On Tuesday, January 7, President Joe Biden created Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands National Monuments, protecting more than half a million acres of public land. National monuments can be created by the President under the authority of the Antiquities Act. Since 1906, the Antiquities Act has been used as a bipartisan preservation tool by eighteen different presidents, often during the lame duck period.
Biden has created ten new national monuments, the most of any president in a single term other than President Jimmy Carter, who recently passed. Many of Biden’s national monuments, including the brand new Chuckwalla and Sáttítla Highlands National Monuments, have been responses to advocacy by indigenous groups.
Chuckwalla National Monument
Bordering Joshua Tree National Park to the South, Chuckwalla National Monument contains more than half a million acres of desert lands. The effort has been led by seven local tribes, joined by a slate of local businesses, municipalities, and scientists.
Protect Chuckwalla, the organization that proposed the monument, has cited cultural, historical, and ecological reasons for its preservation. The primary purpose of the monument is to protect “a living landscape with interconnected cultural, natural, and spiritual significance that continue to sustain the well-being and survival of Indigenous peoples today.”
This landscape includes “multi-use trails established by Indigenous peoples, sacred sites and objects, traditional cultural places, geoglyphs, petroglyphs, pictographs, native plants, and wildlife.” The monument’s namesake, the Chuckwalla lizard, is one example of the biodiversity protected by the designation.
Sáttítla Highlands National Monument
In Northern California, Sáttítla Highlands National Monument has been carved out of national forest land from the Shasta-Trinity, Klamath, and Modoc National Forests.
Like the Chuckwalla National Monument, the effort to protect Sáttítla Highlands—often called the Medicine Lake Highlands—has been spearheaded by local tribes. At the forefront is the Pit River Tribe, who have defended the Medicine Lake Highlands from geothermal development in court.
The organization Protect Sáttítla Highlands describes the region as “culturally significant, geologically unique, life sustaining.” Beneath Sáttítla Highlands are volcanically formed aquifers that “store as much water as California’s 200 largest surface reservoirs.” The watershed has been threatened by clear-cut logging, geothermal power-plants, and hydraulic fracking.
Sáttítla Highlands National Monument borders Lava Beds National Monument to the northeast, which is managed by the National Park Service. Like Sáttítla Highlands, Lava Beds National Monument has a special significance to local indigenous tribes.
In the winter of 1873, a small band of Modoc people resisted removal to the Klamath Reservation by holding out in a network of lava tubes and caves. They were besieged for five month in what became known as “Captain Jack’s Stronghold,” named after their leader.
Biden’s protection of indigenous heritage on public land
Throughout his term, President Biden engaged indigenous American leadership and practice to guide the management of public lands. Biden made history when he appointed Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo, to be the first Native Secretary of the Interior and Chuck Sams, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, as the first Native director of the National Park Service
In addition, Biden has shown a keen interest in responding to indigenous advocates to protect culturally significant landscapes. In 2023 he designated Avi Kwa Ame and Baaj-Nwaavjo I’tah Khukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon national monuments, protecting almost 1.5 millions acres considered sacred to multiple tribes across the Southwest.
This summer he added Molok Luyuk ( “Condor Ridge,”) which is sacred to the Patwin people, to Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument. In December of this year, he established Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument, preserving one of the darkest moments in Native American history.
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