On Wednesday, the House voted to pass the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act, which would permanently ban any drilling or mining within a ten-mile radius of Chaco Canyon. The canyon is a historic and sacred site in New Mexico for the Pueblo nations and the Diné (Navajo Nation). It currently exists as a checkerboard of federally protected and unprotected lands.

Protecting Chaco—despite the show of support from the House—will be a fight. The bill still has to survive a Republican-held Senate and then somehow land the signature of President Donald Trump, whose approach thus far has been to strip protections from public lands and extract every last ounce of natural resources—unless the land is near a place Trump needs votes for the 2020 election. Chaco, located in a solidly blue state, is not.

The bill’s main sponsor, Representative Ben Ray Luján, is committed to the uphill battle. “We do need a vote out of the Senate,” Luján told me by phone, the day before the House vote. “We need to sign into law to make sure that we are able to protect Chaco in perpetuity, for the the Pueblo people and the Navajo people and the significance of what it means to us, not just in New Mexico or America, but the significant site that it is even globally.”

In championing Chaco in Congress, Luján was joined by Representatives Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo), Xochitl Torres Small, and Raul Grijalva, as well as New Mexico’s Senators Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich. The Chaco battle is offering a political roadmap for how a grassroots movement led by Native American communities can successfully work with their local and federal political representatives toward protecting, and one day reclaiming, the land that was stolen from them. The path is not without its bumps.

Some hope for the Chaco bill has come from unusual places: Seventeen Republicans, including Chickasaw Nation citizen Tom Cole, joined Democrats in voting in favor of the bill. For the most part, though, the opposition has come from the people and organizations one could expect. Markwayne Mullin (Cherokee Nation) was the only Native member of the House to vote against the bill—not exactly a shock given his record and the fact that the oil and gas industry rank as his top campaign donors.