Fracking in Pueblo and Dine Communities.

• Author: Meyer, Melodie

Table of Contents Introduction I. The Chaco Landscape: Place and People II. Fracking Technology, Regulation, and History A. United States Fracking Boom B. (Under) Regulation 1. National Environmental Protection Act 2. Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act 3. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act C. History of Fracking in Chaco Canyon III. Fracking Impacts in Pueblo and Dine Communities A. Health and Water Impacts B. Cultural and Socioeconomic Impacts IV. Potential Recommendations A. Dismantle United States Development and Control of Tribal Landscapes B. Transition From Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind C. Increase and Strengthen Tribal Regulation of Water D. Tribal Cultural Sovereignty Conclusion Introduction

Located in the seemingly barren, yet beautiful, desert of northwestern New Mexico, the living and historic Greater Chaco landscape is surrounded by hundreds of oil and gas wells. For the fossil fuel industry, these oil and gas deposits are just the beginning. While commonly thought of as a National Park that protects impressive archaeological ruins of a complex ancient society, Chaco Culture National Historical Park and its surrounding area actually composes a sacred landscape (1) for several tribes. For thousands of years, tribes have depended on this landscape for clean water, subsistence, and cultural uses. In recent years, however, the landscape surrounding Chaco Culture National Historical Park has come under threat by fossil fuel companies who wish to extract oil through hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. This proposed fracking would impact the integrity of the Chaco landscape as a priceless cultural resource and compromise the health and safety of indigenous communities who call the area home.

Proposed and ongoing fracking in the Chaco landscape presents water-related environmental justice issues for Pueblo and Dine (2) communities in New Mexico. Indigenous communities are uniquely vulnerable to fracking because of their socioeconomic status and relationship to their homelands where fracking takes place. In particular, because water plays a large and distinct role in indigenous cultures, lifeways, and political movements, fracking disproportionately impacts Southwest indigenous communities. The Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs recently released the long-awaited Farmington Mancos-Gallup Draft Resource Management Plan Amendment and Environmental Impact Statement, (3) which amends the original Environmental Impact Statement for the Chaco Canyon area. This plan, while meant to account for different uses of the area and different impacts of additional fracking wells on nearby communities, does little to put the affected communities at ease.

A fracking ban is warranted because fracking is unregulated, potentially threatens both groundwater and surface water, and lacks effective and efficient remediation. Moreover, given that indigenous peoples of the Southwest experienced extreme land dispossession throughout various periods of colonization, and are still denied full autonomy over lands that are culturally and politically significant to them, a fracking ban is particularly warranted in the Chaco landscape. The United States' legal system, specifically environmental and administrative law, fails to adequately regulate fracking in indigenous communities, and thereby continues to uphold this history of colonialism and white supremacy. The story of fracking in the Chaco region is more than just one isolated incident; the phenomenon of the fossil fuel industry harming indigenous peoples is endemic to the experience of colonized peoples.

To move forward from these injustices, tribes and indigenous communities (4) must assert tribal cultural sovereignty, coregulate federal and state lands outside tribal borders, and promote anti-authoritarian approaches, such as grassroots movements, to ensure water protections for Pueblo and Dine communities in New Mexico. These strategies are essential to maintaining a healthy environment for Pueblo and Dine peoples and the future of all New Mexican communities.

1. The Chaco Landscape: Place and People

   "The ancient Pueblo people called the earth the Mother Creator of all things in this world ... In the end we all originate from the depths of the earth." (5)

   The significance of fracking on the Chaco landscape is best explained by first providing a description of the landscape's history and its importance to indigenous peoples in the Southwest as a sacred place and a homeland. The Chaco landscape is located in the San Juan Basin, the large structural basin comprising Northern New Mexico and Southwestern Colorado. (6) Archaeological research has revealed hundreds of ancient Pueblo settlements spanning beyond the Chaco Culture National Historical Park for over 60,000 square miles (roughly the size of the state of Georgia). (7) Ancestral Pueblo people began living in the area as early as 490 A.D. and remained until 1400 A.D., until they migrated, likely due to drought. (8) Beginning in the twelfth century, the area was also inhabited by Dine ancestors. (9)

   For Pueblo people, land and story are inherently connected. (10) One cannot exist without the other, and both are necessary for the cultural survival of the Pueblo. Leslie Marmon Silko, a Pueblo of Laguna author, writes:

   In A.D. 1100 the people at Chaco Canyon had built cities with apartment buildings of stone five stories high. Their sophistication as skywatchers was surpassed only by Mayan and Inca astronomers. Yet this vast complex of knowledge and belief, amassed for thousands of years, was never recorded in writing. Instead, the ancient Pueblo people depended upon collective memory through successive generations to maintain and transmit an entire culture, a world view complete with proven strategies for survival. (11) Chaco Canyon was a ceremonial and economic hub for ancient indigenous peoples. (12) As the place where knowledge of solar and lunar cycles evolved, it is both a metaphoric and literal part of many Pueblo migration narratives. (13) Pueblo people ritually revisit both stories and landscapes. The Pueblo relationship and understanding of Chaco Canyon does not align with non-indigenous understandings of normative land use or ownership. Even though Pueblo people revisit Chaco Canyon both physically and in story, there is usually no visible evidence of Pueblo physical presence or disturbance. Thus, early colonizers and current oil and gas companies mistakenly believe that Pueblo people no longer use the landscape or are unaffected by development on the land. Yet both Pueblo and Dine people know that the Chaco landscape, like many sacred places, is a living landscape.

   The Chaco landscape's history of land ownership and use paints a picture of gradual and ongoing indigenous land dispossession. From the 1500s to the 1800s, New Mexico underwent successive colonization by Spain and Mexico. (14) In 1823, the New Mexican governor surveyed and documented the Chaco landscape and its ruins. (15) At the time, Spanish settlements in the San Juan Basin were almost nonexistent. (16) But the area was the site of battles between Spanish settlers and the Dine. (17) Spain, allied with the Pueblos, conquered the area. (18)

   As summarized by Christine Klein, "in the spirit of 'manifest destiny,' the United States declared war against Mexico on May 13, 1846" in order to acquire Californian and New Mexican territories. (19) After the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, the United States gained control of these territories. (20) During early U.S. occupation, indigenous land claims were systematically eradicated. The Chaco landscape became classified as public land due to its perceived vacancy, despite the land being used as a place of quiet prayer and seasonal pilgrimage, harvest, and livestock range. (21) Formal eradication of indigenous land ownership began with the 1868 Treaty at Fort Sumner, which established an official Navajo reservation. (22) The 1868 Treaty at Fort Sumner shrunk Dine territory to all but a small portion of Dine ancestral homeland, excluding the heart of the Chaco landscape. (23)

   A 1869 New Mexico territorial court ruling eliminated the federal trust duty to protect Pueblo lands from settlement. (24) The court held that because the "honest, industrious, and law-abiding" Pueblo people did not fit the court's racist view of "savage" Indians, Pueblos had unrestricted power to dispose of their lands. (25) This decision was confirmed in 1876 by the Supreme Court in United States v. Joseph, making federal statutes protecting Indian land from speculation and settlement inapplicable to Pueblos. (26) Both the treaty of Fort Sumner and this 1876 Supreme Court decision illustrate a federal policy of removing indigenous people from the Chaco landscape, converting Pueblo and Dine land ownership within the area to public land, and opening it up to excavation and exploitation.

   The American Museum of Natural History began excavation of the Chaco landscape in 1896. (27) In response to activities of private landowners who were thought to be disturbing the areas then classified as archeological sites, President Roosevelt created the Chaco Canyon National Monument in 1907 under the Antiquities Act of 1906. (28) In 1980, the Chaco Canyon National Monument was redesignated the Chaco Culture National Historical Park by Congress, adding 13,000 acres to be managed by the National Park Service. (29)

   The United States' partial preservation of the Chaco landscape as an archaeological resource embodied a shift in American perception of public lands and landscapes in general. Yet, it is telling that only certain archaeological sites within the Chaco landscape are protected. For indigenous peoples, most forms of archaeology are destructive and antithetical to their beliefs, as archaeology...