Chaco in Trump's gunsights

When the people of the Chaco Wash were building in what is now northwestern New Mexico the ancestors of the Lakota were living in post-archaic North Carolina. 

Today, the oil field traffic some driven by Black Hills Gas Resources near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, creates hazards for Indigenous and visitors alike. Fracking just outside of Chaco threatens to trigger seismic activity under the fragile sacred site and contributes to the methane bubble over the Four Corners area. In 2015 Santa Fe-based Wild Earth Guardians joined other interested parties in suing the US Bureau of Land Management to stop the encroachment. 

In 2021 New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich asked then-Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to end leasing within a 10-mile radius of the park because Chaco is an International Dark Sky Park at risk to flaring. So, in partnership with the Bureau of Indian Affairs BLM completed a draft resource management plan for Chaco and a decision released. 

In 2023, citing the scarcity and fragility of water supplies in the region a three-judge panel on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the BLM didn’t properly gauge long-term impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act so it suspended some 200 permits and blocked others issued by the Trump Organization. Trump's Interior Secretary has been invited to New Mexico to survey the destruction of the area's cultural resources. 

Genetic markers have identified the Picuris Pueblo predominantly among the Chaco descendants.

Mario Atencio (Diné) always looked forward to visiting his grandmother in Counselor, New Mexico. She lived what he describes as a “simple Navajo lifestyle” in the small rural town, raising dozens of animals on her lush green property, which he remembers as a magical and peaceful place. Two years ago, Atencio became the lead plaintiff in what could soon become a landmark climate litigation case. After winding its way through the legal system, the lawsuit will go before the New Mexico Supreme Court, which agreed this month to hear the case. If the court rules in Atencio’s favor, the case would join high-profile decisions like Held v. Montana, a suit brought by young people who accused Montana of violating their constitutional right to a healthy environment by not regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Atencio v. State of New Mexico could end up forcing the country’s second-largest fossil fuel producer to clean up its act. [Western climate litigants keep fighting]

In vindictive retribution and a slap at Native America the Trump Organization nominated New Mexico Earth hater, Steve Pearce to run the BLM.

In a related story, a coalition of community organizers is growing opposition to an extractive industry intent on raping the Black Hills.

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