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New Mexico In-Depth
New Mexico isn’t doing enough to end missing and murdered Indigenous people crisis, lawmakers say
Lawmakers and advocates this week said an advisory council on missing and murdered Indigenous people Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration announced Tuesday isn’t a good replacement for a task force disbanded earlier this year, and questioned why state officials aren’t asking for more money to confront the crisis.
The secret sauce of the alcohol industry’s statehouse success
This is New Mexico In Depth’s mid-week newsletter. Sign up to receive our stories and newsletters here. Contact us: [email protected]. A new report brings into focus the insidious nature of alcohol industry lobbying at the New Mexico statehouse. “Still Under the Influence: A Look at the Alcohol Industry and Its Influence on New Mexico Elected Officials,” by Common Cause New Mexico, underlines the entrenched power of the industry. Sadly, 20 years after the good government group issued a similar report about alcohol, New Mexico leads the country with the highest alcohol-related death rate.
Indigenous families with missing and murdered relatives protest disbanding of state task force, get apology from governor’s spokeswoman
A spokeswoman for Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham apologized to Indigenous families with missing and murdered loved ones last Friday during a protest at the Roundhouse over the abrupt ending of a task force created to find solutions to disproportionate rates of violence Indigenous people face. Lujan Grisham’s administration disbanded the...
NM Indian Affairs secretary wants to create bureau for missing and murdered Indigenous people
The Indian Affairs Department wants about $350,000 to continue to address a crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people in New Mexico, Secretary-Designate James Mountain told the Legislative Finance Committee on Tuesday. The money, if approved by state lawmakers, would pay for four full-time employees and build the beginnings of a bureau, Mountain told the legislators on the committee, which plays a critical role in writing the state budget.
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 housed the task force.
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 turn onto a well-worn path that cuts around and through a few fields before coming out behind a gas station. She’d cross the highway. From there, her house was straight down a tree-lined street.
Lawmakers tackled New Mexico’s crisis of rural health care workers. It wasn’t enough.
As the crow flies, the Pojoaque Primary Care Center is about 20 miles from New Mexico’s 400-plus-year-old capital, Santa Fe, with its art galleries, well-known opera and tourist destinations. But it’s 45 minutes by car from Dr. Mario Pacheco’s home on Santa Fe’s south side. With...
NM State Sen. Benny Shendo takes job in Colorado
Sen. Benny Shendo, D-Jemez, has accepted a job with the University of Colorado and according to a Colorado newspaper will relinquish his legislative seat in the spring of 2024. One of the most powerful Indigenous lawmakers in the New Mexico Legislature, Shendo has served as a state lawmaker in Santa...
New Mexico AG says he’s going after school discipline and Yazzie-Martinez to protect children
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he is ready to “test the limits” of whether the state constitution gives him the authority to assume control of the state’s defense in the 2018 Yazzie-Martinez court case, but hopes it doesn’t come to that. “That is...
Attorney General to Investigate School Discipline at Gallup McKinley Schools
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez is opening an investigation into disproportionately harsh punishment of Native American children by Gallup McKinley County Schools. New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica reported in December that Native students are expelled from New Mexico public schools at a much higher rate than other children, and that Gallup McKinley, with the largest Native student population of any public school district in the U.S., is largely responsible.
NM Attorney General seeks control over state response to Yazzie-Martinez
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez wants to take over the state’s “slow progress” in reforming public education to ensure all children are sufficiently educated as required by a landmark 2018 court ruling. The judge in that lawsuit found the state had violated the educational rights of Native American, English language-learners, disabled and low-income children.
New Mexico expands restorative justice pilot project
A state pilot program to implement a new discipline approach called restorative justice will expand from 12 to 24 schools in the coming year, according to program coordinator Emma Green. Green appeared on the local public affairs show New Mexico In Focus last week, explaining restorative justice as a philosophical...
ICYMI: The State Ethics Commission squashed move by Lujan Grisham. Here’s why it matters.
This is an example of New Mexico In Depth’s mid-week newsletter. We think it’s crucial to stay in touch and tell you what’s on our minds every week. Please let us know what’s on your mind as well. Or, got tips? What do we need to know? Contact us: nmindepth@gmail.com.
Growing number of NM schools pursue restorative justice to keep kids in schools
On a brisk February morning with snow on the ground, children arrived at Tsé Bit A’í Middle School in Shiprock, on the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico. Word in the hallway was something was afoot: Substitute teachers were waiting in each classroom. The children’s 35 regular...
Crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous people brings federal commission to Albuquerque
Savanna Greywind. Daisy Mae Heath. Ashlynne Mike. The reading aloud of those names and five other missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls followed by a moment of silence opened a three-day hearing of the Not Invisible Act Commission in Albuquerque on Wednesday. The federal commission — made up of...
Extreme heat will take an unequal toll on tribal jails
In any given year, thousands of people are incarcerated in dozens of detention facilities run by tribal nations or the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Often left out of research on climate and carceral facilities, the tribal prisoner population is one of the most invisible and vulnerable in the country. Now,...
Governor sidesteps straight talk about alcohol vetoes
More than a month after Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham vetoed tentative steps that state legislators had taken to address New Mexico’s worst-in-the-nation rate of alcohol-related deaths, her office offered rationales that don’t square with her actions. The governor vetoed the first increase in alcohol tax rates in 30...
Navajo Nation Council passes resolution opposing New Mexico Indian Affairs appointee
The Navajo Nation Council is calling on Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to withdraw her appointment of a former governor of San Ildefonso Pueblo as Indian Affairs cabinet secretary. Passed unanimously last week by the tribe’s governing body, the resolution adds to growing opposition to James Mountain as Lujan Grisham’s pick to head the state agency.
Farmers weigh tough choices as uncertain water future looms
Sitting at his booth at the Bosque Farms Growers Market, George Torres greeted customers all morning one Saturday last year. Many he knew by name and asked about their harvest, the weather, the water. All around him, vendors sold vegetables, milk, eggs, cookies, cut flowers, and seedlings. One farmer dropped off a bundle of radishes, saying, “That’s all I have yet.”
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