We all need to learn more about boarding schools and their legacy

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This week the U.S. Interior Department released a 100-page report on the lasting consequences of the federal Indian boarding school system. You might recall last June Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Laguna Pueblo, announced the federal agency would investigate the extent of the loss of human life and legacy of the federal Indian boarding school system, a chapter of U.S. history many Americans know little to nothing about. 

This week’s report is the first of possibly many, and it deserves to be read by as many Americans as possible. 

Here are some of the investigation’s top-level findings:

Beginning in the late 1800s, the federal government took Indian children from their families in an effort to strip them of their cultures and language.Between 1819 and 1969, the U.S. operated or supported 408 boarding schools across 37 states (or then-territories), including 21 schools in Alaska and 7 schools in Hawaii. Of those 37 states, New Mexico had the third-greatest concentration of facilities, with 43, trailing only Oklahoma and Arizona.  The schools “deployed systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies to attempt to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children through education, including but not limited to the following: (1) renaming Indian children from Indian to English names; (2) cutting hair of Indian children; (3) discouraging or preventing the use of American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian languages, religions, and cultural practices; and (4) organizing Indian and Native Hawaiian children into units to perform military drills.The Federal Indian boarding school system focused on manual labor and vocational skills that left American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian graduates with employment options often irrelevant to the industrial U.S. economy, further disrupting Tribal economies. 

Boarding schools in New Mexico got an early start.Two years after the first boarding school, the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, opened in 1879, the Presbyterian Church opened the Albuquerque Indian School (AIS) for Navajo, Pueblo and Apache students. Later, the school transferred to federal control.The Albuquerque Indian School merits several mentions in this week’s report, including five photos as I counted them of young Indigenous girls and boys in class, and of the building itself. 

Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Albuquerque Indian School, 1947-ca. 1964 (most recent
creator). (ca.

Bella Davis

New Mexico In Depth hires Bella Davis to report on Indigenous Affairs

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New Mexico In Depth’s 2020/2021 academic reporting fellow Bella Davis returns as full-time staff this summer with a focus on Indigenous affairs, thanks to funding from Report for America. 

Report for America is a national program that helps fund reporting positions in local newsrooms.

“Report for America provides a unique opportunity for journalists to pursue meaningful, local beat reporting that sadly is missing from many of today’s newsrooms,” said Earl Johnson, director of admissions at Report for America, in the organization’s statement about their 2022 reporting corps. “Together, our emerging and experienced corps members will produce tens of thousands of articles on critically under-covered topics—schools, government, healthcare, the environment, communities of color, and more.”

Davis began reporting while a student at the University of New Mexico, with student newspaper The Daily Lobo. As she neared graduation, she joined New Mexico In Depth’s diversity fellowship program, where she was able to produce longer-form, deeply reported work. She focused on the importance of midwifery as one solution to staggeringly disproportionate rates of maternal death among Black and Native women, and a series of stories about private prisons. After graduation, she accepted an eight-month fellowship at the Santa Fe Reporter, funded by the New Mexico Local News Fund, where she wrote about criminal justice, housing, local businesses and cannabis.

Critical race theory is a GOP bogeyman

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Last weekend, Derek Matthews, the founder of the Gathering of Nations Pow Wow, asked GOP state lawmaker and GOP gubernatorial hopeful Rebecca Dow to pull a campaign commercial that talked about “critical race theory. Standing on a stage with Dow in front of thousands of Native people who had flocked to the Albuquerque event from all over North America and beyond after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, Matthews’s request hushed the crowd except for a smattering of clapping and whistling. Dow ignored Matthews and welcomed the Gathering of Nations attendees without responding to his request. It was an awkward moment. I want to join Matthews in asking Dow to pull the commercial.

Abandoned Uranium

Climate change and the third world, in New Mexico

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In reporting two recent stories about abandoned uranium mines north of Church Rock, N.M., I heard residents say several times that they want federal officials to take action, not just more talk about cleaning up radioactive waste left practically in their backyards for 40 or more years. I also heard how exhausting it is for the people who live next to this waste to repeatedly tell their stories to people like me, people concerned, even outraged about the situation, but who don’t live there–journalists, government officials, and activists from elsewhere–who have the luxury to come and go. “…sometimes, you get so frustrated talking about these things,” said Edith Hood, a resident who lives in the Red Water Pond Road community near the mines, in remarks to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at their public meeting in Gallup last Friday. “…we, Indian country, we are like the people that live in the third world, in the United States,” Hood said. “Nobody listens to us.

From our blog

ABQ city councilor’s political group steps up to PAC

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Another political season. Another new political group with a forgettable but vaguely feel-good name.In March, a new entity registered with the Secretary of State: Working Together New Mexico. Albuquerque City Councilor Louie Sanchez, who represents part of the city’s westside, has said its purpose is to support the campaigns of particular candidates. Sanchez didn’t file a report last week saying how much the group has raised and spent despite a state deadline. Nor did he file a no activity report, a minimum requirement of groups that register with the Secretary of State under the campaign reporting act. Yesterday, six candidates in the June 7, 2022 Democratic primary wrote Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver to request an immediate investigation of Working Together New Mexico for not filing a report. “This PAC has developed a website, launched a PR campaign, raised funds, and retained a prominent consultant…to say they haven’t spent $1,000 yet just doesn’t pass the smell test,” Tara Jaramillo, running for State House District 38 in central and southern New Mexico, stated in the press release sent out by campaign consultant, Neri Holguin. This analysis originally appeared in our Friday newsletter.

From our blog

It’s time for lawmakers to embrace transparency (Updated)

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Update: Shortly after publishing the following newsletter on Friday, Senate President Pro Tem Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, wrote in an email to New Mexico in Depth that lawmakers would include transparency in a revised junior bill during an upcoming special session. She said lawmakers would use as a model new transparency measures passed last year for capital outlay allocations. “I wish we had done this originally but we think we have an answer to how to make those changes,” she wrote. Later on Friday, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and legislative leaders announced a special session of the Legislature would convene on April 5, to take up a revised junior bill and consider measures they can take to help New Mexicans in the face of rising inflation. After sending out our newsletter last week about lawmakers’ outrage over the governor vetoing their dark spending bill, I had a moment of deja vu.

Trump ally Couy Griffin pushes election audit in Otero County. Not all Republicans like it.

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Otero County is the latest local front in a war that is dividing Republicans over the 2020 election. The County Commission in southeastern New Mexico has paid for a $50,000 study they call an audit of the county’s election results, provoking headlines after voters complained that volunteers who are going door-to-door quizzing them are asking them who they cast ballots for — a charge one of the organizers has denied. While the county commission has authorized paying for the audit, it’s not an official audit like the ones completed after each election by the Otero County Clerk, the Office of the Secretary of State or an independent firm contracted by the state agency. Leading the effort is a group called New Mexico Audit Force and an ally is Otero County’s most famous commissioner — Republican Couy Griffin, the Cowboys for Trump leader awaiting trial on federal criminal charges of entering and disorderly conduct in a restricted building related to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Education

Tribal Remedy Framework boosted with funding

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With about 24 hours left in this year’s session, Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Albuquerque, was celebrating additional money earmarked in the state budget to help tribes take more control over educating their own children. 

“We’re walking out of the session with $35 million for the tribal remedy framework,” said Lente of the Sandia Pueblo. The tribal remedy framework is a set of goals negotiated and agreed to by the state’s 23 tribes going into this year’s session that would beef up tribal education departments and resources.In recent years tribes have demanded more control over educating their own children and have used the 2018 landmark Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico court ruling to buttress their case. That ruling found New Mexico negligent in providing a sufficient education to at-risk students, which includes Indigenous students.Indigenous students make up about 34,000, or 11% of New Mexico’s K-12 student population and they lag behind their New Mexico peers in reading, math, high school graduation and college enrollment. The Yazzie/Martinez decision suggested those outcomes mostly stem from decades of underspending and neglect by New Mexico, shattering the perception that blame rests on children and their families instead of on a systemic failure.Lente and others had sought more than $40 million in additional money for tribes, but the $35 million is a significant boost over previous years. For example, $15 million of the $35 million in the budget would go toward beefing up tribal education departments and is substantially more than the $5.25 million appropriated for this year, which ends June 30.

2022 Special Edition

Lawmakers move bills to tackle housing crisis

Bobby Brier for New Mexico In Depth By |

Two affordable housing measures that aim to tackle a sprawling housing crisis in New Mexico  are in a race against time with eight days left in the 2022 legislative session. 

Currently, across the state lower-income renters grapple with a vast shortage of affordable and available rental units, homelessness ticks upward, and tenants face quick eviction proceedings in court for nonpayment of rent, according to Attorney Maria Griego in a New Mexico In Depth story published in January. 

Senate Bill 134, would inject more money into the New Mexico Housing Trust Fund to bolster programs that help people around the state get into housing and create more affordable housing. 

Sponsored by Sen. Nancy Rodriguez, D-Santa Fe, and Rep. Nathan P. Small, D-Las Cruces, Senate Bill 134 passed the Senate on Monday 37 to 3, and heads to the House of Representatives where it awaits a hearing in just one committee, the House Taxation and Revenue Committee.The legislation would create year-after-year revenue — called recurring in Roundhouse lingo — for the state’s Housing Trust Fund, by earmarking 2.5% of the state’s senior severance tax bond capacity allocated each year. The approximate value of the infusion would be $25 million in fiscal years 24 and 25, a significant boost over the usual annual allocation for the housing fund, which has fluctuated from $5 million this fiscal year to zero dollars in the fiscal year that ended in June 2018. 

On the Senate floor, Rodriguez said that for every dollar put into the fund, it generates at least 29 to one in return. “Why is it that we have such big problems in New Mexico with affordable housing?” she asked, noting skyrocketing costs that mean many have to spend more than 50% of their income on a mortgage or rental payment and don’t have any funds left to provide for their families. “Our mental health issues, behavioral health issues, problems that are just huge in New Mexico, all are linked to somebody being homeless or the financial stresses of not being able to provide a payment for their home,” she said. 

The bill received widespread endorsements on the floor from numerous legislators. 

“I’d like to remind the body that all of us are one catastrophic event away from … losing the security of our homes,” said Sen. Carrie Hamblen, D-Doña Ana, who noted that she had served previously for four years as president of the board of directors of the Mesa Valley Community of Hope, a nonprofit organization that serves homeless people in Doña Ana County. 

Not everyone was on board with the bill. Sen. Pat Woods, R-Broadview, objected to creating an annual appropriation.

education

Tribal education funding makes progress

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Three bills that would bolster the state’s 23 Native American tribes’ ability to educate their own children cleared their first legislative committee this week.The House Education Committee’s passage of House Bills 87, 88 and 90, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Derrick Lente of Sandia Pueblo, never was much in doubt.With a little over two weeks left in the 30-day session, the question is whether beefed-up money for tribal education contained in the bills will make it into the $8.5 billion state budget. 

And whether the Legislature will change how New Mexico distributes money to tribes from one-off grants that require applying for the money each year to an automatic year-over-year appropriation — called recurring in statehouse lingo. Lente explained to his legislative colleagues during Monday’s committee meeting that the legislation before them was foundational to the Tribal Remedy Framework, which details  education reform priorities sought by the state’s 23 tribal nations. 

In recent years tribes have demanded more control over educating their own children. They’re supported by the 2018 landmark Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico court ruling that found New Mexico negligent in providing a sufficient education to at-risk students, which includes Indigenous students.Indigenous students, who make up about 34,000, or 11% of New Mexico’s K-12 student population, lag behind their New Mexico peers in reading, math, high school graduation and college enrollment. The Yazzie/Martinez decision suggested those outcomes mostly stem from decades of underspending and neglect by New Mexico, shattering the perception that blame rests on children and their families instead of on a systemic failure.The court ruling wasn’t the first to name systemic or institutional causes for low educational outcomes for Indigenous students. From the 1960s on, report after report has documented the dismal education afforded to the state’s Native American communities. 

The Kennedy Report of 1969, a federal review of indigenous education, acknowledged the classroom was a tool of assimilation for indigenous children for much of this country’s history.