Interior Secretary discusses importance of new national monument protecting tribal land

Interview

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Thank you for having me.

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Yes.

Well, earlier in the summer, we had an opportunity to hike down the Grand Canyon to Supai Village to visit with the tribe there who live at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. At one time, they were banished from their ancestral homelands. And it took a lot of work by tribal leaders and supporters and some lawsuits.

And they were painstaking about needing their travel homelands back. They were back there on the floor of the Grand Canyon. They had a chance to visit with people where they are. And it's -- it was astounding. They're living on the lands that their ancestors lived on, those beautiful blue-green waterfalls.

They cherish that land. The bones of their ancestors are there. And so I understand how important that those places are to the tribes.

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Thank you so much.

Well, I will address the collaboration issue first. We have many public meetings. This is what you would call collaborative conservation, where tribes and organizations and people get together and work towards something that they want.

But this hasn't gone -- this didn't just happen since President Biden came into office. This is a decades-long, step by step, one step forward, another half-baby step forward. People have been working on this issue for decades.

And we're happy that we're able to get it done under this administration. With respect to the lands that are conserved as a national monument, it doesn't -- it excludes valid existing rights. And people who have valid existing rights within that area will keep those. That includes folks who have current mining operations or those claims.

Additionally, we should all know -- and I think most people do know -- that this land has already been -- it's -- we're going with the status quo. The land has already been protected. It had a 20-year withdrawal on these parcels of land. And there are places to mine, and there are places not to mine.

And this area, as I said, with the bones of these tribal ancestors, with thousands of cultural sites and ecosystems that sustain wildlife and species that we don't see every day, those places are too special to mine.

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Well, the president today in his remarks talked about his goal of conserving 30 percent of our land and waters by 2030.

He has conserved more land and waters than any president since John F. Kennedy, I believe.

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Well, I'm saying I feel very strongly that perhaps the message isn't getting out, right?

I mean, this has -- this has been the best president in modern history for conservation of our lands. And those conserved lands, they are -- they help avert the climate crisis. So we're going to keep doing what we're doing. The president has clean energy goals. We have conservation goals. I feel very honored to serve under him.

And we're going to keep moving forward.

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