Bringing native perspectives into archaeology for a more complete picture of the past
Ernest Atencio
Posted inArticles
Taos’ return to the acequias
Patricia Quintana takes a break from irrigating and leans on her shovel, watching water from the Acequia Madre del Sur del Rio Fernando flow across her newly planted pasture. Two young men from Taos Pueblo patiently guide the water with intuitive skill, using a gentle pull of the shovel here, a small plug of mud […]
Posted inArticles
The high carbon cost of la vida rural
My wife recently calculated our carbon footprint for a project at the school where she teaches. Just how much CO2 are we contributing to global warming? I was smugly confident that our footprint would be tiny compared to others. We are seriously green, after all, trying to live a simple rural life. We heat with […]
Posted inMay 12, 2008: Boom! Boom!
The mysticism of mud
Mud season just ended on the sage-covered mesa north of Taos that I call home. During the last few months, you could tell who lives on dirt roads by the perpetual stripe of mud on their lower pant legs. That’s normal. But I have never seen as much mud as I saw this spring. On […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Closing the wounds
A plucky group of New Mexico activists pushes mining reclamation into the 21st century
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
Reclamation’s mixed bag
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. Take a chocolate chip cookie and extract most of the chips and maybe a few nuts, as carefully as you can. Then reassemble the cookie without its “ore” and see what you have. That gives you some idea of the challenge mine owners face […]
Posted inDecember 3, 2001: Closing the wounds
The fractured states of mining reclamation
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. When Jim Kuipers started accumulating information for his guide to Hardrock Reclamation Bonding Practices in the Western United States, he found a regulatory landscape as diverse as the region itself. Though every state in the West requires mining companies to plan ahead for reclamation […]
Posted inAugust 28, 2000: The mine that turned the Red River blue
The mine that turned the Red River blue
Activists turn the tables on the biggest, slipperiest mine in the Rio Grande watershed
Posted inAugust 28, 2000: The mine that turned the Red River blue
The life and times of a mining town
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story. 1921 Molybdenum Corp. of America (later abbreviated to Molycorp) begins underground mining in the Red River Canyon east of Questa, milling 50 tons of ore per day. Miners and their families live on site in a self-contained company town. 1964-5 As high-grade veins of […]
Posted inApril 24, 2000: At your service: Unions help some Western workers serve themselves
A norteno champions a local environmental ethic
Many here in “New” Mexico have not forgotten that the United States violated the 150-year-old Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo by asserting ownership of community ejidos – common lands under the historic land-grant system. Today, those lands make up national forests and land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. In this contested landscape, environmentalists and […]
Posted inApril 10, 2000: Beyond the Revolution
Water deal could drain New Mexico’s small towns
Northern New Mexico farmers fear cities will suck their communities dry