What do we lose when we don’t know ALL of our histories? Understanding our great, great, great, great grandparents' lives and how they survived, where they settled or traveled, and what languages they spoke – all of these details reveal so much about who we are and how we landed here in this place, at this moment in time. How our ancestors interacted with other people and with the land has had ripple effects on why things are the way they are today.

Dr. Gregorio Gonzales (Comanche, Genízaro), the tribal liaison for the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, works to develop relationships with 23 tribal governments based within New Mexico. DCA divisions interact with as many as 34 American Indian tribal governments, which include tribes with ancestral ties to New Mexico and whose tribal headquarters are located in Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas. Gonzales is uniquely suited to this position due to his impressive knowledge of Indigenous history in the state—including Genízaro history which is still largely unknown in the context of United States history. 

Even within New Mexico, groups without any connection to a Genízaro identity are not likely to know this history. And as Gonzales reveals, he didn’t understand the full history and context of his Genízaro identity until he was a young adult.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to [email protected]. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit http://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

***

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

For a transcript and full show notes, please visit podcast.nmculture.org

In a large, low-population state like New Mexico, with lots of rural communities, libraries play a vital role in literacy, education, and job skills training—along with the simple joy that comes from learning and being immersed in the numerous worlds that can be found within a book’s pages. 

Each of the 130 libraries across New Mexico, including 21 tribal libraries, serves the specific needs of its own community. Many tribal libraries, such as the Santa Clara Pueblo’s library, maintain a community archive of historic photos, interviews, and oral histories that preserve the past and help restore the language. 

Also, youth programming plays an important role in helping kids become early readers through story time, summer reading challenges, and special events. Youth programming also provides databases for research, tutoring, and resources for homeschoolers. 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

New Mexico State Library

Santa Clara Pueblo Community Library

Aspen Song Kids

Carnegie Library in Las Vegas

We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to [email protected]. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit http://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

***

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

For a transcript and full show notes, please visit podcast.nmculture.org

Poetry is everywhere. Poetry is in the way we speak or sing or the ways we imagine. Poetry offers space and possibility. And poetry is the best kept open secret we have. Because as it turns out, poetry can sometimes have the unfortunate reputation of not being for everyone. 

Thankfully, state poets laureate are working to change this perception and helping people find the magic and meaning in poetry. New Mexico State Poet Laureate, Lauren Camp, is no exception. Now midway through her three-year term, she’s made it her mission to traverse the vast reaches of the state to build community and poems. 

Camp’s passion for poetry is infectious. Whether making poems as collages or writing about goatheads or night skies, her poetry invites readers and other poets and would-be poets in.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Lauren Camp’s website

In Old Sky: Poems Inspired by the Grand Canyon

New Mexico Epic Poem Project/New Mexico Arts

Article: New Mexico’s Queen of Poetry, El Palacio, spring 2023

We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to [email protected]. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit http://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico CulturePass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

***

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Editor: Monica Braine (Assiniboine/Lakota)

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

For a transcript and full show notes, please visit podcast.nmculture.org

Creating art in the face of grief can be complicated and hard to navigate, especially when the grief feels both private and personal—and a part of a much larger epidemic, like the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) crisis. 

Both Bobby Brower (Iñupiaq) and Tara Trudell (Santee Sioux/Rarámuri/Mexican/Spanish) found their way into speaking about the MMIP crisis through clothing and adornment that are linked to a long history of protection, prayer, and collaboration. 

On this episode of Encounter Culture, Brower and Trudell talk with host Emily Withnall about creating Native Alaskan atikluks and creating beads out of paper, respectively, and the reason it is so important to do this work in community. 

Brower is a fashion designer whose work has been featured on the TV series Alaska Daily and in New York Fashion Week, among others. Trudell is a multi-media artist working in fabric, paper, photography, and film, among other mediums. 

For both women, the art cannot exist without community, and it is in community that important stories and information can be shared and held. 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Museum of International Folk Art

Bunnell Street Center Arts Center

Alaska Daily (TV series)

Tower Gallery

Ashlynne Mike AMBER Alert in Indian Country Act

We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to [email protected]. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

***

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Special music in this episode: “Kinship Honor – K’é Biyiin,” written by Herman Cody & Radmilla Cody, performed by Radmilla Cody. Courtesy Canyon Records. Also, “Mother’s Words – Amá Bizaad,” written by Herman Cody & Radmilla Cody, performed by Radmilla Cody, courtesy Canyon Records. 

Instagram: @newmexicanculture and @elpalaciomagazine

Jemez Historic Site, like all of New Mexico’s Historic Sites and museums, offers unique historical and cultural perspectives on the deep and wide-ranging communities, languages, and traditions across the state. And while New Mexico contains a complicated and layered history, these Sites not only honor history but vibrant and ongoing cultures that continue to this day. 

Marlon Magdalena, the Instructional Coordinator Supervisor at Jemez Historic Site and member of the Jemez Pueblo, says that all aspects of his community, currently and in the past, are important.

“My primary goal is just to tell people who the Jemez people are--that we're people that are still around. We're Indigenous people, Native American people, that we still exist. We’re still here. And we still have our languages, we still have our language, we have our culture traditions.” 

In this episode of Encounter Culture, Marlon Magdalena shares his knowledge of the night skies, his perspective on the Pueblo Revolt, and his flute making and flute playing. Notably, Marlon played with Clark Tenakhongva and Matthew Nelson of Öngtupqa in the United Arab Emirates. Clark and Matthew's music (featuring Gary Stroutsos on flute) is featured throughout season 4 of Encounter Culture, which tells the story of Miguel Trujillo. 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

***

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture

Traveling to some remote parts of Northern New Mexico can feel a little like traveling back in time. There’s the slower, rural lifestyle and lack of cell reception, for starters, but in some small pockets of rural communities, people still speak a 17th-century dialect of Spanish. 

Encounter Culture host Emily Withnall speaks with National Hispanic Cultural Center’s executive director, Zack Quintero, archivist Robin Moses, and Librarian Amy Padilla about their work to collect and preserve this ancient Spanish dialect before it disappears—which they say could happen in just fifteen years. Though the mountainous region of Northern New Mexico once helped to preserve this unique dialect, greater connectivity and the forces of assimilation have resulted in fewer native speakers. 

As Zack, Robin, and Amy reveal, they hope to preserve New Mexican Spanish as a part of their work with NHCC, but their investment in the project is personal, too.

To learn more about the Legacy Project, go to www.nhccnm.org. New information will be added to the website as the project progresses. Or visit the National Hispanic Cultural Center in person. The museum is open every day of the week, except Mondays. And if you’re interested in contributing to the project, please contact Zack Quintero at [email protected] or Robin Moses at [email protected].

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

New York Times article by Simon Romero

Esther Cordova May

Instituto Cervantes Albuquerque

New Mexico Highlands University

Northern New Mexico College

We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to [email protected]. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture

If you’ve ever been to a Sinclair gas station and see the green dinosaur out front, paleontologist Tony Fiorillo says it’s a fair approximation of New Mexico’s Alamosaurus—which was first discovered in New Mexico more than one hundred years ago. Not only is the Alamosaurus a “New Mexican icon,” as Fiorillo says, but it’s also the only dinosaur discovered in North America so far that appears to have migrated from South America.

In addition to his work as a researcher and paleontologist, Dr. Tony Fiorillo is the executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science. His career has covered several continents largely to study dinosaurs and the environments in which they lived. For more than two decades, Fiorillo focused on the Cretaceous of Alaska. There, his teams made significant advances in the understanding of ancient Arctic biodiversity and paleoecosystems as a way of understanding future climates.

In this episode, Fiorillo joins Encounter Culture host Emily Withnall in a conversation about arctic dinosaurs, what 19th-century scientists understood about the first dinosaurs they found, and how dinosaurs can provide insight for what’s in store for humans. 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science

https://www.nmnaturalhistory.org/ 

Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins dinosaur sculptures at Crystal Palace

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/crystal-palace-dinosaurs.html 

Dinosaurs at Denali National Park

https://www.nps.gov/dena/learn/nature/fossils.htm

We’d love to hear from you! Send feedback to [email protected]. You can write a regular email or record a short voice memo and attach it for us to listen to.

Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

***

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture

What would it be like to see a symphony? How can you capture the rhythm of waves or a murmuration in constellations of light? If anyone can offer a visual representation of multi-sensory experiences, multimedia artist Leo Villareal can. As Villareal shares in his conversation with Encounter Culture host, Emily Withnall, “I think of my tools more like instruments in a way. And I'm making kind of visual music.”

Leo Villareal is a world-renowned artist with roots in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in El Paso and Marfa, Texas. He currently lives in Brooklyn where he owns a gallery and oversees a team of artists, engineers, and programmers. His light sculptures can be seen in galleries in Geneva, London, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Madrid, Washington, D.C., Beijing, Amsterdam, New York, and San Antonio—to name a few.

Among Villareal’s newest light sculptures is Astral Array, an installation on view permanently in the outdoor breezeway to New Mexico Museum of Art’s new Vladem Contemporary location in the Santa Fe Railyard.

Villareal draws inspiration from the natural world, from Indigenous weaving, and from computer coding and programming. Despite the sometimes-impermanent nature of his installations, many of which are site- and time-specific, he appreciates the cycle of creation and dismantling inherent to his work and to the ways in which his continued experiments with light are visible to all. 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

New Mexico Museum of Art Vladem Contemporary

Illuminated River: A Public Art Commission

Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

***

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture

Indigo, cochineal, red earth, and corn pollen: these are among some of the traditional materials used in the art of Dakota Mace (Diné), Kéyah Keenan Henry (Diné), and Daisy Trudell-Mills (Santee Dakota, Mexican, and Jewish) in the Naaldeeh exhibition at the Bosque Redondo Memorial. 

Dakota Mace is a nationally renowned artist and instructor at the Institute for American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. In creating work for the Bosque Redondo Memorial, Dakota invited her students, Kéyah and Daisy, to create works alongside her that would speak history of the place and the suffering endured by the Diné people during the Long Walk and their four-year internment at Fort Sumner. 

Encounter Culture host Emily Withnall invited the three artists to speak about their art, the history of Bosque Redondo, and the ways art can provide healing for the Diné and Ndé whose histories are tied to the land. 

Many Diné people grew up with warnings from elders to never travel to Bosque Redondo Memorial. Some continue to hold this warning to heart, and some, like Dakota and Kéyah, offer their art in prayer. For Daisy, the stories of the homesickness that the Diné and Ndé experienced at Bosque Redondo resonated deeply. 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

EC0202: Listen, and Speak the Truth: Collaborating Through Conversation on the Bosque Redondo Memorial with Manuelito Wheeler and Aaron Roth

El Palacio: Challenging History: The Conception and Crafting of A World-Class Exhibition That Honors One of New Mexico's Darkest Chapters

Dakota Mace

Daisy Trudell-Mills

***

Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture

For more, visit podcast.nmculture.org.

Meet Emily Withnall, the new editor of El Palacio Magazine and your new podcast host of Encounter Culture. 

As a journalist and writer—and New Mexican, first of all—Emily is acquainted with all facets of the magazine publishing process. In conversation with Andrea Klunder, producer and story editor for Encounter Culture, Emily talks about her love of audio storytelling that goes all the way back to growing up on radio. With Encounter Culture, she strives for captivating storytelling with just the right amount of wandering. 

Emily is passionate about artists experimenting with public spaces, making art more accessible and less intimidating. Wearing the hats of El Palacio editor and Encounter Culture host, she wants to expand the magazine’s conversations into the podcast and also invite more Indigenous writers and artists to join in. 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

EC0308: How to Write About Art and Environment with Emily Withnall, El Palacio

EC0307: Geology in New Mexico with a Side Gig in Space with Jayne Aubele and Dr. Larry Crumpler

EC0305: Art That Is For Everyone: Cristina González and Katie Doyle, Vladem Contemporary

EC0302: What Have the Trees Seen? New Mexico Folklore at Los Luceros Historic Site with Carly Stewart and Rebecca Ward

“The Feather Thief” on This American Life

Will Schwarz's Sunday Puzzle

Latino USA with Maria Hinojosa

Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman

KUNM

Cristina González at Vladem Contemporary

Visit https://newmexicoculture.org for info about our museums, historic sites, virtual tours, and more.

Our favorite way to fully experience everything they have to offer is with the New Mexico Culture Pass. Find out how to get yours here.

Subscribe to El Palacio Magazine

***

Encounter Culture, a production of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs, is produced and edited by Andrea Klunder at The Creative Impostor Studios.

Hosted by Emily Withnall, editor at El Palacio Magazine

Executive Producer: Daniel Zillmann

Technical Director & Post-Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz

Recording Engineer: Kabby at Kabby Sound Studios in Santa Fe

Editor & Production Manager: Alex Riegler

Theme Music: D’Santi Nava

Instagram: @newmexicanculture

For more, visit podcast.nmculture.org.