The Quiet Politics and Gentle Literary Activism Behind the Battle for Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument

Abstract

In the closing weeks of his administration, President Obama used his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate the 1.35-million-acre Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah, a redrock landscape sacred to many Native American tribes. With the designation, Bears Ears became the second national monument in Utah—after Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, designated in 1996—where literature and the literary imagination had formed part of the arsenal of campaigners petitioning for the designation. This discussion looks to the works of writers across the American West who have spoken out in defense of Bears Ears (both pre- and post-designation), to consider the place of literature in environmental activism. In particular, this discussion examines how literary activism emerges as a creative yet gently subversive performance, allowing commentators to speak back to an ethics of (ecological) care, responsibility, and to respond to injustices at Bears Ears. Across these two national monuments, and three accompanying and pivotal anthologies, this discussion unpacks and interrogates an ongoing gentle political rhetoric and dialogue surrounding the Bears Ears national monument. But this quiet resilience has been disrupted, upended by the Trump administration’s review of more than two dozen national monument designations, which specifically targets Bears Ears, but also includes Grand Staircase-Escalante.