Christine Means talks about her sister, Dione Thomas, who was killed in April 2015 in Gallup during a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives National Day of Awareness event in 2022 on the Plaza.
Christine Means talks about her sister, Dione Thomas, who was killed in April 2015 in Gallup during a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives National Day of Awareness event in 2022 on the Plaza.
Indigenous people help make New Mexico what it is. It’s from local Indigenous cultures that some of New Mexico’s most famous attractions have emerged: the turquoise jewelry, pottery designs and textile patterns, and the red and green chile-inspired food, to name a few.
New Mexico, including ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe, has a rich history built on the land of Indigenous people. Some bigger organizations, such as the ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe Playhouse and the ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe Community College, have written land acknowledgments, honoring that the land beneath the institutions is not “theirs,†but rather Indigenous land stolen throughout history through the process of colonization in the U.S.
The statements are a start, but there is more we all can do on an individual and governmental level to help bring justice for Indigenous people in our state.
The movement of land acknowledgments is not singular to ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe. Land acknowledgments have recently become a custom before formal events, to honor and announce the land that Native American people have inhabited and was colonized by European settlers throughout history, and often in violent ways. While land acknowledgments officially started in the 1970s, their rise seems to have peaked in recent years, according to Vox.
To understand the reason behind land acknowledgments, it’s helpful to look at the history of Indigenous people in the U.S., including the history of the different local pueblos. When Spanish colonialism took hold in the 16th century, Pueblo people in what is now modern-day New Mexico faced hardships like enslavement and forced conversion to Catholicism, according to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. These conditions led to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, which pushed the Spanish out for 12 years before they reentered the area. While the Spanish eventually recognized pueblos with land grants, according to the New Mexico Commission of Public Records, Indigenous people still lost land they had lived on and faced hardships like smallpox, which devastated some populations.
In a recent movement to decolonize — or work toward cultural, psychological and economic freedom for Indigenous people with the goal of Indigenous sovereignty — land acknowledgments have become normalized and are a practice that has become more popular among organizations. Sovereignty, according to the organization Trees, Water and People, is freedom from external control for Indigenous people, so ultimate liberty from past colonial powers.
At their best, land acknowledgments allow non-Indigenous people to educate themselves on the stewards of the land. At their worst, land acknowledgments are a low-effort and performative attempt at decolonization that have little to no intention behind them.
While land acknowledgments are a start, donating to Indigenous organizations and continuing to advocate for sovereignty of Indigenous land (and for “land back†— a concept promoting the return of Indigenous land to communal ownership rather than real estate or private ownership) needs to be the next step in a momentous step toward decolonization.
Ross Douthat, a columnist at The New York Times, said it best: “Here you have rich and powerful institutions, their wealth and power inseparable from the larger development of the United States, claiming virtue by piously declaring themselves to be in possession of other people’s stolen lands,†he wrote in 2023.
The search for missing and/or murdered Indigenous women must also continue. The phrase “missing and murdered Indigenous women†describes the movement aimed at alleviating the crisis of Indigenous women in the U.S. and Canada who go missing or are killed at disproportionate rates. New Mexico had the highest rate of missing and murdered Indigenous women in 2020, according to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, despite only having the fifth largest Indigenous population in the country.
Nationally, the numbers are halting. In 2016, there were 5,712 reports of missing American Indian and Alaska Native women and girls, according to data from the National Crime Information Center. The U.S. Department of Justice’s federal missing person database, NamUs, only logged 116 of these cases, according to the nonprofit organization Native Hope. According to 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, homicide is the third-highest cause of death among Native American girls ages 14-19 and women ages 20-24.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham created an advisory council to address this long-standing issue in late November, shortly after disbanding a task force aimed at studying the issue.
“Bringing more law enforcement to the table will help address a major crux of this issue: a lack of coordination among federal, tribal, state and local entities,†Lujan Grisham said in a statement. “The work of this group will help bring missing Native people home, provide closure to families and communities, and prevent other families from experiencing these tragedies.â€
New Mexico’s rich history of Indigenous land, while interesting, has also been problematic. I urge local businesses, organizations and government officials to keep making and announcing land acknowledgements, but to also continue legislation and efforts that move beyond those words.
Emily J. Aguirre will be a junior at ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe Prep. Contact her at emjazz19@gmail.com.
The ·è¿ÍÖ±²¥ Fe New Mexican observes its 175th anniversary with a series highlighting some of the major stories and figures that have appeared in the paper's pages through its history. The collection also includes archival photo galleries.
