New Mexico

New Exhibit Shows Navajo Nation’s Suffering, Resiliency

Published

3 years ago

June 5, 2022

New Exhibit Shows Navajo Nation’s Suffering, Resiliency

By ROBERT NOTT, Santa Fe New Mexican

FORT SUMNER, N.M. (AP) — They named the realm close to this place Bosque Redondo, after a grove of cottonwoods close to the river.

The Navajo imprisoned there referred to as it “Hwéeldi.” Some say that interprets to “place of struggling.”

It would as effectively have been referred to as hell.

It was close to right here, in Billy the Child nation, that the U.S. authorities tried to strip members of the Navajo Nation and Mescalero Apache tribe of their language, tradition and non secular beliefs within the 1860s.

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The federal government had already eliminated them from their native lands in New Mexico and Arizona, forcing them to take the Lengthy Stroll, because it grew to become recognized — a forlorn journey on foot of a number of hundred miles by which illness and demise grew to become each day companions. And it wasn’t only one journey; there have been various lengthy walks that passed off through the years from completely different websites, together with Fort Defiance in Arizona and Fort Wingate close to Gallup.

As soon as the folks arrived right here, they discovered a sandy, desolate desert panorama unfit for farming and bereft of contemporary water. They grew to become prisoners, then survivors, struggling first to only stay after which to get again residence.

In the long run, they succeeded, mentioned Morgen Younger, a historian who helped leaders of the Bosque Redondo Memorial/Fort Sumner Historic Web site create the exhibition Bosque Redondo: A Place of Struggling…A Place of Survival.

In the end, Apaches fled the fortress-reservation one winter evening in 1865, and Navajos negotiated a launch and treaty in 1868 that helped them develop into an influential nation, she mentioned.

“It is a place of resiliency,” Younger instructed the Santa Fe New Mexican. “Individuals had been pressured right here, they survived, they returned residence.”

And that perspective is mirrored within the exhibition, which drew greater than 500 folks on Could 28, the official opening day. The exhibition, which pulls on historic paperwork and oral accounts, takes the customer on a journey again to the 1860s via at present because it tells the story of people that finally discovered their approach residence and reclaimed their native methods.

It’s not a straightforward story to inform — or to absorb. Pictures, panels of textual content and audio shows of the oral reminiscences of those that survived the ordeal paint a portrait of a authorities decided to wipe out an Indigenous inhabitants it noticed as a menace.

There are tales of troopers taking pictures pregnant ladies who couldn’t sustain on the stroll; of elders and infants drowning in river crossings; of 12- and 13-year-old ladies, combating off hunger, promoting their our bodies to troopers for a chunk of cornmeal.

It’s an exhibition that may simply immediate tears, mentioned Santa Fean Diana Clanin, who mentioned it was a “tough choice” to go to the exhibition. As a docent for the New Mexico Historical past Museum, she is aware of the backstory of the positioning.

“I didn’t know if I may be capable of deal with it,” she mentioned, including the exhibition showcases the fact of “man’s inhumanity to man.”

However, she added: “It’s value each mile (I drove).”

Wendy Raper, a Navajo lady from Clovis, mentioned she additionally is aware of all too effectively the historical past of the Lengthy Stroll and the jail camp at Fort Sumner.

“That is the place I come from,” she mentioned. “That is what made me who I’m.”

The 6,500-square-foot exhibition was a long time within the making and began largely due to a handwritten letter left on the website by some visiting Diné youth in June 1990. At the moment, the historic website targeted on offering details about the fort and the well-known outlaw who was shot and killed in these components — Billy the Child.

The letter — on show within the museum — mentioned the youth discovered the positioning “discriminating and never telling the true story behind what actually occurred to our ancestors in 1864-1868.” It went on to demand museum officers “present and inform the true historical past of the Navajos and the USA army.”

Change didn’t occur in a single day, and even over the course of one other 15 years. The Bosque Redondo Memorial, as it’s now recognized, opened in 2005 however was only a facility with just a few storyboards of knowledge. However talks slowly started across the concept of creating a everlasting exhibition — one which would come with the enter of Navajo and Mescalero Apache members.

Aaron Roth, historic websites supervisor for the memorial, mentioned these behind the creation of the exhibition sat down for the primary time with tribal group members in August 2016 to find out how finest to current a tough story that wanted to be instructed.

5 years later, within the autumn of 2021, the memorial’s leaders mounted what Roth referred to as a “mushy opening” of the present exhibition.

Amongst different options, the exhibition contains interval and modern cultural artifacts, a touch-screen show of the 1868 treaty between the Navajo and the U.S. authorities you could learn or hear and a response room the place guests can file their reactions to the exhibition.

Lots of these written responses, Roth and others concerned with the memorial mentioned, mirror private tales, together with from the survivors or youngsters of survivors of the Holocaust. A number of folks interviewed on the website Saturday mentioned it instantly conjured up pictures of Nazi Germany’s persecution and genocide of Jews.

In that sense, you would possibly say the Bosque Redondo memorial is the closest factor to a Holocaust museum that Native Individuals have.

However Roth, like others interviewed for this story, mentioned he doesn’t consider nearly all of normal public is aware of the story behind the positioning or the Lengthy Stroll.

“For the longest time, even in (Fort Sumner) itself, the historical past wasn’t even taught in faculties,” he mentioned. “Individuals who grew up right here within the ’60s and ’70s mentioned to me, ‘This occurred in our personal yard, and we didn’t even comprehend it occurred.’ ”

Manuelito Wheeler, director of the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona, and one of many Native American representatives who helped form the exhibition, echoed that thought.

“It appears nearly all of Individuals don’t know that this even occurred,” he mentioned. “When there’s that unawareness, it results in an uncaring perspective. As soon as somebody understands what occurred, their logic and feelings will assist them perceive that this was unsuitable.”

He mentioned that so many individuals see the story of the Lengthy Stroll and Bosque Redondo imprisonment as one in all “resiliency” speaks to the very fact “we’ve come a good distance on the sacrifice of a few of our tradition, the sacrifice of human lives.”

For 17-year-old Veronica Beck-Ruiz, a member of the Chiricahua Apache nation, the exhibition touches deep, uncooked private feelings. Her great-great grandmother endured the Lengthy Stroll and Bosque Redondo.

Beck-Ruiz — who left various private messages on Publish-it notes and on the numerous whiteboards within the exhibition expressing the way it made her really feel — summed up her sentiments in a single succinct sentence as she ready to depart the memorial.

“It shouldn’t have occurred, nevertheless it did,” she mentioned. “And it made our folks stronger.”

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New Mexico

New Militarized Border Zone Spurs National Security Charges Against Hundreds of Immigrants

Published

3 hours ago

May 14, 2025

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New Militarized Border Zone Spurs National Security Charges Against Hundreds of Immigrants

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Several hundred immigrants have been charged with unauthorized access to a newly designated militarized zone along the southern U.S. border in New Mexico and western Texas since the Department of Justice introduced the new approach in late April. President Donald Trump’s …

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New Mexico

‘A moving time machine’: Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad gets to ready to roll through New Mexico, Colorado

Published

20 hours ago

May 14, 2025

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‘A moving time machine’: Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad gets to ready to roll through New Mexico, Colorado

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New Mexico

Drone footage shows deputies fire non-lethal weapon to disarm armed children in New Mexico – Times of India

Published

2 days ago

May 13, 2025

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Drone footage shows deputies fire non-lethal weapon to disarm armed children in New Mexico

A standoff involving two young boys armed with a loaded handgun was safely resolved thanks to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office’s drone programme, authorities in New Mexico revealed last week. The incident, which occurred in February, was captured on drone and body camera footage released publicly by the sheriff’s office.The dramatic footage shows deputies negotiating with the boys, aged 7 and 9, as they passed a firearm back and forth during a tense exchange. “Put it down, baby,” one deputy is heard saying, urging the children to disarm.

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According to the news agency AP, the situation escalated when one of the boys pulled the trigger, but the weapon malfunctioned.Sheriff John Allen praised the drone for giving deputies a critical aerial view of the unfolding scene, helping them assess the boys’ positions and the firearm in real time. Deputies eventually used non-lethal rounds to distract the children before moving in to disarm and detain them. “Our deputies could have taken deadly force. That would not have gone well with anybody in the nation,” Allen said during a press conference.Authorities say no charges have been filed against the boys, as state law prohibits prosecuting children that young. According to news outlet HuffPost, the children remain in the custody of their guardians and that the firearm had been retrieved from inside their home. Allen said officials are now considering charges against the parents under a New Mexico law that makes it illegal to store firearms within children’s reach.“We know one side is going to say, ‘Lock them in jail.’ They’re 7 and 9 years old,” Allen told reporters, highlighting the importance of recognising the boys’ age and brain development. “I told you before, numerous times in numerous interviews, that I understand the frontal lobe.”The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office had reportedly been called to the boys’ home over 50 times prior to the incident for various issues, according to AP. Instead of pursuing criminal action, the department has worked to connect the family with trauma therapy, medical and behavioural services and even prepaid grocery cards.“This case illustrates the complex intersection of juvenile crime, mental health and public safety,” Allen said in a statement quoted by AP. “We are taking important steps to close service gaps and expand our ability to work with juveniles involved in firearms or violent crimes.”New Mexico has seen a surge in violent incidents involving young suspects in recent months, prompting calls from prosecutors, law enforcement, and Republican lawmakers for Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham to convene a special legislative session to address the state’s growing crime crisis.

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