On Monday, Donald Trump will visit Salt Lake City. He is expected to formally announce plans to substantially shrink two Utah national monuments: Grand Staircase-Escalante and Bears Ears.
A review of national monuments was conducted by the interior secretary, Ryan Zinke, who recommended changes to 10 such areas. In seeking to open up more land for growth and extractive industries, Trump has the support of Utah's all-Republican congressional delegation.
Orrin Hatch, the senator who invited Trump to Utah, said in a video statement the "outcome" the president will announce " strikes an excellent balance where everybody wins ".
Thousands of demonstrators, however, gathered at the state capitol on Saturday in a show of solidarity with Native American tribes that say the move against Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante is nothing less than a" monumental mistake ".
A coalition of five Utah tribes with ties to the land- the Navajo Nation, Ute Mountain Ute, Ute Indian Tribe, Hopi and the Pueblo of Zuni- has vowed to oppose any shrinkage of "the member states national" monument. Before the formation of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, in 2015, the tribes had never are working together. Their leaders say legal action is likely if Trump announces a reduction.
Shaun Chapoose, councilman of the Ute Indian Tribe business committee, said this was a significant moment for Native Americans. Many citizens mobilized around tribes opposing the Dakota Access pipeline and alliances were forged around Bears Ears. Despite reversals suffered by the Dakota Access protesters, he said, he insures a reawakening of hope.
" Indian country is coming out of its sleep ," Chapoose said." It's given an opportunity for us to voice concerns, and it's made it OK for tribes to talk amongst themselves, like they used to do a long time ago.
Chapoose said that in backing extractive industry over preservation and Native American communities, the Trump administration had depicted a line in the sand.
" It's another slap in the face in the overall relationship between the federal government and the tribes, and local people ," he said.
Chapoose said the issue had led locally to a polarization between those in favour of the monument and people who want the freedom of the media to use the land for mining, logging and riding off-road vehicles.
Davis Filfred, the son of a medicine man and a Navajo Nation council delegate, said he did not want to see Bears Ears become like his tribe's land, which he said had been contaminated by fossil fuel growth. Coalmining in the Four Corners area, he said, offers a cautionary tale.
Filfred said his Navajo people would continue to hold ceremonies on the land." More than 150 years ago, the federal government removed our ancestors from Bears Ears at gunpoint and sent them on the Long Walk, but we came back ," he said, in press release issued by the Native American Rights Fund.
Bears Ears was designated by Barack Obama days before he left office, as the first national monument to be requested by native tribes. Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk of the Ute Mountain Ute tribe was in the waiting room at the doctor's office when she took the bellow from the federal government. When she supposes of that moment, she cries.
Lopez-Whiteskunk was one of the founding co-chairs of the coalition that seeks to defend Bears Ears.
" We are very distinct, sovereign tribes ," Lopez-Whiteskunk said, adding that some tribes were historic foes and some were not accustomed to women being in the circle of leaders.
It is estimated that Bears Ears holds more than 100,000 Native American culture and archaeological sites, including petroglyphs, pottery, tools and ancestral Pueblo dwellings. Sacred sites have been threatened by looting and vandalism. The hope was that national monument status would preserve and protect the land from desecration as well as potential growth by the energy industry.
Native Americans are caretakers of the land not just for tribes but for all American citizens, she said.
Lopez-Whiteskunk said she was not surprised by the turn of events under Trump, but still found it disheartening.
No matter what happens on Monday, she said, or in the future, it will not diminish the historic accomplishment of having Bears Ears declared a national monument.
This article was revised on 4 December 2017 to correct Shaun Chapoose's title.