Navajo allottees back Chaco withdrawal repeal as Pueblo leaders push to keep protections
Navajo Times | Donovan Quintero
Visitors explore Chaco Cultural Historical Park in Chaco Canyon in this November 2021 file photo.
NAGEEZI, N.M.
Pauline Atencio was born inside Chaco Canyon in 1950, in the family sheep corral at their winter camp, in a canyon dotted then with hogans and tents.
Her father and grandfather earned wages there rebuilding the stone kivas, or kitsʼííl, that tourists now photograph. Her family still holds 160 acres of allotment land inside the park.
“Éí éí shi cheiiyę́ę́, iidą́ą́shį́į́ binaał éį́ Washingdóón ndáʼaałtʼíʼó,” Atencio recalled stories she was told when she was a girl.
But to stand on it, Atencio, now in her mid-70s, must first check in at the visitor center and wait for a park ranger who carries the keys and instructs her not to touch anything. She tells them it is her land. She tells them the same thing when the park asks, year after year, whether she would like to sell.
“And if I did sell the land, then what? I’d have no land,” Atencio said through an interpreter, speaking mostly in Diné bizaad. “My children and their children won’t have any land. That’s why I’ll never sell it.”
To read the full article, please see the Aug. 13, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow