A Generational Shift: Exploring Citizenship and Identity with Dr. Porter Swentzell

[Opening strum of Theme Music]

[00:00:00] Dr. Porter Swentzell: When you have even the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, there are many Native people who are actively fighting in opposition to citizenship. Because will it set up the situation where then the nation that I belong to could become obliterated?

We have to think, you know, like that was the express mission of the United States was to eliminate Indigenous peoples, right? So when they’re like offering citizenship, it really actually looks like this is the next step in wiping out Indigenous nations. 

[00:00:38] Charlotte (VO): Hi folks, this is Encounter Culture, a podcast from the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. I’m Charlotte Jusinski.

Stephanie (VO):  And I’m Stephanie Padilla.

Charlotte (VO): This is the fourth episode of our collaboration with the New Mexico History Museum on Native American voting rights before and after Trujillo v. Garley. 

Stephanie (VO): Yes, and if you haven’t already, we recommend going back to the first episode of season four to hear how the full story unfolds.  

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[00:01:00] Charlotte (VO): To celebrate this season’s collaboration, we’d like to thank you for being part of our listening community at Encounter Culture.

Over the past three seasons of the show, we’ve toured New Mexico’s exceptional state museums and historic sites. But, of course, our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is in person with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Right now, through August 31st, 2023, you can enter to win a package of four Culture Passes and a one year subscription to El Palacio magazine, all valued at $145, by visiting podcast.nmculture.org/giveaway.   

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Once again, visit podcast.nmculture.org/giveaway and enter to win four culture passes and a one year subscription to El Palacio magazine. Giveaway ends August 31st, 2023.

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Charlotte (VO): Today, we’re sharing our conversation about dual identity and barriers to voting with Dr. Porter Swentzell. Porter is an educator, tribal leader, and invaluable consultant on this project.

[00:02:21] Porter: I’m Porter Swentzell. I’m from Santa Clara Pueblo. Right now, I’m the executive director of Kha’p’o Community School, which is our tribally controlled school at Santa Clara Pueblo. I’m enjoying that level of service to my community. And before this, I was at the Institute of American Indian Arts, also as a professor.

[00:02:38] Stephanie: How did you hear about the Miguel Trujillo Project? 

[00:02:41] Porter: I was contacted by New Mexico History Museum staff who were, you know, saying we’re looking at this project and thinking about how we might, might move it forward and your name has come up. 

That’s an interesting thing. I always talk to my students about this topic. Especially, I’ve gotten the opportunity and the privilege to teach Native history and Pueblo history, right? And so, when I’m talking about this more the last hundred years or whatever, of federal Indian policy of New Mexico history, of Pueblo history, this is a topic that always comes up, you know. It’s a really important topic.

And it’s always, you know, something to point out that yes, there’s the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, but it didn’t apply to everybody, right? 

So here in New Mexico, because of our state constitution, that was in fact not, not actually the case, right? So it took Miguel Trujillo from Isleta Pueblo suing the state to get that changed, right? And make a difference there. 

And so it’s something that, you know, it’s like, yes, there was this federal legislation, but it didn’t change everything, right. And bringing up those complexities, I always enjoy, like, sort of highlighting how complex history is and sharing that as well. 

It was a topic I had talked about and nobody is telling this story very much, right? And then when it was brought up, I was like, well, that’s funny. Maybe, I guess, maybe that’s something that’s come to my doorstep in this kind of way. And I can contribute to helping with that story in some way or another. So I was happy to join and participate on that level. 

[00:04:22] Stephanie: Were you taught about Miguel Trujillo when you were growing up?

[00:04:25] Porter: No, I learned about it much later in life. And it wasn’t part of any kind of schooling or anybody that I knew about never talked about it. 

[00:04:35] Stephanie: Why do you think that is? 

[00:04:37] Porter: At least until very recent, it’s not part of, really, any kind of history books for curriculum and things like that. It’s not something that’s really spoken about. There’s probably a little bit of hush-hush about it, in the sense that the State of New Mexico had sort of failed, in essence, to provide the right to vote to Native peoples for decades after it had been available in the rest of the country. 

So it’s probably something, you know, from a state side, there’s kind of like this…Yeah, that’s not a story we all want to talk about. Right?

And so it ends up missing out on official curriculum for a long time, right? It’s kind of one of those, uh, I guess, not a brighter moment that people want to focus on and celebrate. 

But at the same time, you know, the story of Miguel Trujillo is also a powerful story as well, right? You can see that the sort of shift where there’s interest in telling that story and sharing that story.

[00:05:34] Stephanie: We’ve talked about how this wasn’t something that Pueblo people or just Native people in New Mexico were sure that they wanted to celebrate yet, because they didn’t know, really, what the outcome would be. From a tribal leadership perspective, what do you think about their thought process then? 

[00:05:52] Porter: That’s a, that’s a huge question, right?

I go back to words and what do words mean. The way that the U. S. government is designed and the philosophies that underpin it and are at the root of, you know, the political philosophy of the United States differ pretty radically from Indigenous thoughts about how are people governed, identity, right? And so we start to get into some of that mix there, right?

And I like to define a couple words as well. You have these different terms like “state” and “nation,” right? So I always like to tell my students to kind of differentiate those two things apart. 

So that a “nation” is a group of people with a shared identity, a shared language, a shared history, a shared culture, right? Whereas a “state” is this idea that is really, really modern in terms of human experience, right? And so a lot of people look at, like, the idea of the state going back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

[Baroque music]

[00:07:03] Charlotte (VO): And now for another brief history lesson. Signed on October 24th, 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years’ War, arguably one of the most destructive conflicts in European history. 

[00:07:11] Stephanie (VO): Some say it created the framework for modern international relations, and that the concepts of state sovereignty and diplomacy between nations start here. 

[00:07:23] Porter: But 1648, that’s like the sort of birth of the idea, right? That’s not very old at all in terms of our experiences as human beings. 

And so the idea that there could be sort of this imaginary line drawn over many nations and that you could clump them together into this one, sort of like, idea, like the United States, is a baffling idea in terms of the entire breadth and expanse of human experience.

Like, at no point in time did people before really organize themselves in such a fashion really. Our way of organizing ourselves has been always about shared identity, shared culture, shared history, that nation idea, right? 

And so within the United States, we have many, many Indigenous nations that we identify ourselves by who we are as Indigenous nations.

And we have our rules about how you become a member of that. And those roles obviously today have been deeply impacted by colonialism and things like that. 

[00:08:33] When you have the, even the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, there are many Native people who are actively fighting in opposition to citizenship. Because it means that you are surrendering. You are saying, I am choosing to become a citizen of this state. 

What does that mean to my pre-existing citizenship to this other nation? And if I become a member of this, will it set up the situation where then the nation that I belong to could become obliterated?

We have to think, you know, like that was the express mission of the United States was to eliminate Indigenous peoples. So when they’re like offering citizenship, it really actually looks like this is the next step in wiping out Indigenous nations. 

We might sit in our modern day seats and not quite see it quite in the same way. But for a lot of peoples in the early 1900s, you know, citizenship meant giving up your citizenship to your nation, and then, creating the situation where your nation could be destroyed, right, because they were like, well, there’s no citizens left in this nation anymore. You all have joined, you have all signed on to be United States citizens. You don’t need to have any obligation to this nation, which is in a real sense, you know, part of the story of assimilation and colonization, all of that.

So that’s why I say it’s not really a quick, easy answer, right? 

But when we think of here in New Mexico, right, we have had our long standing Pueblo nations here. And in many cases, our current day locations are, if not in the same place, really close to where we were at the time that the Spanish invaded New Mexico, right? 

Many of our communities are still in the same place or within very close proximity, right? We have our lands that surround our villages that are our traditional lands, even if they’ve been shrunken down or restricted in ways that we still have that original land base. 

And so, you know, you can think of those who came before us who were faced with the dilemma of citizenship and participation saying what does this mean in terms of our responsibility as leaders to protect not only our own people, our nations, and who we are, our language, our culture, all of that, but also our lands, our plant life, our water, the animals, all of that. 

So we have a responsibility that comes from the beginning of time to serve, not just the people, but the place as well, right?

And so by gaining the right to vote, who are we helping out by that? Does this help us out? Does it help us out in our purpose of serving our communities? 

Those are important questions to mull over. Is voting a positive representation of how we think about governing? 

Voting is not a customary form of our governance, right? Why would we adopt this foreign concept that doesn’t represent our values or our understandings of the proper way that governance proceeds, right? 

And how will that spoil our core values in some way, or damage our communities? 

We have been experts at not just surviving in this environment, in this high desert environment. We have not only just survived here, but we have found incredible ways to thrive in this environment for millennia. And those are not just about technology of this environment, but the social technology as well. 

How do you build vibrant communities that can exist through the stretches of time? You don’t want to mess with something that works very, very well, right?

That has allowed us to continue on so effectively as Indigenous nations, right? Being careful, right, and thoughtful about those processes, those are the kinds of challenges and thoughts going through people’s minds, you know.

[00:12:49] Charlotte: In answering that question, you know, you kind of answered, well, people feel this way, people feel that way. I’m kind of curious to ask both of you how you feel about this topic of being a citizen of the United States versus being a citizen of the Pueblo, and how those can go hand in hand and how they oppose each other?

(pause)

[00:13:09] Stephanie:  (laughs) He gave me the Indian point, Native point. 

It’s funny because we joke about it a lot growing up and, you know, it’s in, like, Native movies like Smoke Signals where they joke about oh, you’re going outside the rez, you need your passport. That’s a whole ‘nother world. 

And I think, now that I’m old enough to understand my culture and how to navigate outside of the rez, I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of two very different cultures, and I also enjoy the opportunity to potentially get into politics someday, which I’m not saying I’m going to do that, but the ability to be able to make a difference on a national or state level, rather than just tribal.

But I do think it’s complicated trying to figure it out because once you do start to enter that outside world, you almost feel like you’re leaving a piece of your identity behind. 

In fact, that’s something that I still struggle with, but at my core, I know that nothing can take that away from me. 

[00:14:15] Porter: Yeah, I think, uh, and people talk about like that two worlds thing, how you kind of work in both areas, but at the same time, you’re still who you are, right?

So you might be trying to engage in different systems, right, but you’re still you. 

How do we utilize some of these systems to ultimately lead to what we need? You know what I mean? The perpetuation of who we are as peoples, right. So engaging in political activity that can be a useful tool, especially in this world. 

You know, Stephanie, you’re in the legal field, right? Having Native lawyers battling in the courts, we need people like that for that ultimate goal of perpetuating who we are, right? Because if we look at our toolbox, right, in some cases, you know, I say, would we be good with just a screwdriver and a plier? We say, well, what if we could add in, you know, like a level and a saw and a drill, you know, like these are kind of the things, you know, that, that we’re expanding our toolbox, in the pursuit of perpetuating our identity and our culture, our, our lands, protecting our water, protecting all of the things that we hold dear?

We have, like, all this technology, right? How can we leverage that? 

But every step of the way, making sure you’re asking the questions, does this compromise our core values? Does this actually compromise our purpose, right? 

So we’re trying to get to this destination. Does the means, uh…

Charlotte: Do the ends justify the means?

Porter: Yeah, do the ends justify the means. There’s the word. So that’s the question, right? Always at every step of the way is, is this really what we’re doing here? 

[00:16:05] Stephanie: I think that’s just how we’re raised is you take care of each other and you take care of the earth. So it doesn’t really matter how far you go. That’s always in the back of your mind, and even you, Dr. Swentzell, you know, being an educator, it gives you the opportunity to go out and tell the correct narrative and educate people properly rather than reading books or taking classes from non-Native people about our own history. 

It’s very complex, but I think it’s nice for us to both agree that, you know, your Native identity doesn’t ever go away.

[Hopi vocal music swells]

Stephanie:  Going off of that though, how do you think that plays into voting today? 

[00:16:52] Porter: There’s a lot more work to do because that system is very paque. Uh, it’s difficult to understand. It’s not very visible. People don’t know how it really works. It uses all these strange words that are not part of our everyday language, right.

Even when you are deeply involved, it’s very confusing. And you’re like, how do I know? How do these things happen, right? 

That’s an incredible hurdle for people to get involved, right? So you see the same people who are knowledgeable and know the system basically running everything on the background, right?

When that happens, it doesn’t make people very excited to vote. So then it comes back the other way. And, you know, in doing the research for the Miguel Trujillo project, like looking through archives and stuff, there’s a lot of newspaper articles where even at that time, you know, Miguel Trujillo is like being quoted in the newspaper, right, and, other leaders at that time say, “Well, it’s great that we got the right to vote, but we don’t have a reason to vote.”

Do you know what I mean? And that’s pretty powerful, even right immediately, 1948, 1949, you’re like, that’s cool, but why should we? Right? That hasn’t really changed in a lot of ways. Why should people vote?

In the sense of how is it that those people are speaking to our direct purposes, you know, as Indigenous nations, right?

[00:18:21] Charlotte: That’s interesting, because I catch myself in this too, because there is this assumption that like, Oh, well, Western democracy, American democracy is the way to do it. You know, it has to be efficient. It has to be this. It has to be that. Why wouldn’t everybody want to participate in this? And, um, you’re exactly right. Like, no. 

[00:18:42] Stephanie: You know, it’s natural to push people to vote. So I get what you’re saying. I think a lot of people think that way. 

[00:18:49] Charlotte: Yeah. And it’s easy. It’s easy to think that way.

[00:18:50] Stephanie: Yeah. I was raised a lot by my grandparents, because my mom, you know, worked so much and she was a single mom.

So I was with my grandparents a lot. I was with elders a lot. And I think I learned a lot from them, but not this stuff. You know, we didn’t ever talk about the history of voting and the history of why some elders can be so stuck in their ways. 

And I think a lot of times for Native people, it’s because our elders went through so much, like, I’ll give you this, but I’m gonna take this, or, you know, there’s a lot of skepticism.

So, even for me, I didn’t quite get it until I was working on this project and talking to the right people, so. 

Charlotte: Absolutely. 

Stephanie: Yeah. 

[00:19:35] Porter: And if you don’t have that tradition of family, like, oh, what you do is vote on election day, right? Like, thinking of my great grandparents, you know, visiting them as a kid, or grandparents, you know, they might comment on, maybe because there’s a TV and there’s advertisements going, or like, oh, I don’t like so and so, or whatever, but there’s not like that built in generations of experience in that realm, right?

And for, for a lot of Pueblo communities, voting within the community is just not something that occurs. So Stephanie brings up an important point on that.

[00:20:08] Stephanie: Yeah. And for me, it wasn’t even like, you don’t go vote, but it was just not talked about. You know, like voting wasn’t really a topic of discussion. 

So when I entered college and stuff, I realized how important it was, but I now also understand why it’s still, you know, kind of scary or not important to some Indigenous people. 

[00:20:29] Porter: Well, I guess on the other side, because I kind of, I made it sound pretty negative, right? But I try to encourage people, especially like even voting on, like, those local local elections, right? Because turnout is so low. Because you sometimes hear people like, why would I vote? Like, it means nothing to all these people, right?” 

But like, yeah, in the big elections, your vote is just a very tiny sliver, right? But on these local small, and those are the most impactful elections on directly, like, impacting our policies in our immediate neighborhood, right? 

But you might be one of only a handful of people actually voting for your area. So you’re like getting to vote for like 50 people because you showed up, right? And so trying to change that, like, hey, you want to have, like, an enormous impact where your voice is, like, magnified many times over… 

[00:21:24] Charlotte: Vote for city council. 

[00:21:26] Porter: Or school board or something like that. Those are huge. Cause nobody shows up for those.

And then those have the biggest impact because people will be, like, raging about some issue or whatever on the national election. I’m like, yeah, the president of the United States has very little to do with the issue that you’re really concerned about, but the county commissioner has a lot to do with it.

And if you showed up for those ones, wow, they win their elections by like, five votes sometimes, or 20 votes, right? It’s very, very close.

[00:21:58] Stephanie:  I mean, as an educator, you know, you see a lot of the younger generations. I mean, gosh, what does the day school start at? 

[00:22:04] Porter: We have preschool, so like six months.

[00:22:06] Stephanie: So you are involved now through preschool through adults with Native youth in your tribe specifically. Do you see youth wanting to participate more politically, or are they interested in that at all?

[00:22:20] Porter: I think that there’s always a group, and you mentioned learning about voting and its importance going to college, right?

I feel like that’s probably a common theme that there will be a lot of people who don’t really think about it, don’t talk about it, right? It’s not on the radar, right? And go to college, that’s where they learn something about that and become much more active. 

[00:22:44] Charlotte: It’s also when they come of voting age, when they go to college, that’s kind of when I got involved and aware of politics was because I was a freshman in college turned, freshly turned 18.

You know, like, suddenly my opinion mattered. 

[00:22:56] Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:22:59] Porter: And when you’re like, I don’t know, 8 and they’re like in 10 years, you can till out this paperwork and then you can go to this place on this certain day and then you can fill out bubbles of people you may or may not know about things you may or may not know about… And uh, if you just wait 10 more years, right?  And when you’re like eight, like a year is like forever. 

 Charlotte: Yeah, exactly. 

Porter: So it’s very meaningless on that level, right? But it is kind of like, those conversations, right, that could spark that.

[Flute music]

Stephanie: Judge June Lorenzo, who we interviewed, she mentioned that something that she thought was helpful was when people would go out to the polls to help other Natives, if they had a question or if they didn’t speak English fluently, there would be people there who could translate or help out. 

[00:23:54] June Lorenzo: My name is June Lorenzo. I’m Laguna and Diné. I’m Tábąąhá on my mother’s side, the Water Edge People and I’m Little Turkey on my father’s side from Laguna. So I was born in Albuquerque, ‘cause there were no hospitals at Laguna, and raised at Laguna. 

[00:24:16] Charlotte (VO) : June Lorenzo is Chief Judge at Zia Pueblo. 

[00:24:19] Stephanie (VO): She’s also in private practice in state and tribal courts, and advocates internationally on human rights issues for Indigenous people.

[00:24:27] June: I made it a point to go to every chapter house in San Juan County when I was working. I made it a point to go and introduce myself and do an assessment of whether the county clerk was in fact providing information. This was like a lot of dirt roads and so on, you know, and if I needed, people that I needed to talk with, I mean, there were no names for roads. 

And I had, you know, no fear of going out, you know, with directions of you go over this hill and you turn this way and then there’s like, there’d be two hogans and you go to the right, that sort of thing. 

So I think people who know Indian country, not only the physical geography and the language, but just cultural protocols and so on, I still think that’s really important, I just, I really do, to participate fully in voting. I still think that a lot of nuanced things that people don’t think of, you know, that if you don’t speak English, it’s a bad thing that if you don’t speak English, you’re sort of uncivilized, whatever. 

So sometimes at the polls, people would ask for help and people would get offended and say, “Oh, I don’t need help with Navajo. I can speak English perfectly.” Right? But the point was you should be able to use your first language when you do this. You don’t need to use English to vote, right? 

You know, like one of the things we did was go and talk to people afterward, but if you don’t know how to speak to elders, you know, you can be off putting to people and you’re not going to get any information.

[Music transition back to the interview.]

[00:25:59] Porter: Yeah, and I think those are good examples of when turnout has been good is that there are those individuals who are going door to door, who are transporting people to the polls, who are explaining, you know, providing that voter education component, right, that makes a big difference.

A good example is, like, 2008 and 2012. Santa Clara and a lot of Native communities had really good turnout, and there was a lot of really motivated people who were going door to door, transporting people to the polls. And the turnout was pretty high, but again, it had to do because there was Obama on the ticket, there was a lot of energy about that.

Then when you don’t have that energy, then it drops back down again, right? 

And just on the precinct level, you know, those of us who are involved, basically are all calling our family, going door to door, telling them, if you vote on this day, this is how you do it. This is where it’s located at. I’ll drive you over there. Oh, you’re not registered, here’s the paperwork, right, because the barriers to voting are plentiful, actually. 

For a lot of communities, there’s that educational hurdle, but then also access to polling places, right? Especially those areas that are extremely rural. Say, for example, Jicarilla  or Navajo Nation, uh, Mescalero, right, where, especially Navajo Nation, you have vast expanses of land. And so people may have to travel for, you know, half an hour, an hour. 

[00:27:41] Charlotte: And you know, a lot of times the roads aren’t necessarily great or voting is held in November and you never know how the weather is going to be in November. Just getting anywhere was kind of a day trip and not everybody has a day.

[00:27:54] Porter: Right. Or vehicles, transportation, right? So even if the road is good, you don’t have a car or truck or whatever, you know, so you rely on family members. A lot of families, they’re bringing in their own water, right? So they don’t have their own wells or anything like that. So they’re, they’re gonna go to town maybe on one day every two weeks or whatever to go get water, groceries, everything that they need.

And if that doesn’t land on election day and as part of that, then that’s not what’s going to happen, right? 

Charlotte: Town day is Thursday. Oh well.

[00:28:31] Porter: Exactly. So, that’s especially a challenge. That’s anywhere in New Mexico that’s very rural, right? Where you have huge distances between polling stations. A lot of those areas you deal with a lot of high levels of poverty. Like, when you start to think about it, it’s not that easy to do if you don’t have somewhere to start. It’s almost like taking your own relatives by the hand, right? And you’re like, do this, do that, go over here, I’ll take you there, you know, because that’s really important, right? 

[00:29:08] Charlotte: So what is the, quote-unquote, cost of low voter turnout in Indigenous populations?

[00:29:15] Porter: There’s a couple of things at work here that tribes, we receive a lot of our funding for programs for the things, the housing and things of that nature from the federal government. 

So, in some cases, state government tends to, uh, forget or not pay attention as much, right, because there’s not as much engagement.

Now, that’s changing quite a bit, but the state owes an obligation as citizens of New Mexico, as well as, as our nations, that they owe an obligation for road maintenance, for healthcare, and we pay taxes, you know, sales tax, all of that, right? It’s very important that those services be returned back as tax paying citizens of New Mexico.

But, a lot of times, that’s not the case because if you don’t vote, right, there’s less impact, especially on local elections, right? Candidates are ambivalent about the needs of Native nations, right? Then they don’t focus on sort of diverting those funds to where they should be. So in a sense, almost writing off an entire group of taxpayers of New Mexico because they’re saying, “Well, they don’t really vote very much. It’s not a big part of my base to get elected. Why should I bother?”

Now that I think that is changing as tribes are becoming more politically-savvy, becoming much more engaged in the legislative process, right, on the state level. 

And so as more Native people vote, then the impact is not just on having a voice heard right at the polls, but also of having that impact on those who are making the decisions on the political level, right, regardless of party or anything, right, they start to pay attention because those 80 voters at that Pueblo or that 300 at that Pueblo, they can shift the election, right? They could shift it and it could be someone else who’s there. 

Especially when you look at other states, then the proportion of Native people in those states is not as big as New Mexico. We’re one of the top ones. Right? And so it’s very important that be recognized as citizens of New Mexico and have those services provided. 

[Music swells]

[00:31:34] Charlotte (VO): In the next episode of Encounter Culture…

[00:31:38] Kara Bobroff: We have so many students through NACA that their identity is really, like, theirs to share and theirs to really connect to and it’s not, like, monolithic.

It’s like not all Native Americans are the same. So you’re Native American, that means you’re one thing, right? It’s like, no, like, we have some folks who are, like, four or five different tribes, and they’re French and Irish. 

You know, so it’s just really, like, understanding that, which, if I had understood that when I was in sixth grade, I probably wouldn’t have made half the mistakes I did later on in life, and would have probably made better decisions along the path, too.

[Season Outro. Theme music fades in.]

Charlotte (VO): Encounter Culture is a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. This season was produced in collaboration with the New Mexico History Museum with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. 

Stephanie (VO): We are especially grateful to the family of Miguel and Ruchanda Trujillo, and to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.

Charlotte (VO): Our show’s producer is Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios. 

Stephanie (VO): Season 4 is produced and edited by Alex Riegler, Monica Braine, and Andrea Klunder. 

Charlotte (VO): Our recording engineer is Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe. 

Stephanie (VO): Post-production audio by Edwin R. Ruiz. 

Charlotte (VO): Show notes by Lisa Widder and social media design by Caitlin Sunderland.

Stephanie (VO): Our executive producer is Daniel Zillmann. 

Charlotte (VO): Thank you to New Mexico artists El Brujo, D’Santi Nava for our theme music. And to Clark Tenakhongva, Gary Stroutsos, and Matthew Nelson for the incredible Hopi music featured throughout all six episodes of this season. Their new album is set to release in August 2023, and will be available for purchase on Bandcamp and at ongtupqa.com. We’ve included the links for you in the show notes.

Stephanie (VO): For a full transcript and show notes, visit podcast.nmculture.org or click the link in the episode description in your listening app. 

Charlotte (VO): I’m your host, Charlotte Jusinski. 

Stephanie (VO): And I’m your co-host, Stephanie Padilla.

Charlotte (VO): The Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs is your hub for the state’s exceptional museums, historic sites, and cultural institutions. 

Stephanie (VO): From Native treasures to space exploration, world class folk art to awesome dinosaurs, we celebrate the essence of New Mexico every day. 

Charlotte (VO): Remember to head to podcast.nmculture.org/giveaway to enter to win four culture passes and a subscription to El Palacio. Enter before August 31st, 2023. Thanks for listening.

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