Haaland: Chaco protections ‘millennia in the making’
CHACO CULTURE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK, N.M. – A few big rigs carried oilfield equipment on a winding road near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, cutting through desert badlands and sage. Mobile homes and traditional Navajo dwellings dotted the landscape, with a smattering of natural gas wells visible in the distance.
This swath of northwestern New Mexico has been at the center of a decadeslong battle over oil and gas development.
On Monday, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland joined pueblo leaders at the park to reflect on her office’s announcement last week that it would seek to withdraw federal land holdings within 10 miles of its boundary, making the area off-limits to oil and gas leasing for 20 years.
The action halts new leases in the area for the next two years while federal officials consider the proposed withdrawal.
“This celebration is decades in the making,” Haaland said. “Some would even say millennia in the making.”
While the Chaco area holds significance for many Indigenous people in the Southwest, the Navajo Nation oversees much of the land that makes up the jurisdictional checkerboard surrounding the national park. Some belongs to individual Navajos who were allotted land by the federal government generations ago.
Navajo leaders support preserving parts of the area but have said individual allottees stand to lose an important income source if the land is made offlimits to development. They’re calling for a smaller buffer of federal land around the park as a compromise to protect Navajo financial interests.
The rough road to the park was lined with brightly colored signs Monday in support of the allottees, many noting the importance of oil and gas development to their livelihoods.
“Our land, our minerals. We support oil and gas,” read one sign.
Environmentalists, Democratic politicians and other tribes had been pressuring Haaland – the first Native American to lead a U.S. Cabinet agency – to protect land beyond the park.
A former Democratic congresswoman from New Mexico, Haaland sponsored legislation during her U.S. House term to curb oil and gas drilling. She has called the area sacred, saying it has deep meaning for those whose ancestors once called the high desert home.
“This is a living landscape,” Haaland said Monday. “You can feel it in the sun, the clouds and the wind. It’s not difficult to imagine centuries ago children running around the open space, people moving in and out of doorways, singing in their harvest or preparing food for seasons to come – a busy, thriving community.”
A World Heritage site, Chaco is thought to be the center of what was once a hub of Indigenous civilization. Within the park, walls of stacked stone jut up from the bottom of the canyon, some perfectly aligned with the seasonal movements of the sun and moon. Circular subterranean rooms called kivas are cut into the desert floor.
More discoveries are waiting to be made outside the park, archaeologists have said.