Chaco Op-Ed

Written by Julia Bernal, (Sandia Pueblo)

Land, water, and mineral colonial resource exploitation is a reoccurring reality on the stolen ancestral lands of the Pueblo, Dine and Apache people; what is known now as the Greater Chaco region (San Juan Basin) has been heavily fracked by oil and gas industry. As we have seen in the most recent weeks, we live within the violence of the white settler state. And the system created by European invasion has continued to oppress indigenous, black and people of color. We see no different when it comes to the violence inflicted on the land in the form of resource extraction. Violence on the people is violence on the land.

There are currently over 4,000 active wells and over 500 new drilling permits that have been approved by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This means that well over 91% of the public lands surrounding the Chaco Canyon Cultural historic park have been grabbed and occupied by energy companies. It created the largest methane plume in the US and has weakened the air quality causing health impacts to those who live in the region, specifically our Dine relatives. Advocacy on a grassroots, tribal and congressional government level have been working to protect our ancestral homelands. 

This past February 6th, the BLM continued to auction land parcels within the Greater Chaco Region and in the Permian Basin of Southeastern New Mexico. The BLM New Mexico State Office lease sale received bids for 66 parcels covering 16,784.64 acres of land with totaling sale high bids of $20,389,528.00. Every quarter, the Greater Chaco Coalition and the Western Environmental Law Firm submit protest letters and scoping comments for each upcoming land auction yet, the BLM has no formalized process for addressing protest letters and response to those letters yet remain pending.

This is also true for the lack and disrespect the BLM and BIA have shown the sovereign tribal nations within New Mexico. Even during a global pandemic, the BLM had wished to move forward with a newly drafted Resource Management Plan Amendment and Environmental Impact State with the plans to expand fracking operations by nearly 3000 new wells within the region. 

As the Navajo Nation became the COVID19 epicenter of the US and Pueblo nations also greatly impacted was due to the lack of medical infrastructure and resources to combat this virus. In the wake of crisis, many community members, relief funds and mutual aid initiatives came together to aid their relatives who have limited access to resources like water, food, diapers, PPE, and even cloth masks. The instructions to flatten the curve as the virus crept into traditional indigenous communities shifted the capacity of tribal leaders as they worked to create new systems for tribal members to remain safe and keep outsiders off our lands. This order that all Pueblos would remain closed to the outside world exercised their tribal sovereignty. And this just was not in New Mexico, but other indigenous nations across turtle island declared closures to their reservations to protect their people, and in some cases the reaction was blatantly racist and violent.

The South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem threatened to sue two tribes, Cheyenne River and Oglala Sioux, from restricting entry through their reservation lands with checkpoints on the highways that ran through their land.  These are true acts of indigenous sovereignty, and it further reveals the blatant disrespect for tribal sovereignty when it comes to protecting not just our people but protecting our cultural resources, languages, traditions, elders, youth, and sacred sites, like Chaco Canyon. Yet, the BLM continued to move forward with their RMPA, without the adequate and meaningful tribal consultation otherwise known as Section 106 – the mandated “trust” relationship between government to government.

The All Pueblo Council of Governors collectively demanded that the BLM extend their public comment period because there was not adequate time for tribes to collect their protest statements in opposition of the newly drafted Resource Management Plan Amendment and Environmental Impact Statement. This is because it lacks meaningful tribal consultation but also lacks cultural cumulative impacts that the tribes have the right to include in the RMPA – EIS.    

And days before the public comment period deadline, the BLM decided to extend the RMPA public comment period for 120 days – the most recent deadline being September 25 th , 2020. This extension was requested due to the COVID19 outbreak and that this pandemic has weakened the capacity of Tribal governments because of stay at home orders and lack of broadband access for some of the more rural tribes. And for those who work in Indian country know that our capacity is always extremely limited.

Mind you, tribes had to ASK for an extension. If this were not requested, it was likely that they would move forward with the drafted RMPA – EIS. The feds have always worked to streamline consultation processes whether it is excluding sovereign tribes or the public voice, or even attempts to gut acts like the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA). All favor of the oil and gas production on stolen ancestral indigenous lands.

The BLM continued with their September deadline and hosted three virtual stakeholder meetings that were basically a faulty process to seemingly include community and tribal voices yet they are still considering the Draft Resource Management Plan without amendments.

As of November 10th, the FY2021 Appropriations Bill prepared by the Senate Republicans does not contain the preexisting language, supported by the sovereign tribal nations and many others, that prohibit the BLM from leasing federal lands within roughly 10 miles of Chaco Canyon. This is the only policy provision which was removed from the CR in the Interior Bill, while the majority retained riders on sage grouse, BIA and Monuments. This is a direct attack on Tribal capacity during a global pandemic, reveals how off the rails the oil and industry has been managed under the Trump administration, and disregarded the requests by the Pueblos and Navajo sovereign nations. 

There was never consent from indigenous nations for a fossil fuel extractive economy on our sacred lands.

Fighting against fossil fuel addicted economies on different federal, state, and local governmental jurisdictions has made it virtually impossible to end the non-renewable energy economy and contributes to the global capitalist machine that favors oil and gas corporations who make trillions of dollars at the expense of indigenous people and the land they protect. Abolishing such European institutions is the only way to return land and water management back to the indigenous people.

The current political climate has demanded the abolition of violent and corrupt police forces that perpetuate violence on black, indigenous, and people of color, and we must also demand the abolition of extractive violence on our earth mother.

#Protectthepeople #LandBack #WaterBack #PublicLandisStolenLand #StolenLandisAncestralLand