This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
[Video (From the folks at Patagonia): Defined by the Line: A Film About the Fight to Protect Bears Ears]
Mark Maryboy began with an apology.
He was sorry, he said, if he wasn't able to hear all the questions The Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board might put to him. His new hearing aids are not only uncomfortable, he explained, they don't work so well.
Which was fine. Because when someone like Maryboy is talking, everybody else should just shut up and listen.
A leader in the Native American rights movement since he ran away from one of those dreadful beat-the-ethnicity-out-of-them boarding schools when he was 13 years old, Maryboy has fought for the rights and needs of Native people in general, and the Navajo Nation in particular, for most of his life.
He served as the first Native member of a Utah county commission, in San Juan County, where such an achievement was only possible because the federal government lowered the boom on the county's discriminatory election practices. He has also held various tribal offices and, from both directions, taken on the powers that be on everything from oil rights to education to health care,
Now Maryboy is focused on the crusade for the proposed Bears Ears National Monument. And the main point he wanted to make to us was also something to do with hearing.
Don't, he warned, listen to the Utah elected officials who claim that Navajos are opposed to the monument plan.
There are some, of course. But the Navajo Nation, through its democratic process, has come out in favor of a 1.9 million-acre monument. So have 24 other tribal governments.
What really offends Maryboy and his allies is how Utah's local, state and federal officials cherry-pick a few Natives and hold them out as representing the whole population. That ignores the sovereign status of the Native tribes, as recognized in the U.S. Constitution.
"It is supposed to be government to government consultation," Maryboy said, "but they just talk to individuals who agree with them.
"We expected sympathy and professionalism out of those people," he said. "They still haven't engaged with tribal leaders."
It may seem odd that Utah officials who are opposed to the Bears Ears plan — Sen. Mike Lee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz and Gov. Gary Herbert — would so easily toss aside the idea of tribal sovereignty. They are, after all, the folks who most loudly thump the tub for the sovereignty of the states in their relations with the federal government.
Not, perhaps, as odd as the habit of Utah (and other states) to swoop in and take away the decision-making authority of cities and counties whenever they feel the need. But odd.
Or maybe not.
Maybe Utah elected officials naturally assume that the elected governments of the Navajos or the Utes or the Hopi don't really speak for the wants and needs of their constituents because those same Utah elected officials don't really speak for the wants and needs of those they represent.
On issue after issue — school vouchers, education funding, air quality, gun swaggering, Medicaid expansion, Planned Parenthood, hounding Hillary over her emails — Utah's one-party, gerrymandered Legislature and congressional delegation waive off what the center-right populace wants and values and instead pursue far-right, Koch brothers, fossil fuel forever interests.
It makes perfect sense that a Utah legislator would look at a Navajo Nation Chapter delegate — if he bothered to find one — and expect that the Native politician was just like the white guy — buttering his own bread without any regard at all for the true best interests of his constituents.
The accusations leveled at the pro-monument Natives — including those circulated around Southeast Utah in forged letters and false press releases — include the insult that they don't really speak for their neighbors, but for far-away monied interests.
Of course that's what the anti-monument officials think. That's why they seemed to have no hesitation about making all that stuff up. Of course, that argument goes, Native politicians are bought and paid for. You know, just like the white ones.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Maryboy's point is that the discussion over Bears Ears, and a lot of other issues, should be sovereign nation to sovereign nation, a relationship that supersedes the powers of the individual states.
That's why — in addition to the fact that the land-use plans put forward by Utah office-holders have so rudely ignored the Native governments — Maryboy and his allies feel they have the right to go right to the top, to President Obama, and urge him to use his Antiquities Act authority strictly at the request of Native Nations, not just to please white folks or his own ego.
Because that's what allied nations do for one another.
George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, favors the creation of a Navajo Embassy in Salt Lake City. Just in case he ever needs to seek asylum.