The Trump Administration is moving to shrink a protective buffer zone around Chaco Canyon in Northeast New Mexico, potentially opening one of the most spiritually significant sites in Native American history to oil drilling, according to Rolling Stone.
The canyon, a UNESCO World Heritage site and national park where structures date back to 1250 CE, sits on lands sacred to the Diné (formerly Navajo) and 19 Pueblo tribes. The Bureau of Land Management has announced plans to "revoke the withdrawal" of roughly 336,425 acres of public land within a 10-mile radius of the site—land that former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland protected in 2023 specifically to prevent new drilling.
Rolling Stone's reporting focuses on Mario Atencio, a Diné organizer, and his grandfather Daniel Tso, who have spent years fighting extraction in the Greater Chaco area. "We're literally in the place where gods walked," Atencio tells the publication. "Our ceremonies were born here." This is lived spiritual reality colliding with energy policy.
The BLM has set the public-comment period at just 14 days, giving Indigenous communities minimal time to mobilize resistance. This follows the Administration's summer reduction of protected acreage around Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante by roughly 90 percent.
Oil and gas extraction near sacred sites has become a flashpoint because the damage is irreversible. Once drilling infrastructure is installed, aquifers are compromised, ceremonial landscapes are scarred, and undoing it takes decades of legal warfare. The Diné and Pueblo tribes have faced this repeatedly.
Atencio and Tso are racing against a July 29 deadline to file comments. Indigenous networks and environmental groups are mobilizing, but 14 days to coordinate across tribal governments, generate public pressure, and file substantive feedback is a tight margin.
