In January, after decades of activism, the Pit River Nation finally saw part of the watershed protected from extractive uses as the newly designated S\u00e1tt\u00edtla Highlands National Monument. It\u2019s one of the few, but growing, examples of protected areas created in the U.S. in collaboration with Indigenous nations. But the region has long been under threat from logging, mining and geothermal extraction and the Trump administration has hinted at trying to rescind this monument and others in California and beyond.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe monument helps carve out co-stewardship, where there\u2019s more tribal involvement,\u201d from managing resources to supporting maintenance efforts, McDaniels said.<\/p>\n
S\u00e1tt\u00edtla Highlands National Monument includes more than 80,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of a remote and unique landscape that McDaniels\u2019 ancestors have inhabited since time immemorial. Its name means \u201cobsidian place\u201d in Ajumawi, the language of the Pit River Nation, which includes 11 related bands. It\u2019s also the homeland of Modoc peoples. Other Indigenous nations including the Karuk, Klamath, Shasta, Siletz, Wintu and Yana consider the land protected by S\u00e1tt\u00edtla to be sacred.<\/p>\n
The centerpiece of the national monument is the still-active Medicine Lake Volcano, one of the largest in the Western United States. Its eruptions have created resources such as minerals carved into tools traditionally traded south and west to the California coast and north into Oregon, and a volcanic stone field, where NASA astronauts have trained for navigating lunar landscapes and where water seeps through the porous surface into expansive underground aquifers. The landscape around the volcano includes lava tubes large enough to walk through and islands of old-growth forests that escaped the flows.<\/p>\n
S\u00e1tt\u00edtla includes a diversity of habitats and ecosystems and is home to rare species of plants, animals and fungi, some of which are found nowhere else. The monument provides habitat for everything from the federally protected northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) in its forests to the long-toed salamander (Ambystoma macrodactylum), a California species of special concern, in its wetlands. The river\u2019s chinook salmon are a symbol for the Pit River Nation and appear on its flag.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s never been a time in which we have not been on this landscape,\u201d McDaniels said.<\/p>\n
Since European colonization, the Pit River watershed has contended with waves of extraction, even as its Indigenous peoples have contended with genocide, cultural extermination and the loss of ancestral lands. The national monument designation adds additional protections from resource extraction while also preserving culturally important sites and resources at risk from the ongoing threats of vandalism and theft. In the case of S\u00e1tt\u00edtla, the Pit River Nation battled geothermal company Calpine in court for more than 30 years to end its illegally maintained geothermal leases on land that is now included in the monument, putting that threat to rest.<\/p>\n Unlike national parks, which take an act of Congress, national monuments may be declared by a president under the Antiquities Act of 1906. National monuments protect historically or scientifically significant places on federal lands. Since President Theodore Roosevelt created Devils Tower National Monument in 1906, all but five presidents have created additional monuments (thus far, President Donald J. Trump is one of the five).<\/p>\n From their onset, protected areas in the United States ignored Indigenous history and excluded Indigenous peoples, sometimes violently, as David Treuer (Ojibwe from Leech Lake Reservation) described in a 2021 article in The Atlantic. Only in recent years have monuments such as S\u00e1tt\u00edtla been created to preserve both current-day cultural practices and resource access for Indigenous peoples and recreational opportunities for others. Designated by President Biden in 2025, the national monument is explicitly expected to be co-stewarded by Indigenous nations and the United States Forest Service, on lands carved from the Modoc, Shasta-Trinity and Klamath national forests. (Mongabay reached out to the Modoc National Forest, which did not comment on the creation of S\u00e1tt\u00edtla, and to the USDA, which oversees all forest service lands and has not responded as of publication.)<\/p>\n \u201cFor us, there\u2019s been a long history of injustice \u2014 the boarding schools, the attempts to erase our culture and heritage and dispossess us from our homelands, and whatnot. But we\u2019re still here,\u201d McDaniels said. \u201cI feel really fortunate that my kids have never known a time in their lives where they couldn\u2019t have their ceremonies, sing their songs, dance their dances and speak their language. And then have access to these places that are required to receive the gifts that they are supposed to receive in their lives, and that you receive in certain places like S\u00e1tt\u00edtla.\u201d<\/p>\n Through co-stewardship, the Pit River Nation will help the U.S. Forest Service fulfill its duties in the monument, at a time when McDaniels said the Forest Service does not have the resources to do all this work itself. \u201cWe plan on engaging a lot more with the Forest Service, knowing that they have lack of capacity to get this work done,\u201d she said. The executive order states that S\u00e1tt\u00edtla will, \u201cto the maximum extent possible,\u201d incorporate Indigenous knowledge and expertise in its management, including for cultural burning practices and educational opportunities for the public, while ensuring that Indigenous people can access traditional resources within the park.<\/p>\n In April, the National Congress of American Indians released a statement in support of national monuments including S\u00e1tt\u00edtla, saying they are \u201can essential tool for preserving the living homelands for Tribal Nations \u2014 not just federally designated and protected locations,\u201d and that \u201cany move to erase those protections is a direct affront to the sovereignty, heritage, and spiritual lifeways of the Tribal Nations who fought for their designation.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Brendan Cummings, conservation director at the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, the Antiquities Act was enacted to \u201cstop the plunder of our public lands.\u201d In addition to protecting archaeological or geologic resources that could be taken away, Cummings said the act gave presidents a fast way to protect entire landscapes, such as the Grand Canyon National Park or Joshua Tree National Park, both of which were designated national monuments by a president before Congress made them parks. The Antiquities Act, Cummings said, recognized that protecting lands through Congress can take too long.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a recognition that the president needed authority to act quicker than that, since loss of our natural resources is often irreparable,\u201d Cummings said.<\/p>\n But in recent years, Republican members of Congress who see national monuments as overly restrictive and who question the entire process by which they are created, have supported reducing or eliminating the president\u2019s power to create national monuments unilaterally. Upon the creation of S\u00e1tt\u00edtla, Representative Doug LaMalfa, a California Republican representing communities near the new national monument, issued a statement opposing \u201cthe use of the Antiquities Act to bypass Congress\u2019 role.\u201d (As of publication, LaMalfa has not responded to Mongabay\u2019s request for comment.)<\/p>\n Some Republican members of Congress have long wanted to deregulate public lands and curtail presidents\u2019 ability to protect lands using the Antiquities Act. State leaders have as well. In 2022, the Republican-led state of Utah sued over the creation of Bears Ears National Monument by President Obama and his expansion of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, alleging that the size of the monuments violated the Antiquities Act, which says that monuments \u201cshall be confined to the smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected,\u201d and that these two monuments were too large to be well-managed. More broadly, Utah said that protected areas should be created by Congress rather than by the president. In his first term, Trump shrank national monuments created by his predecessors, including Bear Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, which protected landscapes sacred to multiple Indigenous nations from resource extraction. Biden reversed that decision, with legal experts questioning whether presidents have the power to shrink or rescind national monuments in the first place, but related litigation is still active in court.<\/p>\n For now, the fate of S\u00e1tt\u00edtla Highlands National Monument is uncertain. Since his second term began, Trump has sowed confusion about S\u00e1tt\u00edtla, releasing proclamations and documents suggesting that he was rescinding several national monuments including S\u00e1tt\u00edtla, but then deleting them, as reported by The Mercury News in March.<\/p>\n McDaniels takes the long view on the fight to protect S\u00e1tt\u00edtla. Her Indigenous nation has worked hard to protect a landscape that all people can access and enjoy, even without realizing that Pit River activism is responsible for its preservation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have been carrying the heavy load \u2014 the weight of protecting these resources that a lot of people enjoy without any understanding or knowledge of who\u2019s been behind it, to preserve and protect it for them, right?\u201d she said. The national monument designation allowed the Pit River Nation to put down that multigenerational load, knowing a sacred landscape and cultural resources would be better protected.<\/p>\n \u201cIt put a long-term protection solution over this area so that our kids and our grandkids don\u2019t have to spend their lives trying to defend this area, so they can actually just use this area as it was intended for them, for healing, for prayer, for ceremony and whatnot, and not have to spend all their time and resources and their lives fighting to protect it,\u201d McDaniels said.<\/p>\nA tool to preserve living homelands<\/h2>\n