Chaco Canyon lies in the Four Corners region in northwestern New Mexico. It was a cultural center of the Ancestral Puebloans between AD 900 to 1150 and reached its zenith around the year 800. The canyon’s inhabitants built magisterial cliff dwellings and vast towns constructed of stone, including semi-subterranean kivas used for ritual purposes.
Around 1150, its inhabitants abandoned the area, leaving behind the buildings. Possible reasons cited for this abandonment have been droughts, poor water management, deforestation (a study has suggested that the canyon’s inhabitants hauled up to 240,000 trees from mountain ranges 46 miles away for home construction), or possibly wars, violence or enemy raids. Researchers still haven’t managed to fully understand the extent of Chaco Canyon’s “lost civilization” or its trade routes among other things.
The discovery of cocoa and the excavation of scarlet macaw skeletons as recently as 2015 in Chaco Canyon, however, both prove the existence a trade with Mesoamerican civilizations that lived hundreds of miles south of New Mexico. Because of this, some Natives in the area call the site “the Original World Trade Center.”
The first in-depth U.S. archaeological expedition to Chaco Canyon took place in 1896. In 1949, the Chaco Canyon National Monument was created. In 1980, it became the Chaco Culture National Historical Park. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1987, and it is one of the most important pre-Columbian historical sites in the U.S. The Hopi and Pueblo people consider the area sacred ancestral homelands.
Energy Development in northwestern New Mexico
Initial excavation of fossil fuels in New Mexico started in the 1920s and heavily intensified in the 1960s. The state is dependent on income from energy extraction, including fracking. In the Four Corners area for example, 91% of all public lands are leased for drilling. Most of the remaining 9% lie in the vast area outside of the protected Historical National Park.
An argument the Bureau of Land Management uses for the lease sales is that it promotes U.S. energy independence. The oil and gas lease auctions for the Chaco area were first planned during Obama’s presidency. Because the sale’s lands are only 20 miles away from Chaco Culture National Historical Park they have been controversial from the beginning. Now, the Pueblo tribes want the Trump administration to impose a temporary ban on oil and gas drilling near the Chaco Culture Historical National Park.
Both Pueblo and Navajo communities in the area are worried about possible impacts of fracking (hydraulic fracturing) on ancestral sites and demand that further studies should be conducted on the possible environmental and health dangers of fracking caused by spills before leasing more land. They also are concerned that water trucks of fracking companies ruin their dirt roads due to the ruts they leave in them and fear that their water quality will suffer from the fracking activity.
An additional problematic aspect in regard to energy development in the area is the concept of sacred lands and special sites: The All Pueblo Council of Governors stated that energy development in the region threatens sacred sites and places that are otherwise important to Pueblo communities. The council also stated that they see energy development plans in the region as a “total lack of respect” for their sovereign tribal nations and as “attacks” on their heritage, adding that they believe their ancestors still reside in the area.
Navajo leaders also state similar concerns as the Pueblo tribes in regard to energy development encroaching on lands they consider sacred or otherwise special, fearing the greater region could turn the area into an industrial wasteland. Russell Begaye, President of the Navajo Nation, has explained, “We are connected to these lands spiritually. The voices of our ancestors live in this area and any disturbance to this area is culturally and morally insensitive.”
The issue has had a mobilizing effect on the local Native communities, some of its activists say. Tribal communities have filed lawsuits against the Bureau of Land Management and at least one of their lawsuits claims that fracking in the area violates the National Historic Preservation Act.
The frictions between Native people and agencies which energy development plans in the Chaco region cause one to contemplate different questions: What is sacred to whom and who decides over what should be protected? What are the best compromises between the desire to protect landscapes of historical and cultural significance and present-day demands for resources?