For Native American activists crossing the nation with a totem pole, sacred lands are their Notre Dame

Nowhere is that debate more heated than at Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, a striking archaeological and natural wonder that activists will reach Saturday.

“Sacred places and public lands are under sustained duress from climate chaos and fossil fuel reliance, and we feel that under this administration we can change the role that the federal government plays in this equation,” said Judith LeBlanc, director of the Native Organizers Alliance, who spoke to USA TODAY as the caravan motored through Utah.

While some tribes have had success on that front – last year the Supreme Court ruled half of Oklahoma is on Native lands, with resulting implications for court cases – most have spent the past years protesting against access to federal lands, many in Indian country, that the Trump administration granted to energy and mining companies.

From the Gila River to Bears Ears: Environmental activists renew push to protect Southwest US public lands amid shifting politics.

“This act should be used to prevent acts of looting for the smallest area compatible,” said Jeffrey McCoy, a lawyer for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian public interest law firm that represented ranchers who said Obama’s declaration deprived them of access to land they had long used.

Bears Ears leader Gonzales-Rogers said activists are pushing lawmakers to increase the size of the national monument to beyond what Obama granted, at nearly 2 million acres