<\/p>\r\nAt a hearing on June 12, 2025<\/a>, Fern\u00e1ndez asked Burgum whether he would support legislation that requires foreign corporations to pay royalties for development on public lands. Burgum agreed with the premise — and went even further in explaining his reasoning.\r\n <\/p>\r\n“Absolutely would support it,” Burgum said at a hearing before the House Committee on Natural Resources<\/a>.\r\n <\/p>\r\n“But I don’t think we should be allowing foreign adversaries to mine critical minerals in our country,” added Burgum, who leads the Department of the Interior<\/a>, the federal agency with the most trust and treaty responsibilities in Indian Country.\r\n <\/p>\r\nFernandez pointed out that foreign interests are behind a massive copper mine being proposed at Oak Flat<\/a>, a sacred site in Arizona<\/a>. She has supported legislation that would block the project.\r\n <\/p>\r\n“So we will work with you to see if we can stop that,” Fern\u00e1ndez told Burgum.\r\n <\/p>\r\nFern\u00e1ndez also brought up efforts to protect Chaco Canyon<\/a> in her home state of New Mexico. She said that public lands<\/a> can be developed without harming the sacred area.\r\n <\/p>\r\n“You can drill for a molecule away from Chaco Canyon and get a return on your investment and not destroy irreplaceable cultural sites,” Fern\u00e1ndez said.\r\n <\/p>\r\n“Don’t do it where there are sacred, protected sites that can never, ever be replaced,” Fern\u00e1ndez added.\r\n <\/p>\r\nBurgum agreed to engage in tribal consultation before deciding whether to allow oil and gas drilling near Chaco. The Bureau of Indian Affairs<\/a> and the Bureau of Land Management<\/a>, which are part of Interior, have been looking into the matter.\r\n <\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n
","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rep. Teresa Leger Fern\u00e1ndez (D-New Mexico) discusses efforts to protect sacred sites with Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":153117,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"single-video-entry.php","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,20,13,1,14,334,23],"tags":[5366,42,117,156,157,94,118,5748,284,6024,49,48,892,167,1072,182,43,1168],"class_list":["post-153116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-indian-trust","category-law","category-national","category-politics","category-video","category-world","tag-119th","tag-arizona","tag-bia","tag-blm","tag-consultation","tag-democrats","tag-doi","tag-doug-burgum","tag-energy","tag-fy2026","tag-hnrc","tag-house","tag-mining","tag-new-mexico","tag-oak-flat","tag-pueblo","tag-sacred-sites","tag-teresa-leger-fernandez","no-wpautop"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/17\/teresalegerfernandez.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcoJ7g-DPC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153116"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153122,"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153116\/revisions\/153122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/indianz.com\/News\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}