Protesters blocked an entrance to Chaco Culture National Historical Park Sunday in advance of U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s visit.
Haaland was supposted to visit the site in New Mexico to celebrate her recent decision to enshrine for the next 20 years what had been an informal buffer around the park. It’s aimed at protecting archaeological and culturally significant sites from future oil and gas development and mining.
The decision came after more than a year of public meetings and consultation sessions with New Mexico pueblos and other Native American leaders.
The landowners and Navajo leaders have said Haaland and the Biden administration ignored efforts to reach a compromise that would have established a smaller buffer to protect cultural sites while keeping intact the viability of tribal land and private Navajo-owned parcels for future development.
Haaland gathered Sunday in Albuquerque with tribal leaders to celebrate the withdrawal.
Her own pueblo of Laguna is about 100 miles to the south and is among those that have fought to protect a broad swath of land beyond park boundaries. Haaland has called Chaco a sacred place that holds deep meaning for Indigenous people, and she talked Sunday about cooperation over the decades between Navajos and people from Laguna.
Navajo President Buu Nygren said in a statement issued Thursday that the weekend celebration was disappointing and disrespectful. He said it should have been cancelled.