4.1 quake near Tsoodził prompts traditional warnings

Posted by Donovan Quintero | Aug 22, 2026 | News |

PINEHILL, N.M.

A magnitude 4.1 earthquake shook the northern slopes of Tsoodził before dawn Saturday. Two Diné men who spoke about the quake from a traditional perspective described it as a warning the Navajo Nation should not ignore.

The U.S. Geological Survey recorded the quake at 4:19 a.m. about 6 miles east-southeast of San Mateo and 15 miles northeast of Grants at a depth of about 6 miles. The summit of Tsoodził lies about 6 miles southwest of the epicenter in Cibola County.

No injuries or damage had been reported as of Saturday night.

The USGS reported a maximum shaking intensity of IV, classified as light. Shaking at that level may rattle dishes and windows, but damage is not expected.

The quake struck in the checkerboard area along the Navajo Nation’s eastern edge. Nearby Diné communities include Baca/Prewitt, Casamero Lake, Mariano Lake, Smith Lake, Thoreau, Bluewater and Tó’hajiilee. Crownpoint is about 40 miles north. Grants, Milan, San Rafael and the pueblos of Laguna and Acoma also lie nearby.

Justin Jones, a Navajo Nation presidential candidate speaking from a traditional perspective, said the earthquake should prompt the Nation to examine whether traditional law has fallen out of balance.

“When things like this happen, it’s a message. It’s a sign,” Jones said. “An earthquake now, it isn’t good. It’s telling the Navajo Nation to reevaluate itself. What part of traditional law is out of balance? What have we neglected?”

Jones said the responsibility extends beyond medicine people.

“When you’re a naat’áanii, you should know what to say and what to do,” he said, using the Navajo word for leader. “The president, the speaker, the chief justice, it’s not only the medicine person who is responsible.”

Alvin Whitehair, who said he was raised traditionally by grandfathers who were medicine people and previously worked as the range district manager for Mount Taylor, connected the earthquake to the story of the Hero Twins.

“They will come back when we start losing our language and culture,” he said. “It seems we are losing our language, and we aren’t obeying our traditional values anymore.”

Whitehair identified envy, greed and harsh words among the hardships the Diné were warned about.

“All we do is be critical of one another instead of treating one another with sacred respect,” he said. “We are in the fourth world now. We ran from water in the third world. All the four-legged beings helped us get here, but we are ruining this world now. We are mining the sacred mountains for oil and uranium.”

The area is part of the Grants Mineral Belt, where decades of uranium mining left dozens of reclaimed and unreclaimed sites around Ambrosia Lake. The Mount Taylor Mine is near San Mateo.

Mount Taylor is an extinct volcano that was active from more than 3 million to about 1.5 million years ago.

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