During a White House Tribal-Nations Summit, the Biden Administration proposed a 20-year ban on oil and gas leasing around Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

The Mountain Pact is thrilled with the administration’s action today (Nov. 15) to institute a 20-year ban on oil and gas leasing within a 10-mile radius around the Greater Chaco Landscape. Chaco Culture National Historical Park is a UNESCO world heritage site and the sacred ancestral homeland to many Indigenous communities. We are grateful to the Biden Administration for working to protect the cultural and spiritual importance of this landscape from short-term extraction and development.

Through the America the Beautiful...

Tribal Consultation Ignored

By Alray Nelson
Communications Director
24th Navajo Nation Council

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — The 24th Navajo Nation Council reaffirmed its opposition to the Biden Administration proposal of a 20-year ban on oil and gas drilling within a 10-mile radius of the Chaco Culture Heritage Withdrawal Area in northwestern New Mexico.

President Biden announced the plan during the first day of the White House Tribal Nations Summit in Washington, D.C. The Interior Department plans for the Bureau of Land Management to initiate consideration of this 20-year withdrawal of federal lands around the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in the coming weeks.

The BLM intends...

There’s still time to be heard on Redistricting

The New Mexico Redistricting Committee has filed its final report with the New Mexico Legislature and is asking voters to encourage state representatives to follow the Committee’s recommendations.

Background: Every ten years, after the Census, voting districts are realigned for equal voter representation. Redistricting is the process of redrawing the geographical boundaries that correspond to certain elected offices to account for changes in population. This is done by the state legislature and of course that means politics rule. In establishing the Redistricting Committee, the Legislature voted to have a more representative group...

“We need strong rules that put an end to methane pollution from the oil and gas industry in order to protect today’s children,” James Jimenez, executive director of New Mexico Voices for Children said, when he expressed support for stronger Environmental Protection Agency methane rules Nov. 2.

Jimenez said children are disproportionately harmed by methane pollution. Voicing his organization’s support for stronger methane rules, he said the children will suffer “increasingly dire consequences of the climate crisis” if methane is not captured.

“Methane mitigation not only keeps potent greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, but it also decreases air pollution, which...