Navajo Nation lawmaker implores Trump to protect monuments

FILE: In a television advertisement airing Thursday, a Navajo Nation lawmaker implores President Donald Trump to protect national monuments. (Photo by Gage Skidmore/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

WASHINGTON — In a television advertisement airing Thursday, a Navajo Nation lawmaker implores President Donald Trump to protect national monuments.

The 30-second ad shows Davis Filfred walking in Bears Ears National Monument in southern Utah. The footage features an expansive landscape with cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, mesas and the sun sitting on the horizon.

Bears Ears has been targeted for reduction by the Trump administration, but it’s unclear by how much.

As the ad wraps up, Filfred says: “Mr. President. Not all monuments divide us. Some bring us together.”

Filfred tells The Associated Press the ad is his way of trying to get attention from officials he says haven’t listened to tribal concerns.

The $150,000 ad is airing in the Washington, D.C., market. It’s paid for by the National Wildlife Federation.