N EW MEXICO’S INDIGENOUS-LED INSTITUTIONS, such as the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture, in Santa Fe, extend their expertise nationally, forging lasting partnerships with major museums from coast to…
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P ORTER SWENTZELL, TRIBAL SECRETARY FOR SANTA CLARA PUEBLO and executive director of Kha’p’o Community School, admits that he isn’t an expert in turquoise. Some of Swentzell’s earliest memories are of…
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WITH EVERY STITCH AND EVERY PATTERN, Jennifer Berg (Diné) weaves a little piece of Navajo culture into her work. “I want to tell the stories of my people,” she says. “I make wearable artwork that is a…
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THE FIRST THING YOU FEEL is the ground tremble with the rhythmic thumping of the drums. It is the symbolic heartbeat of the earth, echoing the hearts beating in our own chests. The drums are at the…
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850: First great houses built at Pueblo Bonito and Una Vida in Chaco Canyon. 1050: Chaco culture reaches its height. 1068–1072: First Chacoan structures built at what is now called Salmon Ruins. 1105:…
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IN THE 17TH CENTURY, the Four Corners region turned cruel. Chaco’s Ancestral Puebloan people had fled three centuries earlier, their elaborate social structure abandoned as the culture’s various…
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Navajo people use the name Diné to describe themselves. The Bureau of Land Management area with Navajo defensive sites is called the Dinétah by archaeologists. In the Diné language, Dinétah refers…
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THE CHACOAN PAST enthralls visitors to Chaco Culture National Historical Park, southwest of Nageezi; Aztec Ruins National Monument, in Aztec; and Salmon Ruins Museum, in Bloomfield, which also tells…
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FATHER ALBERT BRAUN SO LOVED the Mescalero Apache people that he dedicated decades of his life to creating a Romanesque church with rock walls that soar as high as 90 feet. The cornerstone was laid in…
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THE 2,000 LUMINARIAS, set and lit by hand, line the road up the mesa to Acoma Pueblo’s 370-foot-high Sky City. Inside the 1629 San Esteban del Rey Mission Church, tribal dancers pound their feet onto…
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