KC Counts speaks with Marissa Naranjo, deputy director of Sovereign Energy and member of Santa Clara Pueblo, who says the U.S. government has not met requirements for public comment period. You'll find a transcript below. KRWG reached out to the BLM and asked about the comment period and what it has done to reach Native communities and received an auto reply directing us to the comment section, which you can find right here.
KC Counts:
Tell me about your background in energy and native lands.
Marissa Naranjo:
Sure. So, I've been working for over a decade now on cultural and natural resource preservation, both on and off tribal lands and technical policy analysis, supporting our tribes in their government to government consultations regarding lands and sacred sites.
KC Counts:
One of those sacred sites, of course, Chaco Canyon. And there is a 10-mile buffer zone around the National Historic Park that is now in question due to some recent action by the federal government. Tell us about that.
Marissa Naranjo:
Sure. So, yeah, and I'll also just add that I actually got my start into environmental policy through this work on Chaco. So it's been a little over 10 years now and started from when I was just a young person up to now. But this issue has gone back way longer than a decade. Our Pueblos and Navajo Nation have been trying to protect this area fora very, very longtime. But yeah, this so this isn't simply, you know, a decision about a handful of oil and gas wells. The proposal to revoke Public Land Order 7923 or the buffer zone would remove protections from about 336,400 acres across, you know, what is a living Dine and Pueblo cultural landscape and reopen those lands to multiple forms of extractive development, importantly, including uranium mining.
KC Counts:
What's the procedure that the government has to follow in order to change what's there now?
Marissa Naranjo:
The government has multiple obligations to our tribal nations, to Navajo Nation chapters, as well as the public in trying to implement a revocation of the public land order. Most prominently, they are supposed to be abiding by the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act, section 106 process. So, the NEPA, of course, is obligates them to a public process where they're supposed to be issuing iterations of an environmental assessment that is supposed to include public outreach and taking into consideration the input provided by the public and our conservation and other organizations as well as local governments and tribal governments. And then the National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 obligates DOI and BLM to conduct comprehensive and meaningful government to government consultation. But what we've been seeing is that the DOI and BLM is falling incredibly short on both of those obligations.
KC Counts:
Of course, famously, former New Mexico Congressman Steve Pearce recently approved to head the BLM. What role do you expect Mr. Pearce to play in all of this.
Marissa Naranjo:
Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think it's one that our communities across New Mexico, especially tribal communities, are very concerned about right now. You know, our concern is that the director is gathering and considering, we hope, considering all perspectives, but the agency has only given our affected communities only 14 days. They've not held any public meetings. They've moved forward without incorporating critical tribal ethnographic studies. That does not look like an open process, and it looks like an effort to justify a decision that may have already been made. I think it's important in addition to mention that in a recent news Steve Pierce, seems to have been advancing a narrative that is inaccurate, which is that, you know, we have Pueblo people on one side that are trying to protect the landscape, um, and sacred sites, and then Navajo on the other side that is trying to preserve, um, their land rights as a la tease, and that it is a decision between one tribal nation or one group of tribes versus the other, when it's really important to emphasize that behind this narrative has been lobbying efforts and invested efforts by oil and gas companies and other extractive companies to further the divide between our Pueblos and Navajo Nation. I think everybody wants to see this landscape protected, the sacred sites and the health of local community members.
KC Counts:
I think it would be fair to say that no pueblo or tribe is a monolith.
Marissa Naranjo:
That's correct.
KC Counts:
So there are differing, yeah, go ahead.
Marissa Naranjo:
Yeah, we, you know, when... we are trying to explain the importance of this landscape to the BLM. We often refer to it as a living, multi-layered cultural landscape, and multi-layered meaning that every single individual Puebloan tribe has their own relationship to Chaco Canyon and the greater Chaco region. And we also have a collective relationship to that area as well. So that's why it makes it so important that the BLM carry out its obligations to consult with each and every individual tribe.
KC Counts:
Okay so really important to let people know at least how they can get a look at this order and share their opinion on it.
Marissa Naranjo:
I think it's also important to mention that, you know, BLM has again really fallen short in their obligations to outreach to communities. They should be holding accessible public meetings in affected communities, providing that virtual participation, language interpretation for our Dene and Pueblo people. And we're also calling at the community level, the All Pueblo Council of Governors have called for and even state offices are calling for Oh, and then also the congressional delegation is calling for an extension request of 90 days to this public comment period because of the lack of outreach. And because of that, you know, our tribal organizations have had to organize their own community comment writing workshops through coordination with multiple pueblos. Our tribal organizations have reached hundreds of peoples at this point who have needed help and are interested and, you know, wanting to submit comments. And so, I think that really just demonstrates the level of community members wanting to participate, not having the tools to because of the lack of BLM's outreach and the need for an extension on this public comment period.
KC Counts:
So I've logged on myself. It's important to say that Wednesday is the current deadline. How optimistic are you that this will be extended?
Marissa Naranjo:
Well, you know, I think with as much support and leverage that we have right now for this comment extension, it's the right thing for BLM to do and they should do it we all we can do is continue to request urge and demand for it and hope that DOI is not continuing to ignore our tribal nations and communities and affected community members.
KC Counts:
I think eplanning.blm.gov and you can get to the evaluation of potential revocation of Chaco withdrawal that is the name of the project and can participate as I said up until Wednesday now. Marissa, what else would you like to say with your background and your expertise in energy on native lands? Obviously, some folks think that there should be greater participation in terms of that economic opportunity for them. What kind of polling, what kind of information do we have about like where people's opinions are amongst all of the native peoples on Chaco Canyon? Do we have some really good research on that?
Marissa Naranjo:
We actually do not at this point on the kind of economic side of this issue. But I will point to some of the local efforts by the community members in the tri chapter area that have produced a health impact assessment and that's available online through their community kind of discussing health impacts as well as some of the. financial burdens that community members have been taking on as a result of being disproportionately affected by oil and gas activity on their homelands.
KC Counts:
And of course, you talked earlier, you mentioned uranium as well. Maybe some greater concerns even still for that type of mining.
Marissa Naranjo:
Right. We have a Dine Pueblo Solidarity Coalition that has done an initial analysis of the draft environmental assessment for the revocation of the buffer, and we are very concerned that according to BLM's own figures, the revocation would allow about 129 existing mining claims to move forward without first having to prove that they were valid before the withdrawal. At the same time, BLM dismisses that uranium mining is unlikely despite, you know, acknowledging that there are 130 claims, and because they dismiss it as unlikely, they also dismiss meaningfully analyzing any potential environmental, cultural, economic, or health consequences.
KC Counts:
What else, Marissa, do you think is important for people to know that I haven't asked you about yet?
Marissa Naranjo:
I would just continue to encourage folks to talk to their friends, families, do as much outreach as they can to encourage everybody to submit comments by Wednesday. It's really important that we continue to outreach and encourage folks via word of mouth, via social media, any channels available, especially considering that the BLM is not doing so.
KC Counts:
Marissa Naranjo, thank you so much for spending this time with us to tell us about what's going on close to home. We'll stay in touch.
Marissa Naranjo:
Okay, perfect. Thank you so much.
