ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — It was expected to be a homecoming of sorts for U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, after her company invested numerous months hosting public conferences and talking with Native American leaders about suppressing the speed of oil and gas advancement in the San Juan Basin and safeguarding culturally substantial websites.
But her return to Chaco Culture National Historical Park on Sunday was thwarted when a group of Navajo landowners obstructed the roadway, upset with the Biden administration’s current choice to enshrine for the next 20 years what formerly hadactually been an casual 10-mile (16-kilometer) buffer around the World Heritage website.
Social media posts revealed protesters shouting “Go Home!” as some held indications that checkedout no trespassing on allottee land.
The landowners and Navajo leaders have stated Haaland and the Biden administration overlooked efforts to reach a compromise that would haveactually developed a smallersized buffer to safeguard cultural websites while keeping undamaged the practicality of tribal land and personal Navajo-owned parcels for future advancement.
Haaland collected Sunday in Albuquerque with tribal leaders to commemorate the withdrawal.
Haaland’s own pueblo of Laguna — about 100 miles to the south — is amongst those that haveactually battled to safeguard a broad swath of land beyond park limits. Haaland hasactually called Chaco a spiritual location that holds deep significance for Indigenous individuals, and she talked Sunday about cooperation over the years inbetween Navajos and individuals from Laguna.
“This earlymorning wasn’t perfect,” she informed pressreporters. “To see any roadway into any of our nationwide parks or our public lands obstructed was heartbreaking duetothefactthat our public lands belong to all Americans.”
Haaland stated in matriarchal societies w