A group of Indigenous community leaders and advocates for the Greater Chaco region traveled from New Mexico to Washington D.C. Their aim was to lobby Congress for protections of the Greater Chaco area and present a film screening of "Our Story: The Indigenous-Led Fight to Protect Greater Chaco." This film highlights the challenges faced by the Greater Chaco Landscape due to ongoing oil and gas leasing and drilling activities.

Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and U.S. Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.) were among those who attended the premiere. Both support the Chaco Cultural Heritage Protection Act of 2022, which seeks to permanently prevent future federal mineral leasing within a 10-mile buffer around Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

After the film screening, delegates from the Greater Chaco Coalition organized a panel discussion. Participants included Chairman Daniel Tso, Samuel Sage, Kendra Pinto, Mario Atencio, Somah Haaland, with moderation by Rebecca Sobel. The panelists expressed gratitude towards the New Mexico delegation for their backing and reiterated their call for comprehensive impact analysis, strategic planning at a landscape level, clean-up efforts, remediation actions, and meaningful consultations.

The Greater Chaco region is recognized as an ancient cultural landscape that holds significant importance for Indigenous Nations across the Americas. Central to this area is Chaco Canyon in northwest New Mexico, designated as both a National Historical Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site. For over 100 years, this region has been subject to extensive oil and gas drilling operations which have adversely affected public health, environmental quality, climate conditions, and cultural resources.

In recent times, there have been criticisms directed at the Bureau of Land Management for bypassing updates to its resource management plans while approving multistage horizontal fracking without assessing cumulative impacts. The Greater Chaco Coalition has urged halting new oil and gas activities until thorough studies on these impacts are conducted along with ensuring tribal consultation and regional protections.

Responding to persistent calls for safeguarding these areas in 2021 led Interior Secretary Haaland initiated Honoring Chaco Initiative (HCI). This initiative represents a collaborative approach aimed at managing cultural landscapes within this region—an effort anticipated by advocates like those from Greater Chaco Coalition—to address cumulative effects stemming from oil extraction practices throughout greater landscapes such as those surrounding communities living near or around places like Great Basin Desert regions too!