This story was originally published by the Santa Fe New Mexican and Searchlight New Mexico and is republished here by permission.
Representatives from 20 pueblos joined New Mexico’s congressional delegates at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to repeat a simple message: “Chaco Canyon is not for sale.”
State and federal Democratic lawmakers and tribal leaders — whose ancestors built a major city there more than a millennium ago — have long made clear their opposition to the Trump administration’s plans to rescind a 10-mile buffer zone barring drilling and mineral extraction around Chaco Culture National Historical Park in northwestern New Mexico.
Chaco Canyon “is a vibrant place of prayer, pilgrimage and core to the identity of many Southwest tribes, whose connection to this land stretches back thousands of years,” U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez said at Wednesday’s news conference in Washington, D.C. “In other words, there is no replacing it. The administration’s decision to revoke protections for the greater Chaco landscape are an absolute gut punch to New Mexico and to our pueblos, and to give just the public 14 days to respond is an insult.”
Aligning with the Trump administration’s focus on removing restrictions on mining and oil and gas extraction, the Bureau of Land Management plans to revoke a 2023 order closing about 336,404 acres near Chaco Canyon to drilling and mining for 20 years. The order was issued by then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the New Mexico Democratic gubernatorial nominee.
Supporters of the buffer zone have been ramping up their public outreach efforts as a two-week public comment period on the environmental assessment for the plan to allow mining and drilling, which they have decried as too short, approaches its end July 29.
“The question before us is simple: What kind of legacy will we leave?” Cochiti Pueblo Gov. Phillip Quintana said. “Will we choose short-term extraction, or will we choose to protect one of the most important Indigenous cultural landscapes in North America, a place whose meaning reaches far beyond any single administration?”
“Will we choose short-term extraction, or will we choose to protect one of the most important Indigenous cultural landscapes in North America?”
New Mexico’s five Democratic senators and members of Congress on Wednesday wrote to U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, asking him to extend the comment period to at least 90 days. The letter also calls on Burgum to visit Chaco “before taking any action that would put this irreplaceable landscape at risk,” something he agreed to do in an appearance before the House Natural Resource Committee in June 2025.
“He lied,” U.S. Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, whose district includes Chaco Canyon, said Wednesday. “But we will hold him to his comment. We will hold the Department of Interior to the rules and the laws and the regulations, and we will not let them silence us.”
“We asked for a meeting, but we never got it,” said Joey Sanchez, chair of the All Pueblo Council of Governors. “I don’t know if you’re here in town, but you know we’re here. We’re ready to be with you. We ask you to come and visit.”
Burgum did not respond to requests for comment.
State rep: New Mexico must fight
Although the decision on whether to revoke the buffer zone is being made at the federal level, state Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo, doesn’t want the state to sit idly by.
“I am calling on the governor to make New Mexico’s opposition unmistakable and to direct the resources of the state toward defending this landscape,” Lente said in a Tuesday statement.
Lente said the state Department of Cultural Affairs and the State Historic Preservation Officer should “use their full authority in the federal review process, including their formal role under the National Historic Preservation Act, to insist that the cultural harm of this proposal be honestly studied and honestly weighed.”
A spokesperson for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she has been “pushing back on this terribly shortsighted and reckless proposal for months, including submitting official administration correspondence in April and coordinating with New Mexico’s congressional delegation to bolster our state’s official opposition.”
Mixed Navajo views
Although leaders of New Mexico pueblos have been united in publicly opposing drilling and mining around Chaco, leaders of the Navajo Nation, whose lands surround Chaco Canyon, have often disagreed.
Navajo President Buu Nygren, who opposes the buffer zone, will not be returning to office next year, having come in third in Tuesday’s primary election. However, the two candidates to succeed him have expressed views on the topic that are fundamentally the same as his.
Justin Jones has said allottees should be allowed to develop oil and gas extraction “because they have surface and subsurface possessory rights,” the Navajo Times reported in 2022. And Crystalyne Curley, the Navajo Nation Council speaker, strongly disagreed with Haaland’s 2023 decision to impose the 10-mile buffer.
However, their perspective isn’t the only one in the area. Mario Atencio, a Navajo activist and critic of the oil and gas industry’s impact on his home whose family has allotments within the buffer zone, said Wednesday revoking protections would give the government “free rein to pollute the land.”
“It’s challenging and detrimental to the public health of local people,” he said.
Searchlight New Mexico is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that seeks to empower New Mexicans to demand honest and effective public policy.
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