Postcards from the conventions, and reflections on the enchanted life at home

A delegate at the Democratic National Convention watches former President Barack Obama give a speech in Chicago on Aug. 21, 2024. (Photo by Shaun Griswold / Source NM)

Going into 2024’s election-cycle hubs for U.S. political power showed me the enchantment in New Mexico is unmatched. Nothing like leaving to make you love where you’re from.

A throughline between Wisconsin and Illinois is how fast and easy it is to get a good cheeseburger. They do need a little green chile up there to make the hamburger stands better. And hot take: Pizza is pizza is pizza. If it doesn’t have green chile, it is not great pizza. Go ahead and @ me.

Waiting in lines to get on the floors of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and then, a couple of weeks later, at the Democratic one in Chicago, my thoughts kept turning to home, where we’re trying to sort out new ideas and fixes for problems we carry uniquely, but that are still tied to greater issues in the United States.

Many people nationally are working every day on access to clean water, good schools and safe, clean streets.

Delegates from both political parties and elected leaders spoke to these issues with a more recent lens. In New Mexico, these are long-standing problems we’ve been patching up incrementally, sometimes going back years before New Mexico was taken over by the United States.

Water wars

In regards to the environment, Republicans voiced loud support for extraction. “Drill, baby, drill,” former President Donald Trump said in his nomination speech. Democrats did speak to energy, too, while trying to at least say that clean air and water are necessary.

Former President Barack Obama caught my attention during his speech when I heard the word “clean” followed by air and water. I had to take a picture of the teleprompter to just remind myself it happened. Days later, images from back home of the San Juan Generating Station coal stacks being demolished after decades of polluting this region’s air, water and healthy existence reminded me that Obama-administration policies on coal are fragile .

Coming from New Mexico, water abundance up north is so present, it’s in the air. The humidity can be tasted at times.  The Great Lakes region (the name doesn’t lie) has rivers, lakes and their rivers dump into their lakes, I thought as I constantly walked from where I stayed to my work covering the conventions. A little mud from a Bosque walk off Isleta Boulevard before I left somehow stayed on my sole. It must’ve wanted to be on that Milwaukee concrete.

On my first night staying at a colleague’s house, I went for a glass of water. Confused on where to get it, only seeing the tap, I had to ask: can I drink from the kitchen tap? My host looked surprised, until I mentioned that the aquifer where I live has a history of contamination and my family in Zuni Pueblo cannot drink water from the tap. So I remind everyone that it took us fighting for an act of Congress to hopefully get us closer to the comfort others take for granted to just drink from the tap in their kitchen.

It’s just part of our New Mexico existence that we’re told to not drink the tap water.

My host assured me that wasn’t a problem there, but it was nearby. So the water issues we experience are at least peripherally present for others — even with the rivers and the lakes, and the rivers that go into the lakes.

It was a regular conversation between Milwaukee and Chicago, where bragging who has the better tasting tap water is like our Chile Verde Wars. It’s all subjective and very privileged.

Quality education

The entire reason for the assignment became a lesson on Native American history, both contemporary and pre-colonization.

I was there with a team of Indigenous journalists , and each day we summoned the class. Outside of the 12 radio shows we did between the RNC and DNC, the crew answered all questions like it was a freshman seminar in American Indian studies at the University of New Mexico.

Really, we were giving lessons Native American children are learning at home and, in some places in New Mexico, at preschool and elementary schools across the state. Not only is that unique since so many people do not know our history — or that Native people are still here — the politicians we were speaking with often said they would support expanding curriculum to their public schools. Suddenly we were talking about the culturally relevant curriculum and New Mexico public education reform mandate. Many at both conventions were surprised by the model.

Sovereignty was a throughline to discussions of freedom. Every person not Native at both conventions had no idea about sovereignty, but could talk freedom. And when someone finally understood that sovereignty comes with terms, namely total approval by the federal government, they could see the limitations to their freedoms.

This conversation with U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisconsin) struck a nerve because he said he understood the perspective from his time as a medical professional for the Indian Health Services at the hospital in Shiprock. He connected the struggles for working with that system to economic sovereignty for tribes, like the Lac Courte Oreilles Band that he represents in Congress.

A few weeks later, on the last night of the DNC in Chicago, a Laguna Pueblo person from New Mexico took the stage and gave a Keres introduction. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland kept up the principles of education for a television audience. Most directly, she took it to two Laguna Pueblo people working up in media row covering her speech.

When Haaland asked how people at the convention were doing with the Keres phrase, “Gu’wha’tzi,” my co-host for the radio show Shawn Spruce immediately responded in the way we as Pueblo people are taught. He said in Keres that he is doing fine.

As I wrote the article, I asked Spruce if it was appropriate to write out the phrase. He said yes. Then he helped me spell it as best we could to share it with the Source NM audience. He gave me a Keres lesson — a language I am actively trying to learn.

When we published the article, we got several comments from readers acknowledging that Pueblo journalists are covering Pueblo politicians, which is as it should be.

It felt enchanting. I could feel my uncles, my grandparents, a language they were told not to speak and struggled to pass on. I knew they heard it. I could feel their voice come out of me.

And that is why we went to Milwaukee and Chicago. We needed Native voices to be heard Native issues to be reported on by our people. That is why we put so much stress on ourselves, our families and our co-workers back home. The support we needed was always at home. And we did it, is what I told my mom.

What’s ‘safe’?

Before the J.D. Vance nomination speech at the RNC, the sounds of passive, angry, violent chants from the Fiserv Forum that hit the Republican talking points on immigration followed me outside of the Panther Arena where we interviewed GOP members of Congress earlier in the day . I had finished my job at that point. I was looking for tacos.

That kicked off a great experience meeting Milwaukee. Everything open outside the perimeter around the Fiserv Forum was somehow loving, even with the large presence that apparently hit the city like a turd . Many businesses closed, home rentals were easy to snag because locals left. People weren’t tipping workers, even after the gleeful crowd inside cheered for tax reform on tips.

Local police from all over the country came and made traffic horrible. This was much different than the secure perimeter set and monitored by federal police, it was clear when state police from places like Indiana and Kentucky would march between arenas inside the perimeter for their shift to usually patrol some street outside in greater Milwaukee.

An officer from Columbus, Ohio, shot and killed one local.

I met several of his friends and apologized for all of us: the press, staff and the convention itself for having to be there as part of what felt like a takeover of their city.

It’s great to be back home. As soon as I got off the plane in Santa Fe I took a taxi to the Rail Runner, got to downtown Albuquerque, hopped on the 66 ABQ RIDE, sat in the back of the bus, and heard my cousins from Kewa Pueblo check in on me. They asked how I am doing.

We’re all doing just fine.

The wildflowers in the backyard are fine, too. I was surprised at how well the house plants did with less care. RIP petunias.

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