My day wearing 'Bears Ears'

It was in the summer of 2006, when I stopped for a smoke, looked at the map and listened hard.   Where I would later learn in the surrounding stillness, of sacred sites and ancient pictographs - the over-all significance of Bears Ears.

Today, hard to fathom that our country's president has just rolled back nearly two million acres of public lands (for private use) of the surrounding, ancestral red rock canyons, at Bears Ears National Monument.

On Monday, the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, the Ute and the "Great Broads for Wilderness" - all filed suit in Federal Court in the hope of protecting these ancient lands from potential drilling and/or future mining.

My first ever visit - but to the Native Americans protesting this recent outcome, "It's a historical trauma our people have been through, over and over".

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/08/opinion/bears-ears-monument.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region


On that solo journey in southeastern Utah.