Press Release: Diné and Pueblo Community Advocates and Leaders Protest to Protect Chaco Buffer Zone
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 29, 2026
Contact
Marissa Naranjo, Deputy Director, Sovereign Energy, marissa@sovereignenergy.org
Cheyenne Antonio, Community Leader, c.antonio40@gmail.com
Diné and Pueblo Community Advocates and Leaders Protest to Protect Chaco Buffer Zone
Frontline leaders gather outside the New Mexico BLM office calling for the Chaco withdrawal to remain in place
Santa Fe, New Mexico–Today, Diné and Pueblo community leaders and dozens of allies held a protest outside the New Mexico Bureau of Land Management (BLM) office in response to the federal government’s attempt to revoke Public Land Order 7923. Established in 2023, PLO 7923 protects over 338,000 acres of federally managed lands around Chaco Culture National Historical Park from future mineral leasing. As protest speakers expressed their support for the Chaco buffer zone, several Diné allotment holders and community members held a press conference outside the Department of the Interior’s DC office, calling for meaningful Tribal consultation.
In addition to calling on Secretary Burgum to reject the proposed revocation and keep existing protections in place, the protest served to:
Amplify Diné Pueblo Solidarity in the face of oil and gas interests attempting to divide Tribal communities
Center the voices of local Diné allottees, frontline residents, and Tribal communities who support maintaining PLO No. 7923
Highlight the cultural, spiritual, environmental, and community health harms that renewed oil, gas, coal, uranium, and other mineral development could cause.
Demand meaningful Tribal consultation and a fair, accessible public process that respects Tribal sovereignty and community participation.
“While some may see the Chaco buffer zone as just policy, I experience it as a lifeline for Diné people. For generations, we have fought to protect our sacred lands, our water, and our future from the relentless greed of extractive industries. The BLM’s attempt to revoke PLO 7923 is a betrayal of its trust responsibility and a violation of our rights as Indigenous peoples. We will not allow our homelands to be sacrificed for profit. The federal government must honor its promises, listen to our voices, and keep the Chaco buffer zone in place, now and for future generations,” said Cheyenne Antonio, Diné Community Leader.
The Greater Chaco region is a vast, living landscape of critical cultural and spiritual importance to Diné, Pueblo, and other Tribes. With nearly 40,000 oil and gas wells across the landscape, Diné people living in the region already experience disproportionate harms from oil and gas extraction, including exposure to hazardous air pollution, toxic spills, industrial traffic, and degradation of the land and sacred places. PLO 7923 provides a modicum of protection for frontline communities and one of the most significant cultural landscapes in the world.
“Our ancestors walked this land long before the federal government existed. They left us the knowledge of how to live with the land. Now, the BLM seeks to erase that legacy by opening our sacred lands to more destruction. PLO 7923 is a small but critical step toward protecting the Chaco Region. Revoking the buffer zone would be an injustice to our past and future,” said Marissa Naranjo, Deputy Director of Sovereign Energy.
Diné allottees and community members have rights to clean air and water, access to land and cultural places, and the preservation of their homelands for future generations. But in the BLM’s proposal to revoke PLO 7923, the agency focuses almost entirely on whether revocation would make certain allotments more attractive for mineral development. The federal trust responsibility cannot be reduced to making allotted lands more commercially viable for extraction. For over a decade, Navajo Nation Chapters, community leaders, and allotment shareholders have voiced public health and safety concerns about oil, gas, and mineral development in the region. BLM completely ignores this. And while BLM recognizes that there are 129 active mining claims within the buffer zone, the agency did not analyze the potential environmental, health and safety, or cultural impacts of uranium mining for Diné and Pueblo communities.
The Diné and Pueblo community leaders call on the Department of the Interior to recognize and fulfill its fiduciary duty to protect allotment lands, water rights, cultural resources, and community health for current and future generations. The group advocates for an extension to the public comment period on BLM’s proposal to revoke the protective zone around Chaco, and calls for congressional support for durable, landscape-level protections for Greater Chaco led by Diné and Pueblo peoples.