Indigenous Publicity in American Public Lands Controversies: Environmental Participation in the Fight for Bears Ears National Monument

Taylor N. Johnson

doi:10.3389/fcomm.2021.673115

Taylor N. Johnson

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fcomm.2021.673115

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Abstract

Environmental decision-making scholars have attended closely to the role of publics and counterpublics in environmental controversies. However, this body of work has undertheorized the ways that Indigeneity may complicate access to or desirability of American publicity as a driving force in environmental advocacy. Inclusion within the American national body both functions as an advocacy tool for Native people and as a colonial discourse that may undermine sovereignty goals. Through a critical rhetorical analysis of documents at the center of the controversy over Bears Ears National Monument, this essay explicates the deployment of American publicity both to support and to undermine Native advocacy for the Monument. Scholars of rhetoric and environmental decision-making must re-orient toward publicity in a way that accounts for settler colonialism and decolonization.

Highlights

In 2015, a group of five Native1 governments published a proposal for the creation of Bears Ears National Monument
Through a rhetorical analysis of the Bears Ears Intertribal Coalition (BEITC)’s proposal and the presidential proclamations establishing and shrinking the monument, this essay 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
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

Summary

Introduction

In 2015, a group of five Native1 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. Through a rhetorical analysis of the BEITC’s proposal and the presidential proclamations establishing and shrinking the monument, this essay 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.

Results

Conclusion