 48, no. 7 (July 1, 2016): 1374–92, https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16640530. 32 National Environmental Justice Advisory Council Indigenous Peoples Subcommittee, “Guide on Consultation and Collaboration with Indian Tribal Governments and the Public Participation of Indigenous Groups and Tribal Members in Environmental Decision Making” (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Protection Agency, November 22, 159 2000), https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-03/documents/ips-consultationguide_0.pdf. 33 Hendry, “Decide, Announce, Defend: Turning the NEPA Process into an Advocacy Tool Rather than a Decision-Making Tool.” 34 Shannon Elizabeth Bell, Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Cox, “Reclaiming the ‘Indecorous’ Voice: Public Participation by Low-Income Communities in Environmental Decision-Making”; John H. Evans, “Can the Public Express Their Views or Say No through Public Engagement?,” Environmental Communication, September 3, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2020.1811459; Senecah, “The Trinity of Voice: The Role of Practical Theory in Planning and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Environmental Participatory Processes.” 35 Endres, “The Rhetoric of Nuclear Colonialism”; Endres, “Sacred Land or National Sacrifice Zone”; Endres, “Animist Intersubjectivity as Argumentation”; Estes, Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance; Hoover, The River Is in Us; Ishiyama, “Environmental Justice and American Indian Tribal Sovereignty: Case Study of a Land– Use Conflict in Skull Valley, Utah”; Johnson, “The Dakota Access Pipeline and the Breakdown of Participatory Processes in Environmental Decision-Making,” April 3, 2019. 36 “Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act,” 25 U.S.C. § 3001-3013 (1990); National Environmental Policy Act; National Historic Preservation Act. 37 National Environmental Justice Advisory Council Indigenous Peoples Subcommittee, “Guide on Consultation and Collaboration”; Youdelis, “‘They Could Take You out for Coffee and Call It Consultation!’” 38 Hoover, The River Is in Us; Kyle Powys Whyte, “The Recognition Dimensions of Environmental Justice in Indian Country,” Environmental Justice 4, no. 4 (2011): 199– 205. 39 Hoover, The River Is in Us, 11. 40 Hoover, 12. 41 Youdelis, “‘They Could Take You out for Coffee and Call It Consultation!’” 42 Eve Tuck and Rubén A Gaztambide-Fernández, “Curriculum, Replacement, and Settler Futurity,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 29, no. 1 (2013): 18. 43 David E. Witt and Bonney Hartley, “Recognizing Multiple Sovereignties: A Starting Point for Native American Cultural Resource Consultation,” Journal of Community 160 Archaeology & Heritage 7, no. 1 (January 2, 2020): 11, https://doi.org/10.1080/20518196.2019.1654673. 44 National Environmental Policy Act. 45 Chip Colwell, “How the Archaeological Review behind the Dakota Access Pipeline Went Wrong,” The Conversation, November 20, 2016, http://theconversation.com/howthe-archaeological-review-behind-the-dakota-access-pipeline-went-wrong-67815. 46 Colwell. 47 Youdelis, “‘They Could Take You out for Coffee and Call It Consultation!’” 48 Justin B. Richland, “Jurisdictions of Significance: Narrating Time-Space in a Hopi-US Tribal Consultation,” American Ethnologist 45, no. 2 (2018): 268–80, https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12637. 49 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument,” 18–19. 50 Keeler, Personal Communication. 51 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Native American Tribes Oppose H.R. 4532, a Bill to Codify the Repeal and Replacement of Bears Ears National Monument,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, January 9, 2018, https://bearsearscoalition.org/native-americantribes-oppose-h-r-4532-a-bill-to-codify-the-repeal-and-replacement-of-bears-earsnational-monument/. 52 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Bears Ears: A Native Perspective,” 3. 53 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument,” 3. 54 Mathew Gross, “Maps by Trump Administration Show Plans to Gut Bears Ears National Monument,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, December 1, 2017, https://bearsearscoalition.org/maps-by-trump-administration-show-plans-to-gut-bearsears-national-monument/. 55 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument,” 18. 56 57 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, 8. Eugene Kaye, “Hopi Fight for Survival and Peace in the next Millennium,” Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine 24, no. 1 (March 2000), http://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/hopi-fightsurvival-and-peace-next-millennium; Robert S. McPherson, “Navajos, Utes and the 161 Paiute Connection, 1860–1880,” in Northern Navajo Frontier 1860 1900 (University Press of Colorado, 2001), 5–20, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt4cgmhk.5. 58 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Bears Ears: A Native Perspective,” 4. 59 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument.” 60 Keeler, Personal Communication. 61 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument.” 62 “Salt Lake Tribune Editorial: Obama Should Create Bears Ears National Monument,” Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, April 25, 2016, https://bearsearscoalition.org/salt-laketribune-editorial-obama-should-create-bears-ears-national-monument/. 63 64 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Spring Newsletter,” 5. Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument,” 38. CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION The BEITC’s fight to protect Bears Ears highlights the complexity of environmental decision-making and public lands designation and management processes in settler colonial contexts. While much of the national attention regarding public lands in the last two decades has centered on debates over industrial development, extraction, and recreation, it is essential to understand that settler colonialism functions as an organizing lens for all of these issues. Settler epistemologies that prioritize profit, understand resource extraction as the primary function of land, center ownership and settler belonging, and erase or minimize Indigenous connections to land must be addressed. A solution to environmental degradation cannot be developed without addressing settler colonialism as a systemic cause of environmental harm, and Indigenous knowledge is essential for developing environmental solutions that are just. Furthermore, environmental decision-making processes that fail to adequately engage with Native nations, communities, and individuals are doomed to replicate these settler ideologies. Likewise, it is crucial that settler scholars and practitioners of environmentalism and environmental decision-making who are invested in decolonization seek out models for decision-making and land management practices that challenge settler colonialism wherever possible. 163 In this dissertation, I have traced three areas where environmentalist movements, public lands advocacy, and environmental decision-making processes show potential for radical change. First, environmentalist practitioners and scholars must critically examine our discourses surrounding land and challenge understandings of land that legitimate the settler state, settler occupation, and settler ownership of Native territories. These discourses, even when they are applied toward apparently pro-environmental ends, replicate settler epistemologies that both erase Native territorial claims and support extractive ideologies that contribute to continued environmental harm. Second, rhetoricians and those working in public policy must reject settler frames of publicity that are founded on inclusion in and acquiescence to the settler state. If our primary frameworks for determining access to participatory spaces or understanding participation in discourse center on inclusion within settler society, then our work will, by design, reproduce the harms of settler colonialism. Third, environmental decision-making and land management processes must be re-designed to account for Indigenous sovereignty as a relational and collaborative practice, rather than adhering to Western theories of sovereignty that assume unilateral authority over distinct territories with strictly enforced boundaries. Bears Ears illustrates the ways that Native sovereignties overlap in places where multiple nations come together and highlights the necessity of producing collaborative decision-making processes that equally value the sovereignty of all Native nations and peoples with commitments to a territory. The most-used extant frameworks for cooperation between Tribal governments and the U.S. federal government exacerbate colonial harms by adhering to strict bilateral approaches and failing to consider how collaboration between many nations with ties to a region might result in better land 164 management practices. This dissertation also points to a need for more attention in environmental justice scholarship to settler colonialism. Throughout this dissertation, I have highlighted the ways in which settler epistemologies and institutions reproduce environmental harms that disproportionately affect Indigenous people. These same epistemologies contribute to the unequal distribution of environmental burdens and benefits that harm other marginalized communities. Environmental justice movements and scholarship must include a critical analysis of settler colonialism alongside analyses of racism, capitalism, and patriarchy that inform environmental in/justice. Failure to do so has two consequences. First, without addressing the settler epistemologies that contribute to environmental injustice, we cannot hope to achieve a world free from environmental injustice. Settler colonialism, like racism, capitalism, and patriarchy, is a central pillar that structures the unequal distribution of environmental harms and benefits and that produces unequal access to environmental decision-making processes. 1 Environmental justice is inseparable from settler colonialism for the Native people and territories that have been disproportionately targeted for industrial development, toxic dumping, and dispossession since the inception of the United States. 2 Second, when our movements and scholarship fail to account for settler colonialism, we reproduce the erasure of Indigenous people and the prioritization of settler interests and desires. This, in turn, reproduces the very problems of injustice for which the early environmental justice movement criticized mainstream environmentalists. The BEITC’s documents highlight a model of environmental decision-making and land management that rejects settler frameworks in favor of Indigenous sovereignty, 165 self-determination, and leadership. This dissertation emphasizes the necessity of significantly shifting the ways that scholars and practitioners of environmental decisionmaking, public land designation and management, and environmental justice think about land, publicity, and collaboration. In the remainder of this conclusion, I will lay out the contributions and implications of this project for future environmental decision-making processes. I will highlight ways that both the field of environmental communication and environmental decision-making processes must change in order to address settler colonialism. Then, I will discuss potential avenues for further research and areas for expansion in this field of study. 6.1 Major Contributions This dissertation’s primary contribution is to provide a model for environmental decision-making processes based on the BEITC’s approach that is committed to Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination and that is critical of settler colonialism. While there has been some attention to settler colonialism in the context of environmental decision-making, there is a need for more intervention that provides approaches to decision-making processes that actively challenge settler colonialism and prioritize Indigenous voices. Many of the problems that other scholars have identified in environmental decision-making processes, such as the de-valuation of marginalized voices as “indecorous” or the “decide-announce-defend” model, among others, may be exacerbated by settler colonial ideologies that prioritize profit, normalize settler occupation, legitimate the settler state, and prioritize (particularly White) settler concerns over those of Indigenous people. 3 166 Additionally, environmental decision-making processes and public lands controversies may be a site where challenges to settler colonialism are uniquely possible. Plans for cooperative land management and Native-led designation processes may open the door toward wholesale return of land to Native nations. Environmental decisionmaking processes present this unique opportunity because they are the sites at which competing environmental understandings are negotiated, criteria for future decisions are established, and distributive outcomes are determined. Models like the BEITC’s collaborative management plan offer opportunities to chip away at the decision-making authority of the settler state and take steps toward Native governments gaining more control over their territories. These kinds of small shifts in the deliberative landscape might eventually give way to larger pushes for full Indigenous authority over public lands. A particularly optimistic outlook might predict that, given sufficient legal precedent, this expansion of Native governments’ authority might be used in the future to argue for the return of land to the Native nations who have been granted management authority. At minimum, implementing models like the BEITC’s proposed collaborative management plan are a way of “elbowing out space” for Indigenous nations to exercise decision-making authority in colonized territories. 4 This is not to say that alternate models of environmental decision-making alone are sufficient to achieve decolonization. However, re-imagining environmental decisionmaking processes as spaces in which the settler state cedes at least some decision-making authority to Native governments may be a useful step in moving toward “decolonization as Native futures without a settler state.” 5 As a settler scholar and environmentalist, I am committed to identifying how the field of environmental scholarship and activism re- 167 entrenches settler colonialism and developing pathways that move us toward a more desirable future free from settler colonialism. Thus, I suggest three important changes to environmental decision-making processes and environmentalism at-large that are essential for an environmental movement committed to decolonization. The BEITC’s model for managing Bears Ears represents one useful example of what environmental decision-making that chips away at settler colonialism might look like. The BEITC’s proposal included a plan in which one representative from each of the five member Tribes, along with one representative from each of three federal agencies with responsibilities in the monument area (The Forest Service, The Parks Service, and the Bureau of Land Management) would work together on a management commission to make decisions about the monument. 6 This plan was decided upon through deliberation between members of the five Tribes who collaborated through the BEITC before the proposal had even been developed. It was intentionally designed to equally include all five Tribes without privileging one over another, and to ensure that knowledge from each of the five Tribes would have significant weight in the management process. At the same time, it placed the majority of the decision-making authority in the hands of Native people by structuring the management commission in such a way that federal agents made up the minority of members, without entirely excluding the federal government from the decision-making process. This, however, is just one example of a potential decision-making model that centers Indigenous authority and knowledge. Rather than propose this structure as a blanket solution to environmental decision-making processes, I turn toward it as a source of inspiration. However, I argue that decision-making processes should be designed in-situ, in accordance with the needs and expectations of affected 168 Native communities, and with attention to social and historical context at every step. Thus, the changes I propose here are not universal edicts, but rather a starting point for decision-makers to consider. First, settler environmentalists and facilitators of environmental decision-making must challenge discourses about land that normalize settler occupation and ownership. This goes beyond calling for more public lands, which generally legitimize the settler state and settler entitlement to Native territories, and instead fighting for the return of land to Indigenous people. We must recognize how rhetorics that normalize settler epistemologies of land actually support extractive industries and other environmentally harmful activities and actively refuse to engage in those rhetorics wherever possible. In the context of environmental decision-making processes, this might include a number of actions. For example, land acknowledgements are an essential but entirely insufficient component of any attempt to exercise settler responsibility. Identifying the people whose land is being discussed must come first, but it is meaningless if their concerns are not prioritized in the decision-making process. Decision-makers and facilitators must put Indigenous epistemologies at the center of decision-making processes by, for example, developing land-use proposals in partnership with Native nations, asking elders to present at or facilitate participatory processes, and/or using methodologies guided by Native epistemologies when carrying out surveys or environmental assessments. Furthermore, settlers who wish to contribute to decolonization must be passionate advocates for proposals that include the return of land to Native nations and vehemently oppose proposals that ignore or actively undermine Indigenous territorial claims and rights. Settler environmental scholars also have significant space to challenge settler 169 approaches to land. We must critically examine how our own rootedness in settler colonialism shapes our research and activism and commit to acting in support of decolonization. We should prioritize research projects that identify and challenge settler epistemologies in public lands and land-use debates, as well as building on strategies for intervening in these debates. And, most importantly, we must listen to Indigenous people both inside and outside of the academy who are already doing the necessary work of rejecting settler epistemologies of land and theorizing land through a Native lens. The second change that must be made to environmental decision-making processes centers on settler notions of publicity. The impetus to demand public participation in environmental decision-making is a useful one. Communities that are affected by decisions must be included in those decisions if environmental justice is to be achieved. At the same time, however, models of environmental decision-making that premise access to those participatory spaces on a monolithic conception of the American Public reproduce the harms of settler colonialism by placing Native people in an impossible double bind; either assimilate to the American public or be left out of decision-making spaces. Environmental decision-making spaces already inherently legitimate the settler state by placing final decision-making authority in the hands of state and federal agencies. To also commit to a vision of access premised on American publicity is to doubly harm Native people who may not be invested in settler futurities. Thus, policies like NEPA that frame environmental decision-making in the context of American identity and settler futurities must be revised or replaced to better account for Native people’s investments in decision-making processes. While regulations such as these likely cannot be entirely scrapped without inviting additional corporate abuses and 170 environmental degradation, those who head up environmental decision-making processes should reject colonial rhetorics and process designs that prioritize settler concerns or frame decisions in terms of benefits to settler society. This call also has significant implications for the field of rhetorical studies, which relies heavily on concepts like the public sphere and public discourse. We must question how our investments in these terms naturalize settler futurities and develop ways of communicating the importance of rhetoric in the production of the material world that move “beyond inclusion.” 7 Third, practitioners and scholars of environmental decision-making must consider the ways that extant approaches to collaboration and consultation often undermine Indigenous sovereignty. There are numerous Indigenous scholars, organizers, and leaders offering models of sovereignty outside of Western political frameworks. Their work should be central to imagining modes of working together in decision-making spaces. Although current US federal regulations require “meaningful consultation and collaboration” with Native nations as part of decision-making processes, those requirements do not go nearly far enough in supporting Indigenous decision-making authority.. 8 Extant decision-making models treat collaboration as merely a bureaucratic requirement, rather than as a partnership in which decision-making authority is shared between all nations with commitments to a region. 9 These models must be rejected in favor of approaches to collaboration in which Indigenous governments are positioned as full partners and leaders, rather than merely advisors. These models could include collaborative management plans such as the one proposed by the BEITC, but they might also look like transferring federal authority over public lands administration to Native governments, making approval from Native nations a prerequisite for decision approval, 171 and/or carrying out decision-making processes that are designed and led by Native communities. The ultimate goal of collaboration and consultation should not merely be to appear to have engaged with Native nations. Rather, collaboration and consultation should be treated as a means for establishing greater adherence to Indigenous decisionmaking authority and dismantling settler decision-making authority. These suggestions are intended to provide examples of what environmental decision-making processes that are committed to moving toward decolonization could look like, but they are neither exhaustive nor definitive. I have been intentionally broad in my descriptions of what kinds of changes must be made to environmental scholarship and decision-making processes because the specificities of any given environmental movement or decision-making process must be worked out in a particular socio-historic context. No two Native nations have exactly the same traditions, expectations, needs, or desires and no single model of environmental decision-making can responsibly address the needs of all Native communities. Instead, those who facilitate environmental decision-making processes should approach every instance as a unique opportunity to build decision-making structures in partnership with the Native people who are most affected by the decision in question. Settler responsibility necessitates listening and adhering to the Native communities with whom we engage. In the context of environmental decision-making, that necessitates eschewing one-size-fits-all models in favor of “recognition justice” that begins with “respect for tribal values and genuine acknowledgement of tribes’ particular situations.” 10 172 6.2 Implications In addition to these contributions, this dissertation has a number of implications for future research that could be more thoroughly explored. My primary aim has been to provide suggestions for transforming environmental decision-making to better challenge settler colonialism and support the self-determination of Indigenous nations. However, this dissertation also points toward other steps that settler scholars who are invested in decolonization might take to improve their research practices. Additionally, there are areas in which I hope to improve this project moving forward that I will discuss in this section. One implication that this dissertation poses for future research is methodological in nature. For settler scholars whose research relies primarily on textual methods, asking permission to analyze texts produced by Indigenous authors and organizations may be a productive tool for engaging in responsible research practices. 11 Indeed, some scholars argue that it is critical. 12 In the context of this dissertation, I sought permission both from Jaqueline Keeler, the editor of Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for the Bears Ears and from the BEITC to analyze their texts. This permission-seeking process had two primary benefits. First, it centered consent as a primary value of my research process. Seeking permission from authors may serve as a stopgap for academic extracitivist ideologies that seek to take knowledge from Native communities without reciprocity. 13 This is particularly important for researchers whose primary analytical methods center the analysis of published documents, which does not incur the same expectations for institutional review or obtaining consent as research that includes human participants. While institutional review boards are not themselves necessarily a perfect solution to 173 responsible research practices, the lack of required review in the case of textual or archival methods necessitates that researchers consider other ways of building responsibility into our research. Reaching out to authors before analyzing their work creates opportunities for scholars to ask how our research can best serve Native communities’ interests and ensure that authors are willing to have their work analyzed, rather than assuming that all documents published by Indigenous authors are inherently open to analysis. Second, reaching out to Jaqueline Keeler and the BEITC allowed me to build relationships that informed my understanding of the context of the documents I analyzed. Jaqueline Keeler agreed to speak with me about Bears Ears, and our conversation was especially useful in pointing me toward connected issues like voting rights and representation in San Juan County, historic disagreements between the five Tribes, and the strategic choices that the BEITC made while preparing to submit their proposal for the monument. At the same time, seeking permission from authors may not always be possible; for example, if scholars wish to analyze texts produced by elders who are no longer with us, authors whose contact information is not readily available to the public, or disbanded organizations, seeking permission may become a more complicated process. In these cases, scholars could reach out to Tribal Historic Preservation Officers or other representatives of the communities with whom the authors of those documents are affilated, but there may be instances in which contacting authors to obtain permission is not possible. In my writing process, this was the case for some of the authors of chapters in Edge of Morning. Ultimately, I decided not to analyze these chapters without permission from the authors and shifted my focus to attend more closely to the BEITC’s 174 documents. In the case of this dissertation, I believe these changes were productive in producing what is ultimately a more coherent product than might have emerged from my original research plan. This change allowed me to focus more particularly on the rhetoric of the BEITC, one of two primary organizations responsible for the establishment of the monument (alongside UDB), and to be more conscious about centering the voices of members of the five Tribes who participated in the BEITC’s advocacy. In instances where a document is central to a project and cannot be excluded however, settler scholars should consider whether they are the right author for that project at that time. This is not necessarily to say that seeking permission is the only appropriate and responsible way of engaging with texts produced by Indigenous authors. Indeed, while Jaqueline Keeler was gracious in providing me with permission to analyze her work and taking time to discuss Bears Ears with me, she also told me during our conversation that she did not feel I needed permission and that she had published the book with the hopes of it being included in public discourse to increase awareness of and advocacy for Bears Ears. 14 While I find permission-seeking to be a useful tool for engaging in research responsibly as a settler scholar, it is worth keeping in mind that the expectations around permission-seeking are not universal. Future scholarship should more thoroughly explore the methodological implications of normalizing permission-seeking as an expectation of textual methods when analyzing documents produced by Indigenous authors and organization. In addition to permission-seeking, settler scholars should pursue engagement with communities wherever possible. Building relationships with the communities affected by our research is a particularly important way of avoiding extractivist tendencies in our 175 research. 15 One obvious strategy is to engage in critical participatory methods with communities. Numerous Indigenous scholars have offered up a rich body of suggestions for scholars who wish to engage with Indigenous communities in research. 16 There is also a wealth of scholarship on both the benefits of critical participatory methods and the best approaches for using critical participatory methods to engage with Indigenous communities. 17 Participatory methods may not, however, always be available. For example, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic significantly altered the course of this dissertation, creating a significant obstacle for conducting interviews, attending BEITChosted events, and visiting Bears Ears during the time allotted for this project. This complication is further compounded by the fact that the material conditions of settler colonialism have left many of the Native communities with ties to Bears Ears without sufficient infrastructure, making even online communication more difficult. Furthermore, both the BEITC and UDB were forced to shift their focus significantly toward supporting COVID relief efforts in Native communities in the face of the US government’s utter lack of attention to high rates of infection and under-supported healthcare networks in Native communities. This lack of participation via interviews and presence, I think, is one of the greatest limitations of this study, and one I hope to address as I move forward with this project in the future by incorporating interviews and/or other participatory methods in revising this project for publication as a book. Other researchers who are faced with similar circumstances may consider other ways that they can support communities even when in-person participation in events or community-building is not an option. For example, scholars may develop grant proposals with funds built in to provide for needs that communities have expressed. In the context 176 of this project, I have tried to support the communities with ties to Bears Ears in a number of ways, including: regularly donating money and supplies for COVID relief efforts headed by the BEITC and UDB; calling state and federal representatives to advocate for policies proposed or supported by the BEITC and UDB (as requested in their newsletters); and prioritizing material suggestions in this dissertation that can contribute both to the adoption of the BEITC’s management proposal at Bears Ears and to better design for future environmental decision-making processes. I also have plans to translate the suggestions presented in this dissertation into a format that can be directly offered to policymakers at the federal level in order to advocate for improved approaches to environmental decision-making. These are steps that settlers (both scholars and nonscholars) should be taking whenever possible, regardless of the focus of our ongoing projects or our methodological approaches. These are only a few suggestions for how settler scholars can be more responsible in our research practices. This list is not exhaustive, and none of these suggestions are one-size-fits-all solutions. I hope that settler scholars will continue to develop strategies for ensuring that our work supports the needs of Indigenous communities that are rooted in actively listening to and engaging with the wealth of literature offered by Indigenous scholars regarding decolonizing methodologies. 18 177 6.3 Notes 1 Hoover, The River Is in Us. 2 Voyles, Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country. 3 Cox, “Reclaiming the ‘Indecorous’ Voice: Public Participation by Low-Income Communities in Environmental Decision-Making”; Hendry, “Decide, Announce, Defend: Turning the NEPA Process into an Advocacy Tool Rather than a DecisionMaking Tool.” 4 Michelle M. Jacob, “Indigenous Education Is for Everyone” (The J. George Jones, Jr. and Velma Rife Jones Endowed Lecture Series, Salt Lake City, UT, January 23, 2020). 5 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” 13. 6 Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, “Proposal to President Barack Obama for the Creation of Bears Ears National Monument.” 7 Chávez, “Beyond Inclusion.” 8 U.S. President, “Executive Order 13175 of November 6, 2000, Consultation and Coordination with Indian Tribal Governments,.” 9 Youdelis, “‘They Could Take You out for Coffee and Call It Consultation!’” 10 Whyte, “The Recognition Dimensions of Environmental Justice in Indian Country,” 200. 11 Taylor N. Johnson and Danielle Endres, “Decolonizing Settler Public Address: The Role of Settler Scholars,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 23, no. 1–2 (forthcoming). 12 Devon Abbott Mihesuah, So You Want to Write about American Indians? A Guide for Writers, Students, and Scholars. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005); Gregory Younging, Elements of Indigenous Style: A Guide for Writing by and about Indigenous Peoples (Brush Education, 2018). 13 This is not to say that permission-seeking is a perfect solution to extractivist research, or that all settler researchers who obtain permission to analyze documents will produce ethical research products. Rather, I see permission-seeking as one useful tool among many that should be considered in research design. Klein, “Dancing the World into Being.” 14 Keeler, Personal Communication. 15 Klein, “Dancing the World into Being.” 178 16 Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna Sessions Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith, eds., Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies (Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2008); Margaret Kovach, Indigenous Methodologies: Characterisitcs, Coversations, and Contexts. 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