UNM faculty, staff decry response to student protests

Approximately 200 University of New Mexico faculty and staff have signed onto a letter criticizing the university’s recent response to pro-Palestinian student protests and encampments. As reported earlier this week, state police disrupted the encampments and arrested several people, prompting a rebuke from ACLU-New Mexico, which says it’s investigating the incident. KUNM reports UNM Associate Professor of Community and Regional Planning Jennifer Tucker helped write and collect signatures for the letter. “This issue of repression on campus goes much broader than just the question of the war on Gaza and the need to intervene,” Tucker tells KUNM, “so we decided to focus it on a support of students rights of free speech, activism and political action.” The letter, addressed to UNM President Garnett Stokes, Provost James Paul Holloway and UNM “leadership,” notes the nationwide protests on college campuses and ongoing harassment by UNM police of its student protests. “Historically, encampments and occupations have been key tactics behind important social change victories,” the letter reads. “These oppositional tactics founded the departments of Ethnic Studies and Black Studies and stopped a large tuition increase in the University of California system in 2015. Encampments are sites of learning and action oriented toward more just futures, embodying the core values of public universities.” While staff and faculty hold differing views on the students’ positions regarding Gaza, “we stand together in unwavering support of their right to free expression and political action.” Gaza protests also blocked the gate at Kirtland Air Force Base yesterday morning, the Associated Press reports.

NM rolls out AI election misinformation campaign

A new election season brings the potential for a new round of misinformation threats, says Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, whose office this week initiated a $500,000 campaign to ward off against AI-manipulated election misinformation. Toulouse Oliver, who has taken a leading role in fighting election conspiracies, tells SFR she hasn’t seen the type of AI election-related problems here that have surfaced in other states, but wants New Mexico to take a proactive stance. “We’re trying to get ahead of the problem because we’re already starting to see it crop up in other places,” she says, citing “that now-infamous robo call that went out to New Hampshire Democratic voters before the primary there purporting to be President Biden saying, ‘Don’t bother going out to vote.’” New Mexico’s Legislature did pass a law in the most recent session requiring disclosure of campaign materials manipulated by AI, but as yet does not prohibit or penalize such materials. “If that works, I don’t know that we need to go any further,” Toulouse Oliver says. “We’re going to have to see how the cycle evolves, though, because if we do end up having bigger problems, we may need to look at going that route and I may ask the Legislature to consider that.”

Sen. Luján urges feds to help farmers stop avian flu

In a letter issued yesterday to both the federal Agriculture and Health and Human Services departments, US Sen. Ben Ray Luján urged administrators to help New Mexico farmers address the growing threat of avian flu among cattle, confirmed here last month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also reported one human case of highly pathogenic avian influenza, but says while sporadic cases of people contracting bird flu may occur, it “believes the current risk to the general public from bird flu viruses is low.” In his letter, Luján describes the outbreak as “concerning” and says New Mexico farmers deserve help in countering the threat it represents. “The current H5N1 outbreak in cattle poses a particular challenge to small producers who manage diverse livestock operations,” he writes. “It is imperative that these producers possess the financial means to effectively quarantine affected livestock and undertake a thorough cleaning and disinfection process. These steps are crucial to halt viral spread to other animals, such as swine, and ultimately safeguard human health, but they are not without cost and risk.” Specifically, Luján calls on the Agriculture Department to expand the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Producer Indemnity and Compensation program.

This and thats

Following a February cyber attack on medical claims company Change Healthcare, New Mexico’s Office of Superintendent of Insurance yesterday issued a warning to consumers to protect their personal information. The company handles 50% of US claims and confirmed breaches of personal information, OIS says. Recommendations from the office include: checking and monitoring financial and credit accounts; signing up for free credit monitoring; signing up for fraud alerts; and freezing accounts, among other standard measures to avoid identity theft. The office also is encouraging all residents who are “experiencing healthcare service delays, pharmacy changes or payment issues to contact the OSI at 855-427-5674, option 3.”

The state health department this week acknowledged upcoming Fentanyl Awareness Day on May 7, and encouraged all residents to know signs of overdose for fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, and proper ways of responding. “Every overdose death is a preventable tragedy. Treatment and recovery are the answer to addiction, but you have to be alive to seek treatment,” Health Secretary Patrick Allen says in a statement. “Every individual has the power to stop an overdose death and help begin the cycle that leads toward that recovery.” DOH’s Hepatitis and Harm Reduction Program at NMHealth is encouraging all residents to “know how to administer naloxone and perform rescue breathing as part of basic first aid response.” Learn more here.

Listen up

A new, moving documentary from New Mexico PBS show Our Land, Ancestral Connections , delves into the story of the Pueblo of Santa Ana’s $30 million purchase of its ancestral lands and its use of “traditional knowledge and western science” to heal the land and unite its people. Producer and environmental journalist Laura Paskus recently spoke to KUNM about the project.

Deb Haaland looks back (and forward)

The New Yorker profiles US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s work, since becoming the first Native American cabinet secretary, to “address the travesties of the past.” By travesties, the story refers largely to the horrors of the federal boarding school system. Haaland, a former New Mexico congresswoman and member of the Pueblo of Laguna, like most Native Americans, has a familial connection to the system that tore apart Indigenous families and abused the children in custodial care—killing them in hundreds of cases. Haaland’s grandmother Helen was one child taken from her family in the village of Mesita and brought to St. Catherine’s Indian School in Santa Fe, where she spent five years. Haaland grew up hearing about the experience from both her grandmother and mother, who also attended St. Catherine’s. In her role at the Interior, Haaland has heard about boarding school experiences from scores of survivors as she traveled around the country as part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative. She began such listening sessions, the New Yorker notes, by acknowledging the irony of the situation: “My ancestors endured the horrors of the Indian boarding-school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead.” The story details both of those histories—the Interior’s and Haaland’s, which includes 35 generations in New Mexico. “I’m here because the ancestors felt it was necessary,” she says of her position at the Interior. “I can’t explain it any other way.”

Out & about

Vogue magazine previews SWAIA Native Fashion Week, which began yesterday and runs through May 5, with a variety of events, including fashion shows, activations and a symposium. Vogue’s story highlights five designers to know from the first-ever Indigenous fashion show in the US, including Santa Fe-based designer Orlando Dugi (Diné) and Albuquerque-based Navajo fashion designer Penny Singer. Be sure to also check out SFR’s interview this week with event founder Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, and images from yesterday’s kick-off event at the governor’s mansion.

This weekend also includes the opening reception for an exhibition of photographs by Milton Snow, a little-known documentarian of Diné life in the 1930s. Nothing Left for Me: Federal Policy and the Photography of Milton Snow in Diné Bikéyah opens on May 4 at the University of New Mexico’s Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, where it will exhibit for the next year. Co-curator Jennifer Nez Denetdale talks to SFR for this week’s cover story about her research into Snow and the livestock reduction era that marked hardship and significant cultural changes for Diné people.

The City of Santa Fe’s two new youth poet laureates, senior students Neve Naktin from Santa Fe High School and Joycelyn Shroulote from the New Mexico School for the Arts (Diné/Hopi/Ohkay Owingeh), both have a love for poetry and a dedication to community service. SFR interviews both Naktin and Shroulote this week about their interests in writing and beyond in advance of a book event for Through Lines, an anthology of Santa Fe’s youth poet laureates’ work since 2019, at 4 pm, Sunday, May 5 at Collected Works Bookstore (202 Galisteo St.).

You don’t feel going out this weekend? Stay home and plow through your Best of Santa Fe ballot. Voting began May 1 and will continue through the end of the month.

Whichever way the wind blows

The National Weather Service forecasts a sunny day, with a high temperature near 74 degrees and east wind 10 to 20 mph becoming southwest in the afternoon. Look for temps in the low 70s on Saturday with a slight chance of rain, and highs in the mid-70s on Sunday with heavy gusts of wind and a concomitant fire watch warning.

Thanks for reading! The Word intends to read the short story upon which the theme for this Monday’s Met Gala is based. This newsletter returns Tuesday, May 7.