Overview:
As battles over Bears Ears, Line 5 and other sacred places continue, Levi Rickert argues Native voters should pay close attention to who funds political campaigns.
Opinion
For generations, tribal nations have fought to protect places that hold the stories of our ancestors, our ceremonies, and our identities. Yet time and again, those sacred places become targets—not because they have lost their cultural significance, but because someone believes there is money to be made beneath them.
President Donald Trump’s decision last week to dramatically reduce the boundaries of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments is the latest reminder that the struggle over public lands is rarely just about conservation. It is also about power, influence, and the financial interests that shape government policy.
Bears Ears is not simply a scenic destination in southeastern Utah. It is a living cultural landscape that is deeply significant to many tribal nations, including the Hopi Tribe, Navajo Nation, Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, and the Pueblo of Zuni. Thousands of archaeological sites, ancient villages, burial grounds, and ceremonial locations are woven throughout the landscape.
For Native people, these places are not relics of history. They are part of who we are.
Grand Staircase-Escalante likewise contains irreplaceable cultural resources and landscapes connected to Indigenous peoples who have lived in the region for thousands of years.
When protections for these lands are weakened, the question naturally becomes: Who benefits?
The answer is not difficult to find.
For decades, energy companies, mining interests, and their political allies have argued that lands surrounding Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante should be opened for greater resource extraction. The region contains deposits of uranium, coal, oil, natural gas, and other valuable minerals. Those resources represent potential profits for corporations, but they also represent irreversible risks to landscapes that tribal nations have worked tirelessly to protect.
Last Wednesday, Michigan’s tribal nations felt deeply betrayed when Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration approved a permit for oil giant Enbridge to build a tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac to house the 73-year-old Line 5 pipeline — allowing Canadian oil to continue flowing through Michigan on its way back to Canada.
Bay Mills Indian Community President Whitney Gravelle, who has fought the Enbridge Line 5 project for the last decade wrote in an op-ed for Native News Online, “some things are simply too sacred to bury beneath a tunnel.”
Michigan tribes were not alone in the opposition to the tunnel. Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, adamantly opposed the project.
“This tunnel puts our Great Lakes, clean drinking water, and ecosystems in jeopardy of a catastrophic oil spill. Instead of prioritizing the safety and well-being of Michiganders, the Whitmer Administration has sided with a billion-dollar foreign oil company, while Michigan taxpayers will assume all the risks for decades to come,” the Sierra Club said in a statement.
Gravelle argues the state of Michigan’s tribal consultation, conducted by separate state departments or agencies, seemed as if state officials were simply checking a box. This compartmentalized approach failed, she contends.
“It is about whether one of the largest freshwater systems on Earth should be placed at continued risk for a pipeline that provides minimal direct benefit to Michigan while enriching a private corporation… It is about whether consultation is a genuine opportunity to shape decisions or simply another procedural box to check,” Gravelle writes.
Native communities have repeatedly found themselves standing between extractive industries and lands that hold profound cultural and spiritual importance. This has happened across the country. Whether the issue is uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, oil pipelines crossing treaty territory, copper mining at Oak Flat, or drilling in the Arctic, the pattern remains painfully familiar.
Promises of economic development frequently overshadow tribal consultation.
With the midterm elections coming up, Native voters should pay close attention not only to what candidates say about tribal sovereignty but also to who finances their campaigns.
Campaign contributions tell a story.
When candidates receive substantial financial support from oil companies, mining corporations, fossil fuel trade associations, or industries seeking expanded access to public lands, Native voters should ask difficult questions.
Will those elected officials stand with tribal nations when sacred places are threatened? Or will they stand with the industries that helped finance their campaigns?
Those are not partisan questions. They are questions about accountability.
Protecting sacred land requires elected leaders willing to place tribal sovereignty and cultural preservation ahead of corporate profits.
Most importantly, it requires Native communities to recognize that elections are not simply contests between political parties. They are choices about whose voices will carry the greatest weight when decisions are made about our ancestral lands, our cultures, and our future–for the next seven generations.
As Gravelle’s column makes clear, sacred places remain vulnerable whenever powerful economic interests are allowed to overshadow Indigenous rights. Native voters should remember that when campaign season arrives. The names on the donation reports may not always appear on the ballot, but their influence often reaches far beyond Election Day.
Thayék gde nwéndëmen – We are all related.
