New Fossil Fuel Projects Meet Indigenous Resistance
New Mexico - The spicy pungency of sagebrush filled the air in Greater Chaco, New Mexico, in late July this summer as I watched towering, rain-laden clouds gather across the endless horizon — a reminder that the midsummer monsoon season would soon turn the dirt roads that snake across the Navajo Nation reservation into quagmires.
Locals are accustomed to these storms, but this region is now also being pummeled by two other tempests — the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit the Navajo Nation hard, especially due to many residents’ difficulty in accessing clean water, and also the tumult of fracking, which has now been lashing the region for 10 years.