Native America
Lawmakers discuss how Native American Voting Rights Act is changing election processes
While New Mexicans around the state head to the polls to cast their ballots during early voting in the ongoing local election, lawmakers met in Santa Clara Pueblo last week to talk about how the election is different on tribal land this time around. The recently passed Native American Voting Rights Act lifted barriers, but […]
New Mexicans pressure federal lawmakers to join calls for ceasefire in Gaza
New Mexico’s congressional delegation is facing pressure in D.C. and here in New Mexico to join the call for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. There were two marches in New Mexico on Monday calling for a ceasefire, one in the state’s capital, Santa Fe, and the other in its largest city, Albuquerque. They followed […]
On the Navajo Nation, a daughter yearns for her mother, missing for five years.
Julia Vicente always walked the same route home from visiting her friend. She’d traverse about a mile of Shiprock, a town on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico’s northwestern corner, along a dirt road through a neighborhood, bordered by hills and an irrigation canal on one side and a busy highway on the other. She’d […]
N.M.’s long road to give Yazzie/Martinez students a quality education
Five years after a judge mandated public school education reform, New Mexico still has a long road ahead before it will come close to meeting its constitutional obligation. At Taos Pueblo Wednesday, lawmakers on the interim Indian Affairs Committee heard from state education officials, attorneys and researchers on their views of what’s needed to provide […]
New Mexico pulls plug on missing and murdered Indigenous people task force
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration has quietly ended a state task force created to find solutions to a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people. The group hasn’t met since May, a few months after several members publicly opposed Lujan Grisham’s nomination of former San Ildefonso Pueblo Gov. James Mountain to lead the Indian Affairs Department, which […]
Former Navajo Nation president launches bid to flip AZ’s largest congressional district
Watching the threat of a government shutdown and the ousting of the U.S. House Speaker, former Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said that is when he knew he had the opportunity to help, prompting him to jump into the race for Arizona’s largest congressional district. “This dysfunction that’s happening and this far-right contingency is taking […]
State to decide before 2024 where to send $6 million for northwestern NM economic development
Setting up solar. Making housing more accessible. Boosting local food production. Starting up hydrogen energy productions. Expanding educational opportunities at local colleges. These are all projects local, out-of-state and even international organizations are vying to set up in northwestern New Mexico to help communities recover from a massive coal plant shutdown that happened in 2022. […]
Native lands lack clean water protections, but more tribes are taking charge
Across the roughly 1,300 square miles of the White Earth Indian Reservation in northwest Minnesota, tribal members harvest wild rice in waters that have sustained them for generations. They’ve been working for decades to restore sturgeon, a culturally important fish, and they harvest minnows and leeches to supply bait for anglers across the country. But […]
New Mexico leaders create nonprofit to steward funding for federal government climate initiatives
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced the formation of a nonprofit to help New Mexico get millions in federal dollars to invest in renewable and sustainable programs that could boost a gap the state has shown in receiving federal grants. The New Mexico Climate Investment Center, otherwise known as the NMCIC, could assist as a facilitator […]
Oñate statue shooter to remain in jail until trial
TIERRA AMARILLA — A man drove more than an hour from his home in the foothills near Albuquerque to Española where he provoked a crowd gathered around a contested public monument, shot someone, assaulted someone else and fled back south until he was stopped by tribal police. Ryan Martinez, 23, will stay in the Rio […]
Hopi, Akimel O’odham activist, civil society groups call for hate crime prosecution
The person recorded on video shooting a Hopi, Akimel O’odham activist in Española on Sept. 28 is being prosecuted by the state of New Mexico for attempted murder and aggravated assault. Meanwhile, the victim, Jacob Johns, along with civil society groups in and outside of New Mexico, are asking the U.S. Department of Justice to […]
Rio Arriba shooter supported 2020 Oñate shooting, online posts show radical rabbit hole
Ryan Martinez, the Donald Trump supporter who shot activist Jacob Johns (Hopi, Akimel O’odham) last month at a prayer vigil where a statue of war criminal Juan de Oñate was set to be installed, had an extensive history of posting and engaging with extremist content on social media, a review of archived posts by Source […]