Decolonizing New Mexico

New Mexico’s story is one of astonishing complexity, resplendent with the tenacity of spirit and set within a magnificent and sovereign landscape that is both ancient and modern. Its people are the heirs to unique and richly woven histories, traditions and a depth of wisdom and memories, all manifest in the physical and social landscape, tangible and intangible, and beautiful and tragic passed from one generation to the next.

Given the times in which we are living, Decolonizing New Mexico focused on critical assessment of the site we now know as New Mexico, including its people, places, moments in time and stories that reflect both the beautiful and the tragic.

It begins with a recognition that the present retains traumas born from the past — a spiritual, emotional and psychological wounding that radiates across the generations — with contemporary implications, including internalized wounds that are only beginning to be measured.

It endeavors to center a difficult process of decolonizing history, which requires awakening consciousness by remembering and reckoning with hard truths and in some cases, letting go of long held beliefs. As Maori scholar, Linda Tuhiwai Smith has observed, “In order to decolonize our histories, we must revisit site by site.” Efforts to transform the impact of this trauma will require a concerted effort to contextualize and reimagine site-by-site, event-by-event and story-by-story, work that is reflected in both historic and recent activism. The approach is also based upon imaginative possibility. Novelist and Chicana scholar Emma Perez suggests the term “decolonial imaginary” as a way to overcome a colonial past, by literally recording presence and re-inscribing new possibilities. Recovery, healing and transcendence is a process, but it begin with a critical and imaginative remembering. The goal is to awaken a practice of memory that does not complicate history, but invites us to make it.

The Context & Framework

Time

Temporally, New Mexico has often been divided by archaeologists into the troublesome binary of “prehistoric” and “historic”; or framed by historians into distinct periods: “Pre-contact, Spanish Colonial, Mexican, Territorial and American.” All fail to capture the complexity of cycles and the transitions that lead up to and follow events, both cataclysmic and ordinary.

People

Identity is neither static nor something easily defined. In New Mexico, it is like nesting dolls, one inside the other, with beauty buried in the layers of complexity and consciousness, unknown perhaps, but still there. Some individuals and communities stand in strength and sovereignty. Others, whether they carry the complexity of their ancestry in their faces and hands or not, sustain memory in an aching consciousness.

Place

The representations of New Mexico spatially are often revealed in cartography, though in the colonial context, mapping is largely about power and politics: positioning places, people and objects in space; lines on parchment often made at the behest of distant popes, kings and presidents.

Story

In New Mexico, there are as many stories as there have been and are people, places and events, and recognizing that the story depends upon its teller is essential. Here, multiple and overlapping themes evoke origins, prophesy, innovation and convergence. Some are tales spun to excite, enchant or lure and others to inform and elevate.

Charting the Path Toward Truth & Reconciliation

Making the Case

This manuscript works to set the foundation for the work that is required to create transformation. Some of the questions before us are: how do we acknowledge the traumas of the past and yet still foster transformation in both present and future; how can we (re)imagine spaces, events and stories that are inclusive and that celebrate the complexity of its residents; how do take the harms and create possibility in healing?

A Comparative Analysis

Overview

In an effort to contextualize this initiative, comparative research and analysis on methods and frameworks of various Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) projects provided insightful information. TRC models have been critical in resolving deeply rooted conflicts around the world, promoting the belief that confronting and reckoning with the past is necessary for successful transitions from conflict, resentment and tension to peace and connectedness.

Charting A Path Forward - Recommendations & Strategies

As the Western Apache say of their homelands in Arizona, “wisdom sits in places,” and New Mexico is certainly no exception. But one cannot grow wise by simply looking at the surface of the buildings or in neighborhoods. I believe that wisdom can only be achieved by seeing past the layers, which in essence makes it deeply and profoundly contested and connected.