Pueblo leaders call for permanent Chaco Canyon protections, ask interior secretary to visit

Pueblo leaders and three members of New Mexico’s congressional delegation spoke in front of the Capitol building Tuesday morning, pushing to make permanent a ban on oil drilling around Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

“We go to sacred places like Chaco where our ancestors today still live,” said Acoma Gov. Charles Riley. “We go and pray that they intercede for us… We do not want the protections to be withdrawn, because it’s those places like Chaco, Mesa Verde, that even today our people, our traditional people, our religious leaders, go to ask for help for everybody, all of humanity.”

The national park in northern New Mexico is a UNESCO World Heritage site that preserves a major center of ancestral Puebloan culture from 850 to 1250 CE, according to a National Park Service guide. Oil and gas drilling, as well as exploratory mining are banned on federal lands within a 10-mile radius of the park until 2043, thanks to an Interior Department order issued under the Biden administration.

While pueblo leaders are united in advocating for the ban to stay in place, the Navajo Nation president has backed legislation that would remove it.

“I support the Navajo people having a say in how their land and minerals are developed,” Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said in a January statement backing the Energy Opportunities for All Act that would rescind the ban. “In this case, the Navajo allottees have an important right to have their voices heard.”

Nygren’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The bill is sponsored by Republican representatives from Arizona and Colorado.

President Donald Trump has made domestic oil and gas production and mining a priority. The Interior Department began reconsidering federal land withdrawals in February, including the withdrawn lands surrounding Chaco Canyon.

A handful of tribes participated in a Bureau of Land Management consultation meeting on the Chaco ban earlier this year, according to a news release from the National Congress of American Indians.

Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández and Sen. Ben Ray Luján, both Democrats, are leading legislation that would make the 10-mile ban permanent, the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act. The 10-mile buffer was negotiated over years of consultation with Navajo Nation leadership, pueblo leadership, archaeologist and the federal government, Leger Fernández said.

“We made sure that we consulted with everybody before we introduced the bill, which is why we incorporated feedback from the Diné — from the Navajo Nation — into the bill in its present form, so that we could call out the fact that that is an area that is also of great cultural significance to the Navajo Nation and the Diné people,” Leger Fernández said.

The permanent ban would not limit drilling on land owned by Navajo allottees within the 10-mile radius or affect existing oil and gas leases, she said.

Leger Fernández was joined by Sen. Martin Heinrich and Rep. Melanie Stansbury.

“Chaco Canyon is not a museum,” Heinrich said. “It’s not just a place protecting amazing buildings from centuries and centuries and centuries ago, or even the incredible astronomy that informed how that place was built. It is a living cultural landscape with direct relationships with the pueblos today.”

During Tuesday’s news conference, several pueblo leaders encouraged Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to visit Chaco Canyon in person, as did the congresspeople.

“I’m going to urge that you all come visit Chaco at some point in time, in your lifetime. It is a very spiritual place,” said Santa Ana Gov. Myron Armijo.