During the first day of his tour of Bears Ears National Monument, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke disagreed with Utah officials who have claimed that Native Americans who support the monument are manipulated by special interest groups, says The Salt Lake Tribune.
“I think they’re smart, capable, passionate, and have a deep sense of ties to their culture and want to preserve it,” Zinke said after a meeting with the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, which first proposed the monument.
At the same meeting, which took place at Salt Lake City’s Bureau of Land Management, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch blamed the “far left” for misleading natives. “The Indians, they don’t fully understand that a lot of the things that they currently take for granted on those lands, they won’t be able to do if it’s made clearly into a monument or a wilderness,” Hatch said.
“Asked to describe which activities Obama’s designation would prevent Native Americans from doing, Hatch said, ‘That’d take too much time right now,’” reports the Tribune.
Zinke will be in the area for the next four days, also visiting Escalante-Grand Staircase, a national monument designated by Bill Clinton in 1996. Proponents of the two monuments have said it’s been difficult to get the secretary to agree to a meeting. While he met with the intertribal group over the weekend, according to a spokesperson for the group, several earlier requests went unanswered.