Bears Ears is co-managed under an arrangement that gives sovereign tribal nations a formal seat in decisions over federal land, a structure that predates and outlasts any single monument boundary.
Five nations, one coalition
The Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition, formed by the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, Ute Indian Tribe and Pueblo of Zuni, proposed the monument jointly and negotiated a management structure in which tribal representatives sit on a commission advising federal land managers directly, an arrangement without close precedent on other American public lands at this scale.
What the land actually holds
Within the broader landscape, sites such as the cliff dwellings and structures known as the Doll House and Moon House ruins preserve Ancestral Puebloan architecture, granaries and rock art panels, some over a thousand years old, alongside more recent Navajo and Ute cultural sites, making the area a continuously used landscape rather than an abandoned one.
Boundaries that keep moving, coalition that has not
The monument's legal boundaries have been redrawn more than once by successive federal administrations, expanding and shrinking the protected area each time political control changed. The coalition itself, and its claim to a management role regardless of acreage, has persisted through every redrawing, arguing that the relationship to the land does not depend on where a map line falls.