Chaco Canyon is one of those places where what isn't there is just as fascinating as what is. What abounds is ruins, mostly, although calling them ruins suggests the place is a mess. It isn't. It's clean and ordered and administered by National Park employees who operate out of a new (2012) and helpful Visitor's Center.
Getting there isn't a problem really. You just drive forever over endless gravel and occasional jaw-rattling potholes, circle through high desert land people used to call "wasteland." It isn't. Not when there is oil to be drilled. I don't have to tell you gas is $3.29 @ gallon here right now, higher elsewhere, I'm sure.
With the help of a Native American Secretary of the Interior, the first, I should add, President Biden recently declared 10-mile, 20-year moratorium on oil drilling in the area, even though he's facing angry voters.
The moratorium brought to mind and memory the way ex-President Trump dealt with Lakotas on the Standing Rock Reservation. He didn't tolerate their protests, not for a minute. In Trump's own inimitable way, he shut them down, put them in their place, white folks might say. "Drill, baby, drill," VP candidate Sarah Palin used to say.
Not even a Native American Secretary of State could keep Biden afloat in turbulent waters--of which there are none anywhere near Chaco Canyon, by the way. Just yesterday, the Navaho nation weighed in somewhat angrily on Biden's ruling, and let the administration know that it was by no means happy.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute--let me get this straight," white folks might say. "Biden preserves Native history, and Native people turn on him? Am I missing something?"
Yes, probably. Native people are not monolithic. The culture they share is one for the most part destroyed by Euro-Americans, but particulars of that culture are not xeroxed. The Poncas are neither Lakota or Winnebago. They have their own story, as do the Lakota and the Winnebago. And Omaha. And Santee.
In this case, the Navajo people, traditionally semi-nomadic sheep herders, are not carbon copies of the pueblo people; and both have a history in Chaco Canyon. The canyon's wondrous heritage is on Navajo reservation land today.
What the Navajo nation argues is that the drill-free zone should be drawn just five miles around Chaco Canyon National Historical Park, not ten-miles, because Navajo land allotment owners are not happy being shut out of income rightfully theirs. By drawing a circle ten miles around the Park, Washington is depriving some Navajo people of an opportunity to make money.
And what of Secretary Haaland, the Native Secretary of the Interior. Well, guess what?--she's from New Mexico herself, but her tribal affiliation is Laguna Pueblo, an entirely different nation.
All of which makes white folks head spin and long for the days of Sarah Palin.
There are hard lessons here, but they're worth unravelling. First, Native America is not monolithic; Native people share problems, but are separate nations with separate histories. Second, Native people, like every last Euro- I know, are human, and thus as full of the dickens as anyone else. They're neither the savages we Euros thought them to be, nor are they saints. They're human.
Navajos want to be heard. There is something at stake here in a canyon as incredible a museum as you can find in D.C., something Navajos have a stake in. Like most every other American, for good or ill, dang it! when it affects their wallets especially, they want to be heard.
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