Two coalitions representing Native American tribes say they received no advance notice before President Donald Trump signed executive orders Monday slashing the size of Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments by roughly 90 percent, reigniting a long-running battle over federal land management and the government’s obligations to consult with Indigenous peoples.
The Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition reported that it was given zero warning before the orders were signed. Autumn Gillard, speaking on behalf of the coalition, said the group “had received zero consultation” ahead of the reductions — a charge that goes to the heart of longstanding federal trust responsibilities toward tribal nations.
Monuments Reduced to Fractions of Original Size
Bears Ears National Monument, originally designated in 2016 by President Barack Obama at the urging of Native American tribes — making it the first monument established through such advocacy — has now been cut to just 121,000 acres. That is a dramatic reduction from its original 1.35 million acres. Trump had previously shrunk the monument to 228,000 acres during his first term in 2017, before Former President Biden fully restored it in 2021.
Grand Staircase-Escalante has been reduced even more steeply. Once covering 1.87 million acres, it was trimmed to roughly 1 million acres during Trump’s first term, then restored under Biden. The new executive order brings it down to 182,000 acres — less than a tenth of its original footprint.
Utah’s entire Republican congressional delegation stood alongside Trump in the Oval Office during the signing ceremony. Utah Governor Spencer Cox and state House Speaker Mike Schultz were also present, signaling strong state-level support for the administration’s move. Trump’s order identifying Grand Staircase-Escalante as rich in copper, iron, titanium, and zinc suggested the administration views reducing monument boundaries as central to its domestic mineral and energy production agenda.
Bears Ears Commission Formally Dissolved
Beyond the acreage reductions, the executive order targeting Bears Ears goes further by formally terminating the federal government’s cooperative agreement with the Bears Ears Commission — a body made up of five tribal nations: the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Zuni Tribe, and the Ute Indian Tribe. The commission was created as part of the monument’s management structure to ensure tribal voices remained central to decisions about the land.
The order explicitly states that federal agency secretaries have “no obligation to engage, consult, or coordinate with the BEC,” effectively stripping the commission of any formal standing in future land management discussions.
Davina Smith-Idjesa, who has been involved in Bears Ears advocacy, described the dual blow of the acreage reduction and the commission’s dissolution in stark terms. “To reduce Bears Ears again is devastating,” she said, “but to abolish the Bears Ears Commission — to attempt to erase years of tribal leadership relationships and work between sovereign tribal nations and our federal partners — is something I am still trying to fully process.”
Democratic members of Congress representing Western states pushed back on the orders, arguing the reductions prioritize corporate extraction interests over the cultural and historical significance these lands hold for tribal communities. While those objections carry little weight in the Republican-controlled Congress, they signal that legal challenges are likely to follow — similar to the litigation that ultimately led to Biden’s restorations in 2021.
For tribes across the region, the monument reductions carry particular weight given the long history of federal promises made and broken. The Bears Ears monument represented a landmark acknowledgment that Indigenous peoples have a sovereign interest in the stewardship of ancestral lands. The relationship between tribal nations and the federal government has been shaped repeatedly by decisions made without meaningful Indigenous input, a pattern tribal representatives say this week’s actions continue. Tribes along the Columbia River have raised similar concerns about federal decisions affecting their lands and waterways, including the chemical spill at Longview that killed fish and drew tribal demands for federal accountability.
What Comes Next
Legal challenges to the monument reductions are widely expected, with tribal coalitions and conservation groups likely to file suit in federal court. Courts have previously weighed in on the limits of presidential authority to reduce monument boundaries under the Antiquities Act, and those legal questions remain unresolved. Congress could also act, though the Republican majority makes legislative reversal unlikely in the near term. Tribal nations involved in the Bears Ears Commission have not yet announced a formal legal strategy, but the dissolution of their cooperative agreement with federal agencies all but ensures the dispute will be settled in court rather than through negotiation.