WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. — Nicole Mitchell, 15, admitted she played hooky to attend Friday’s public scoping meeting on oil and gas development near Chaco Culture National Historical Park, a United Nations World Heritage Site. “I’m only 15. Why am I here?”

Mitchell said as she stood before federal officials from the Bureau of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the Navajo Nation Museum. Despite her nervousness and the nearly 300 pairs of eyes trained on her, she voiced her concerns. Mitchell was one of the lucky ones who actually made it into the meeting room before a man with a clipboard came in and pulled Drew Vankat aside. Vankat, who ran the meeting for the agencies, announced soon thereafter that the fire code limit had been reached. The only way anyone else was getting in was if someone gave up their seat.

If the feds can’t think far enough ahead to have a backup plan in place for a large audience, why should the public presume they know what’s best when it comes to managing mineral development on thousands of acres of land where a scarce precious resource such as water potentially could be harmed by hydraulic fracturing? Maybe, as Anna Rondon said, the agencies were merely “window dressing” — meeting the letter of the law by calling for public involvement, while at the same time limiting it through the size of the venue and allowing only three minutes for comment. In some circles, that is referred to as a “dog and pony show.”

When dealing with Navajo in the future, perhaps the agencies should rent a gymnasium and run the meeting according to “Navajo time,” which doesn’t limit the speaker to three minutes, but allows them to speak until they get what they came to say off their chests. That should have been a no-brainer for BIA, which has trust responsibility for Navajo.

Be on the lookout for radicals?

A sign posted near the entrance to the museum cautioned visitors against violence, and Navajo Nation Police were out in force to ensure peace prevailed. Stationed at various locations inside the building, facing the glass entrance, police had a clear view of protesters outside as they waved banners and shouted slogans against fracking and pipelines and pretty much anything to do with oil and gas development.

Activists such as Mervyn Tilden apparently were known to police. The minute Tilden entered the building, while conversing with a reporter, an officer stepped forward — ready, waiting, watching Tilden’s every move as he crossed the foyer to the meeting room.

Cheyenne Antonio voiced concern about those tasked to serve and protect. “This corporate agenda that is happening right now — having Navajo Police come and police me for having ‘Protect Dine’tah’ on my jacket — that is highly disgraceful,” she said.

Young adult speakers such as Orlando White explained the impacts of development from a Navajo cultural perspective. “Our umbilical cords are buried in the earth. This has meaning to it,” White said. “It’s not a metaphor. It’s literal. We are the land. And when you go in and dig into the ground and lay pipe, when you go in and dig into the ground and release gases into the air, it pollutes who we are. So what I’m saying is that these companies pollute our minds. These companies dig into our mind like the way they dig into the earth, and take that energy from us and then use it against us at the same time. In the process, we are getting ill, we are getting sick.”

Bobby Martin offered himself as living proof. “I’m going to show you what long-term digging into Mother Earth can do,” Martin said, pulling up his shirt to reveal a half moon scar carved across his abdomen. “I’m a third-generation cancer survivor,” he said. “I don’t want my daughters to be a fourth.” Graham Beyal said his community of Shiprock and the Four Corners area are known to the world as a national sacrifice area.

“Part of that includes the uranium mill that has left uranium tailings in the heart of the community,” Beyal said. “I can see it from my house. There’s a huge uranium pile up there, as well as one of the largest concentrations of methane, the destruction of the water table in Rattlesnake, New Mexico, and just recently, the Gold King Mine spill.”

“When. Will. This. Stop?!” he said, pausing between each word, but speaking emphatically in a voice that not only asked a question but sounded as though it had reached its limit. The young activist, who recently returned from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, vowed to become a familiar face. “This is where I live. This is where I am from,” he said. “You will see me, and I will stand up in front of any destruction of our land, whether it be in front of companies that are for gain, or even my own people and leaders who choose to rape Mother Earth.”

Words fail Aside from the emotional outpouring, some such as Jim Hewitt, a geologist working with BLM, were there just doing their job. Hewitt manned an information booth and cheerfully answered questions from the public. The nearest operational well to Chaco is about 12 miles away, he said. Looking at a map, he pointed out two wells that were drilled “a long time ago” that looked to be only a couple miles outside the park boundary. “You see some dry holes,” he said. “This tells me that it doesn’t look too good there for prospects around Chaco.” But about 30 miles away, in the Mancos shale play, horizontal wells abound.

BLM’s Victoria Barr said the agencies want public input on the environmental impact statement and amendment to the 2003 resource management plan, which didn’t analyze fracking impacts, so they can make some well-informed decisions. But how can umbilical cords and relationship to the earth stack up against BLM’s multiple-use mission, which includes “environmentally responsible oil and gas development” by companies that have invested several hundred million dollars in developing leases and drilling wells approved by BLM?

The Hopi Tribe sent a letter to BLM in April 2013 explaining that some of its ancestors’ clans migrated to and settled in and around Chaco before migrating to Hopi. The tribe views Chaco Canyon, “Yupqoyvi, the Place Beyond the Horizon,” as a Traditional Cultural Property, former Hopi Tribal Chairman LeRoy Shingoitewa told the agency. Four months later, BLM asked Hopi for more information. Shingoitewa said the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office had been providing BLM with such information since 2009. “We have reiterated that the commingling of energy development and resource protection around Chaco will inevitably lead to adverse effects to cultural resources significant to the Hopi Tribe,” Shingoitewa stated.

The Society for American Archaeology, New Mexico Archaeological Council, Chaco Alliance, WildEarth Guardians and the San Juan Citizens Alliance filed a petition in 2013, calling on BLM to designate a “Greater Chaco Landscape” Area of Critical Environmental Concern because of Chaco’s cultural significance, wilderness characteristics, remoteness and undeveloped nature. The Plateau Society of Gallup raised issues in 2015 about potential devastation from fracking-induced earthquakes. “An earthquake of 3.5 magnitude in the Chaco area would have some real bad effects on those ruins,” the society’s Martin Link said. “And once those ruins collapse, they’re gone.” U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., has urged officials to ensure that oil and gas leasing near the site is handled with the utmost consideration for Chaco’s archaeological value.

The federal agencies have added two more public scoping meetings and extended the public comment period to Feb. 20. What comments could they possibly be looking for that haven’t already been said? As before, all meetings will be bilingual, in Navajo and English. However, given the years of input the agencies already have received, maybe it’s not the public that needs an interpreter. Maybe it’s BLM and BIA.