by Elizabeth Miller on
CHEYENNE ANTONIO works as an energy organizer for nonprofit Diné C.A.R.E. (Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment). Her family is from Pueblo Pintado, about a dozen miles east of Chaco. Her job requires monitoring the effects of the oil and gas industry, including new leases, spills, and air pollution, as well as what frontline communities face with rough roads and health challenges. She sees the communities living close to Chaco Canyon as caught in systems other people engineered, forced into impossible choices. But she takes comfort from her deep traditions, language, and sense of place.
We’re also known as the Chacoan Navajo, which is known as one of the well-connected Navajos to the sacred space, because our place of emergence is not too far from Chaco.
We’re the caretakers now.
You can’t measure the sacredness of the land.
It’s very much a shared space and a very complicated history.
When I go to the park, I definitely put down my offerings and just ask for protection.
I am a child of our holy ones and I’m here to protect the area, our area. I’m a neighbor. I’m here to protect the land.
When I’m there, I wonder about the stories that happened generations and generations before me. I wonder what took place there. I know there are some scary stories I hear that come from that area. I just wonder how many universes have been connected to Chaco and what universe are we at right now.
I wonder, Why do they want to drill here? They could just leave it alone.
We need a diversity of economic opportunities for the people, other than just exploiting the land, because of the connection that we have to it.
Everyone is just trying to survive.
I’m very proud of our community in the Diné Chaco area. I’m very proud that we continue to have our language. When I’m in Chaco, I do feel that.
I at least have the key of my language to be here and be connected, and the power of knowing our language and our ways.
Read more: Chacoan culture spread across the Southwest in both time and geography. Explore these other spots to encounter different moments in the story.