Some Republican members of Congress on 13 July denounced the Biden administration’s recent move to withdraw hundreds of square miles of federal land in New Mexico from oil and gas development, offering their support instead to legislation that would unravel the ban.
US Rep. Eli Crane was among those to speak out during a congressional subcommittee hearing on the legislation that he and fellow Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Gosar recently introduced to nullify what they consider overreach by the federal government.
Crane’s district includes part of the vast Navajo Nation, which spans portions of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. The eastern side of the reservation is part of a jurisdictional checkerboard that includes federal, state, and private lands along with Chaco Cultural National Historical Park.
He acknowledged that the park holds cultural significance for tribes throughout the Southwestern US but that development surrounding Chaco should be determined by the Navajo Nation and the thousands of individual Navajo landowners who are affected.
“The Biden administration did not properly seek out tribal input and have effectively implemented a destructive chokehold on tribal revenue and economic prosperity,” Crane said.
Although the Navajo Nation has been among the tribes to seek protections for sacred areas within the Chaco region over the decades, Navajo leaders had proposed a smaller buffer around the park to limit the economic consequences of a federal ban land locking individual Navajo parcels.
Navajo President Buu Nygren contends that the administration gave no weight to the tribe’s concerns before imposing the ban.
“The withdrawal was done without meaningful consultation and fails to honor the Navajo Nation’s sovereignty,” he testified. “Respect for tribal sovereignty must be consistent even when it is not convenient.”
Gosar suggested that the administration’s decision was predetermined and that the US Interior Department should have waited to make a determination until New Mexico pueblos completed their ethnographic study, which is due later this year.