On Tuesday, Aug. 8, President Joe Biden created Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, a national monument encompassing almost a million acres surrounding the Grand Canyon. At the signing ceremony, Biden said,

America’s natural wonders are our nation’s heart and soul. That’s not hyperbole; that’s a fact. They unite us. They inspire us. A birthright we pass down from generation to generation.

The White House, Remarks by President Biden, Aug. 8, 2023.

In part, the three-state trip to Arizona, New Mexico and Utah was to promote the Inflation Reduction Act, a piece of necessary campaign work.

On August 16, 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, marking the most significant action Congress has taken on clean energy and climate change in the nation’s history. With the stroke of his pen, the President redefined American leadership in confronting the existential threat of the climate crisis and set forth a new era of American innovation and ingenuity to lower consumer costs and drive the global clean energy economy forward.

The White House, Inflation Reduction Act Guidebook.

We, as a society, must act to address the human causes of the climate crisis, and Joe Biden is doing the work.

The risk we have in establishing this national monument is another president with differing views could undo this work as Donald J. Trump did with Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, created by President Obama a year prior to Trump assuming office. Fact is there is no consensus about creating national monuments which in turn, steers the rudder toward partisanship. Biden’s lofty remarks on Aug. 8 sound universal, yet are not commonly enough believed for Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni to endure when political seas shift.

There are characteristics of the new national monument that make them ripe to be overturned, at least in part. The first is grazing rights on public lands. According to the White House, “(The) monument designation protects these sacred places for cultural and spiritual uses, while respecting existing livestock grazing permits and preserving access for hunting and fishing.” It seems clear that won’t be good enough for ranchers and herders who rely on public lands to feed their livestock at low or no cost.

More significantly, the new national monument is home to some of the most easily accessible deposits of uranium in the country.

The Grand Canyon is too important to not protect. And yet there are hundreds of mining claims, and several active uranium mines in the proposed monument area that threaten to poison the landscape and destroy this sacred land. We know from firsthand experience the damage that can be caused by yellow dirt contaminating our water and poisoning our animals and our children. We are thankful to President Biden and the Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition for their efforts in pushing this initiative to protect our people from the adverse effects of uranium mining.

Navajo Nation President Nygren, Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition Celebrates Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument Designation Aug. 8, 2023

The hope among tribal leaders is the national monument designation is permanent. It is hard to believe that mining interests won’t exploit their political power to gain access to uranium deposits there. They have already begun framing arguments that uranium will be needed to power the displacement of fossil fuels in our energy grid. As I’ve written on several occasions, nuclear power is not the answer to addressing climate change.

We should celebrate the moment of creating this national monument. Local groups have been working on its designation for decades and we should stop, take a breath, and appreciate what determined, long-range political action can accomplish. We must also be vigilant of those who would undo Biden’s work.