The Biden administration is expected to soon finalize a rule banning oil and gas leasing near a Native American historical site despite heavy opposition from local Indigenous leaders, who say the administration’s rule would prevent them from collecting royalties on their land.
The rule, which the Department of Interior (DOI) announced in November 2021, would implement a 20-year moratorium on federal oil and gas leasing within a 10-mile radius of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park located in northwest New Mexico. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said the rule, which would amount to a withdrawal of 336,000 acres of public lands from mineral leasing, would protect the environment and “rich cultural legacy” of the region.
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“We’re not destroying anything — we are Native Americans ourselves. Nobody is destroying the park,” Delora Hesuse, a Navajo Nation citizen who owns allotted land in the Greater Chaco region, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “The oil companies sure aren’t destroying the park. And they have new technology.”
“It just seems like they are listening more to the environmentalist people,” she continued.
Hesuse represents a group of Navajo citizens who own land that has been allotted to them by the federal government for generations and which is often leased to oil and gas drilling and exploration companies. The group opposes the Biden administration rule, saying it would prevent them from collecting much-needed royalties on the land they’ve held for decades.
While the administration has stated the rule wouldn’t impact Indian-owned allotments, blocking federal land leasing would ultimately block development on non-federal land, according to Hesuse and other local stakeholders including Navajo Nation leadership.
