Interior Secretary Deb Haaland hears from boarding school survivors in New Mexico – Santa Fe New Mexican
Survivors of the federal Indian boarding school system shared their stories of loss and trauma Sunday at a hearing held by the U.S. Interior Department.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports the event at Isleta Casino gave attendees the chance to tell their stories of the harms done at boarding schools. It also gave Native educators an opportunity to imagine what education for Indigenous youth can look like.
This was the latest stop on Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s “Road to Healing,” a series of hearings on boarding schools. The institutions were used to assimilate Native Americans by forcibly separating children from their parents and community and suppressing Indigenous languages and beliefs. Many children suffered abuse at the schools and even died.
Native educators at the hearing argued that part of addressing the legacy of Indian boarding schools must include fully funding educational institutions for Indigenous Youth.
Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo, told attendees federal Indian boarding school policies impacted every Indigenous person she knows. She acknowledged that the assimilation policies were carried out by the very same department she now leads.
Third NM cannabis business loses its license - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
The state has revoked the license of an Albuquerque cannabis business and fined it over $298,000.
The Albuquerque Journal reports the division found the company, Golden Roots, violated almost a dozen state laws, including selling illegally-grown cannabis through the state system and transporting it incorrectly.
Division Director Todd Stevens said the violations “show a blatant disregard for the Cannabis Regulation Act and the laws all licensees in New Mexico must follow.”
The company operates the Cannabis Revolution Dispensary, with two locations in Albuquerque.
It’s the third time the Cannabis Control Division has taken a license away from a company since July, according to the Journal. Previously, Paradise Exotics Distro and C.M.F. Productions LLC lost their approval to participate in the industry.
Santa Fe reduces school bus routes - Santa Fe New Mexican, KUNM News
Amid a staffing shortage, Santa Fe Public Schools has reduced the number of bus routes available to students and their families.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports 10 schools from elementary through high school are impacted by the cuts.
Tesuque Elementary is a small school north of the city, which has now lost its bus. Parents there tell the New Mexican it feels inequitable, since mostly rural and Indigenous students, as well as those from families with low incomes, are affected.
The parents are putting together carpools in the meantime, but say that will become more complicated in the long term.
Many factors are driving the staffing shortage across the public sector. Cesario Flores, the transportation director for the school district, says low pay is a significant one.
Drivers make about $19 per hour for what usually amounts to a 30-hour week.
Navajo sheep herding at risk from climate change. Some young people push to maintain the tradition - By Melina Walling And John Locher Associated Press
Whenever Amy Begaye's extended family butchered a sheep, she was given what she considered easy tasks — holding the legs and catching the blood with a bowl. She was never given the knife.
That changed recently.
In the pale light of dawn at this year's Miss Navajo Nation pageant, 25-year-old Begaye and another contestant opened a week of competition with a timed sheep-butchering contest. Begaye says preparing to compete, which also required she practice spoken Navajo and learn more about her culture, brought out another side. It taught her to be confident: that she, as a gentle young woman, could be courageous and independent enough to fulfill such an important responsibility.
"We butcher the sheep because it is a way of our life," said Begaye, who won this year's pageant and is preparing to speak about the importance of sheep as a cultural ambassador over the next year. "That's how my ancestors were able to provide food for their families."
That way of life is in peril. Climate change, permitting issues and diminishing interest among younger generations are leading to a singular reality: Navajo raising fewer sheep. Keeping hundreds of sheep, of historically prized Churro and other breeds, used to be the norm for many families living on a vast reservation that straddles parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. But today some families have given up raising them all together. The ones who do report having far fewer sheep, sometimes just a handful. Still, many Navajo shepherds say they will keep their sheep as long as they can, and some younger people are speaking out and finding ways to pass on the tradition.
WATER IMPACTS
Navajo, who use every part of sheep, became stewards of the animals that arrived with Spanish colonists around the late 16th century. They raised them for meat and wool and helped turn the region into an economic powerhouse that supplied local trading posts with the expertly woven rugs that became an icon of the Southwest. But over the centuries, violence and outside influences have inflicted damage on shepherds.
Beginning in 1864, the U.S. Army forced several thousand Navajo into exile during what came to be known as the Long Walk; they returned to destroyed homes and livestock. Some hid with their sheep and survived, only for the government to again kill thousands of sheep during forced herd reductions in the early 1930s.
Most afternoons these days, shaggy herding dogs encourage a flock of sheep to follow Jay Begay Sr. out to graze. The brassy tinkling of livestock bells rings out over a vast plain of dry grasses near the community of Rocky Ridge, Arizona, close to the border between Navajo and Hopi lands. Begay Sr. uses a walking stick to wind past pockets of yellow flowers, heavily trafficked anthills and the occasional prickly pear. Eventually the afternoon sun casts long shadows, and with a breathy whistle or two, Begay Sr. leads them back on the half-mile trek to their corral, the dogs loping not far behind.
For Begay Sr., his wife Helen and his son, Jay Begay Jr., this way of life is precious. But Begay Jr. has noticed his parents slowing down, and they have reduced their numbers, from 200 down to 50.
It's a story familiar to many others in Navajo Nation.
"A friend of mine says, 'You can't blame people for not wanting to work this hard,'" Begay Jr. said. It's harder now, he added, "because of the way the climate is changing."
A mega drought across the Western U.S. has sucked moisture from the land, leaving cracks and barrenness in its wake. The next count of sheep isn't planned until 2024, but Navajo Department of Agriculture officials say the number is lower than the 200,000 counted in 2017. Adding to the problem is the long-standing issue of water scarcity on Navajo Nation, where roughly a third of people lack reliable access to clean water. The Supreme Court recently decided that the federal government was not obligated to identify or secure water rights for the reservation.
The previous Miss Navajo, Valentina Clitso, says she has seen the impacts of water shortages firsthand, including on livestock. During her travels as an ambassador for Navajo culture, she says people have voiced concerns about springs running dry, about hauling water across long distances. Less forage for the sheep also means families have to spend more on expensive feed in the winter.
COMPOUNDING PROBLEMS
Lester Craig, who lives near Gallup, remembers when his family had over 600 sheep. His mother would buy their school clothes by selling the wool, and she would weave, too.
Now Craig has just a few sheep and goats, some horses and a few dogs, including one herding dog named Dibé, the Navajo word for "sheep."
Like Begay Jr., Craig worries about climate change. He pays more for feed in the winter and must haul water from a filling station in Gallup, about an hour roundtrip.
But Craig doesn't just haul water because of drought. The land where his family lives was contaminated in 1979 by a tailing spill from a uranium mine — he points over the ridge in the direction of the site of the biggest radioactive spill in U.S. history.
The windmill wells near his house functioned but had polluted water. For a long time they used them anyway, not knowing anything was wrong. It was clear, clean water, or so they thought. Now they know, and no longer use those wells.
To prevent erosion, a problem worsened by wild horses that have been allowed to run rampant on the reservation, the allowed number of sheep and other livestock is controlled by grazing permits. Craig has seen the erosion, and tears up thinking about how the contours of the land he once roamed as a child have changed.
Leo Watchman, director of the Navajo Nation Department of Agriculture, says grazing management is the worst it's ever been on the reservation. Among other things, he cites bureaucratic inconsistencies between the federal government and Navajo jurisdictions and holdups on environmental studies that determine how many animals can be kept on any given area of land.
He says thousands of people have been waiting for years for grazing permits. Meanwhile, others have permits they don't use or trespass on land they don't have the right to graze on. Sometimes all of this happens amongst family members who live near each other — a recipe for land disputes.
HOPEFUL FUTURE
Meranda Laughter, who works at the Tractor Supply Co. in Gallup, says over the last five years her family has gone from 300 to just 10 sheep. Despite the sharp drop, Laughter thinks they will eventually increase their flock's size, and that continued education and better management can alleviate some of the problems that have been stacked on top of the drought.
"We need to give time for the land to breathe," she said.
For Craig, a big concern is that that some of the younger generation, including his own family, aren't interested in carrying on the tradition of keeping sheep.
That's something Begaye echoes as she describes what it's like to be a young Navajo. Like some other young people, she wanted to leave the reservation and experience city life. And for a while, she did. She went to Utah Tech University in St. George. But then she started to realize that someday she would want to pass on her culture to her children.
The experience of returning home and helping care for her grandmother, who has dementia, helped shape her choice to reengage with her culture. That led her to compete to be Miss Navajo, and thus help her community band together to overcome challenges and strengthen traditions like sheep herding.
"It just hit me," she said. "This is who I am. This is where I come from. These are my roots, and I don't really want to change that."
Former New Mexico sheriff, Laguna police chief ID’d in machine gun conspiracy case - Andrew Beale, Source New Mexico
Former Bernalillo County Sheriff Manny Gonzales and former Pueblo of Laguna Police Chief Rudy Mora are being accused by federal authorities of participating in an illegal weapons scheme, according to a recently unsealed federal indictment from Maryland. The two have not been charged with crimes, but prosecutors say they signed false documents to help gun dealers illegally obtain machine guns.
According to the indictment, Gonzales and Mora, who was Gonzales’ undersheriff before becoming chief of Laguna police, signed documents indicating the machine guns would be used for law enforcement demonstrations but they “had no expectation or understanding that such weapons would ever be demonstrated to their respective law enforcement agencies.”
The New Mexico law enforcement officials are referred to only by their initials in charging documents for five others, but details and dates of Gonzales and Mora’s positions indicate who they are.
An Albuquerque gun store owner, James Tafoya, is charged in connection with the scheme, along with a North Carolina police chief, a North Dakota police chief, a Florida gun dealer and a North Carolina YouTuber. The YouTuber, Larry Allen Vickers, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and violating sanctions on Russia. He faces up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $1,250,000.
FAKE ‘LAW LETTERS’
The charges revolve around so-called “law letters,” or documents submitted by government officials to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives requesting a firearms dealer be given special permission to purchase restricted weapons including machine guns and short-barrelled rifles.
Federal prosecutors say Vickers, Tafoya and Florida gun dealer and Department of Homeland Security Intelligence Analyst Sean Sullivan solicited and obtained fraudulent law letters claiming they were buying guns to demonstrate to police departments for possible purchase, when in fact the guns were destined for resale and personal use.
Vickers was also charged with, and pleaded guilty to, violating sanctions against Russian arms manufacturer JSC Kalashnikov Concern.
According to federal prosecutors, Gonzales signed a law letter requesting authorization for Tafoya’s gun store in southwest Albuquerque, Woody’s Weapons, to purchase a French-manufactured FAMAS machine gun to demonstrate its use to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office. Mora allegedly signed law letters requesting the demonstration of multiple Glock 18 machine guns to Laguna police.
The indictment says BCSO began phasing out the use of fully automatic weapons in 2013, years before the letters were written.
The indictment estimates Gonzales submitted around 127 law letters to Tafoya and Woody’s Weapons, requesting the demonstration of 598 firearms, seven of which were imported by Sullivan. It also estimates Mora submitted 17 law letters to Tafoya and Woody’s Weapons for 414 guns, and 13 were imported by Sullivan. It is unclear how many of the guns referred to in the letters were related to the indictment.
The two police chiefs charged in the indictment — Police Chief Matthew Hall in Coats, North Carolina and Police Chief James Sawyer in Ray, North Dakota — each requested far fewer firearms in their law letters, though Sullivan imported a higher number of weapons for each of them than for Gonzales or Mora.
Gonzales, a Democrat, served as Bernalillo County Sheriff from 2014 to 2022. In 2021, he ran a controversial tough-on-crime campaign for Albuquerque mayor, attacking sitting Mayor Tim Keller from the right and accusing him of insufficiently supporting police. During the height of the protests in 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd, he met with then-president Donald Trump to announce the deployment of federal officers to Albuquerque.
Gonzales’ mayoral campaign often drew protesters, including one who flew a drone with a sex toy attached over a stage where Gonzales was speaking, sparking the then-sheriff to falsely accuse Keller of coordinating the stunt.
Mora was the police chief for the Pueblo of Laguna, a federally recognized pueblo with a population of about 3,600 west of Albuquerque, from 2019 to 2021.
Gonzales and Mora did not respond to requests for comment. Source NM contacted Tafoya’s lawyers and the Pueblo of Laguna police department, none of whom offered comment for this article. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland said the office cannot confirm or deny whether there are any active investigations related to the case.
In a statement provided by BCSO spokesperson Jayme Fuller-Gonzales, the department said Sheriff John Allen is cooperating with federal authorities and the New Mexico Attorney General’s office on an investigation into the case.
MORE THAN A DOZEN MACHINE GUNS
Sullivan, Vickers and Tafoya were charged with illegally importing more than a dozen restricted machine guns and short-barrelled rifles, and making false statements in federal records.
The trio along with Hall and Sawyer are charged with conspiracy, and Sullivan is additionally charged with unlawful possession of four machine guns and conducting transactions with criminal proceeds, for allegedly transferring more than $128,000 between accounts in relation to the illegal firearm sales.
Prosecutors included text messages between the five defendants and other unnamed participants, including gun dealer “J.B.” in Houston, Texas, and firearms collector “C.F.” in Phoenix, Arizona. In the text messages, Sullivan, Vickers and “J.B.” discuss obtaining law letters with Hall, Sawyer and Tafoya, who promise to get them the letters.
The indictment also contains screenshots from online gun dealerships, where prosecutors say some of the firearms ended up. According to the indictment, the five defendants used “fraud and materially false statements and representations” to acquire the firearms and intended to resell the guns for profit or “to keep them for their own use and enjoyment.”
A controversial public-health order signed by New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham last month directed the state Regulation and Licensing Department to inspect gun stores to ensure they’re complying with state laws, though less than 10% of registered firearms dealers have been inspected so far.
Austin Fisher contributed reporting to this story.
Questions in the air about potential education transitions at Santo Domingo and Cochiti Pueblos - Megan Gleason, Source New Mexico
As students, parents, teachers and other tribal members at Santo Domingo and Cochiti Pueblos question whether or not their children will have a school to go to at the Pueblos next year, a Bernalillo Public Schools board member said officials haven’t decided to change anything — yet.
With a goal to improve education on tribal land, the school board could still push for a change in the future.
John Gurule is a Bernalillo Public Schools board member representing Santo Domingo Pueblo and Peña Blanca. He said the education, like the variety of courses offered, at the Santo Domingo and Cochiti schools isn’t equitable.
Considering the need to address educational deficiencies the 2019 Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit found, Gurule said these inequities need to be addressed. So the district is open to options on how to better the education system, he said, and nothing is off the table.
Then rumors started spreading that the Santo Domingo and Cochiti Pueblo middle schools would be shutting down next year.
Gurule said a school district employee wrongly told the Cochiti Pueblo governor’s office and tribal leadership the middle school was going to be shut down next year.
Parents and other tribal members have been posting on social media about an expected closure of the Cochiti school and the Santo Domingo school for middle school students. They’ve expressed concern the school district made a decision to send their children elsewhere so suddenly without any outreach.
But the district hasn’t made any decisions, Gurule said. He said the district only told local officials that education is a problem, but didn’t clarify that the schools wouldn’t be shut down and people wouldn’t be losing their jobs.
“It may mean that we have to look at options,” he said.
He said people started catastrophizing and rumors started flying. Everyone knows each other, he said, and news travels fast.
He said the school district clarified what’s going on with tribal officials but information didn’t make it down to teachers and parents. The governor’s offices at Cochiti and Santo Domingo Pueblos never responded to interview requests from Source NM.
“We failed to communicate at all levels,” Gurule said.
Gary Tenorio, Sr. is a retired tribal administrator. Tenorio, Sr. (Kewa) has grandkids going to schools at both Santo Domingo and Cochiti Pueblos. He’s worried about what the school district wants to change, potentially sending students off tribal land to go to middle school somewhere like the Village of Bernalillo.
He’s still skeptical this isn’t set in stone for next year already. He said the school board operates in a very political manner.
“If you don’t make people aware of it, they’re going to go ahead and do it anyway,” he said.
What would happen if schools close or merge
Gurule said shutting down the middle schools could still be an option for the future, or Santo Domingo and Cochiti middle schools could be combined. It’s all still up in the air, he said.
If the schools merged, Gurule said the district would have to find funding to fit all students into one facility.
He said a need for more funding overall is a significant issue contributing to the educational deficiencies.
“One of the charges that we’re trying to navigate is how best to address inequity within the limitations of so many formulaic calculations,” he said.
If the district decided to shut down or combine the schools after all, Gurule said the teachers would follow the students. So if students end up attending middle school in Bernalillo, the teachers would have jobs there as well, though Gurule said they could be teaching different subjects.
That would ensure classrooms aren’t overcrowded and tribal members still have Native teachers, he said.
That’s if teachers commit to those jobs, which could mean a longer commute. Tenorio, Sr. said he’s worried the educators will choose to leave with what’s happening at the Santo Domingo schools.
He said he wants to see teachers incentivized to stay on the Pueblo.
“We’ve already lost a lot of good teachers,” he said.
Tenorio, Sr. said he’s also worried about students being forced to leave tribal land to learn.
“We do want to have our kids transitioning into the real world, but at the same time, at their pace,” he said. “We don’t want something to give them cultural shock.”
Transportation is still an unsolved issue. Gurule said there are not enough bus drivers, and that’s “outside of our control.”
It could be difficult for families to afford or find the time for a longer commute on their own.
“When you have a six-person household that shares two cars and three people have to get to work and you can’t afford fuel, your options are: put your kid on the public school bus and they get what they get; don’t throw a fit. Or you make sacrifices that really are not reasonable,” Gurule said.
TRYING IT OUT LAST YEAR
The school district tried out a pilot program with Santo Domingo Pueblo last year where parents could enroll their children in any school in the district, Gurule said, and the district paid for transportation. He said 52 families signed up to send their kids to schools outside the Pueblo.
Another worry is the additional hours a long bus drive would add to students’ days. It’s something lawmakers, specifically those representing rural and tribal communities, have voiced concern for in the past.
Gurule said the current school schedule, with its early start times, doesn’t align with child development. Tenorio, Sr. said he’s concerned about the early start times too.
“It’s already a hardship,” Tenorio, Sr. said.
Gurule said he’d like to see a later start date if kids are traveling to Bernalillo for school.
COMMUNITY INPUT
Gurule said the community should have a say in what could change. Officials are aiming to address misinformation and show parents how the school system works at upcoming community meetings, he said.
Not everyone will be happy with whatever decision officials decide to make, Gurule said, whether it’s leaving things alone, combining the Pueblo schools or shutting them down.
“My personal opinion is that the current model of delivery of education up there is not achieving equitability. So it cannot continue,” he said. “What that looks like, though, I don’t think that’s for me to decide.”
He said the community needs to think about what the definition of equitable education means, even if it’s uncomfortable. Some people haven’t had options, like which school to send your kid to, due to systemic racism, he said.
“We’re asking questions that generationally, folks maybe haven’t sat with,” he said.
He said he’s not even sure who has the power to authorize major changes like the ones on the table and hasn’t yet talked to attorneys about it. The school board is limited to overseeing the superintendent and other specific tasks, like day-to-day school operations, he said.
He’d like a decision on how to address the education deficiencies to be made before the next school year starts, he said, even if it wouldn’t immediately go into effect. He doesn’t want officials to delay addressing educational issues, he said.
“My son is only in first grade one time, and that is not his responsibility to wait for the adults to solve adult problems,” Gurule said.
Game Commission adopts rule setting new limits on how many bears and counters can be killed by hunters - Hannah Grover, New Mexico Political Report
The New Mexico Game Commission unanimously approved new limits on how many bears and cougars can be killed by hunters during a meeting Friday in Farmington.
During the public comment period leading up to the vote, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish received more than 2,800 comments regarding bear and cougar hunting. Of those, approximately 1,700 supported the limits in the new rule and another approximately 1,000 people opposed them. Most comments came in the form of nonspecific form letters that advocacy groups ask members to sign.
Wildlife advocacy groups say that the limits in the new rule are too high, placing New Mexico’s native carnivores at risk.
This is particularly the case for cougars, advocates say. For the most part, the cap on the numbers of cougars that hunters can kill will remain similar to previous years. But the advocates say those numbers are based on population estimates that are higher than the actual number of cougars.
The advocates also argued that the limits do not take into account bears and cougars dying of other causes such as being hit by vehicles or killed by poachers or even dying of natural causes.
New Mexico Department of Game and Fish Wildlife Management Division Chief Stewart Liley attempted to address those concerns in his presentation to the commission on Friday.
Bears and cougars are managed in zones and each zone has its own cap on how many bears and courses hunters can kill. The commission further limits the numbers of females that can be killed.
It is illegal to kill a female bear with cubs or a female cougar with spotted kittens.
In terms of bears, the new rule approved this week that will go into effect in April, limits the number of bears that can be killed to 8 percent to 12 percent of the estimated population in each bear management zone. Zones near urban areas such as the Sandia Mountains tend to have limits of 8 percent to take into account the number of bears killed by vehicles on roads, Liley said.
The total number of animals killed is usually much lower than the maximum the agency allows hunters to kill.
For example, in recent years, up to 804 bears could be killed annually by hunters. The actual number killed each year averaged 525 bears.
When it comes to cougars, the methods for estimating populations have changed in recent years. But the department has only been able to apply those new methods to a couple of cougar management zones. That resulted in decreases in the number of courses that can be killed in those zones. Advocates say that is evidence that the actual population of cougars is much lower than population estimates in 16 management zones.
Kenneth Logan spent 40 years studying courses as a wildlife biologist. He asked the commission if the goal is to reduce the number of cougars. Logan said the 17 percent to 24 percent of the estimated population of cougars in a management zone will lead to decreases and recommended a lower limit of 14 percent in areas where the objective is not to decrease populations.
Meanwhile groups like the Rio Grande Chapter of the Sierra Club and Animal Protection New Mexico called for cutting the cap on the number of bears or cougars that can be killed in half.
Many opponents say that the killing of carnivores is unnecessary and that the hunting of predators have artificially suppressed the number of bears and cougars that would naturally occur.
“Bears and cougars are native to New Mexico,” Charles Fox said during public comment. “They belong on this landscape in ecologically significant numbers and they do not deserve to be killed for human entertainment. Uncertainties in the state’s bear and cougar population estimates make this a risky proposal.”
He called the department’s population estimates guesswork and said that “it is time for New Mexico to get out of the trophy hunting business.”
The vast majority of Americans oppose trophy hunting but Jesse Deubel, executive director of New Mexico Wildlife Federation, said that most of the bear and cougar hunting in New Mexico is not done solely for a trophy, or decoration to put on their wall.
The New Mexico Wildlife Federation is an advocacy group that represents the interests of hunters in the state.
Deubel describes himself as an “amateur wild game chef” and said he uses mountain lion, or cougar meat, in foods like posole instead of pork.
“Bear meat and cougar meat is one of the highest quality, wild sustainable proteins available anywhere,” he said.
He said he opposes trophy hunting in which the meat is not harvested and has, in the past, attempted to change state statutes to require hunters to remove usable meat from bears, cougars and javelinas that are killed.
Deubel said that the majority of hunters in New Mexico who get permits to kill cougars or bears harvest the meat and use it or donate it.
The wildlife federation supports the bear and cougar rule that the commission adopted on Friday, though Deubel said he appreciates that not everyone supports killing native carnivores.
“It shows me that those individuals commenting very much care about the lives of bears and cougars in New Mexico,” he said, adding that he shares that sentiment and enjoys photographing and observing bears and cougars.
But hunting of bears and cougars can also lead to increased conflict between the predators and humans, including livestock predation, Nina Eydelman with Animal Protection New Mexico said. She said hunters often target larger, more established individuals. That leaves those territories open for younger animals that are more likely to cause conflict.
“There’s many studies showing that the hunting…of cougars is not something that is going to reduce conflict with humans because it kills random cougars,” she said. “Just plain indiscriminately reducing cougar populations in an area is not going to reduce conflict with humans.”
Eydelman said it is better to target individual animals that are known to create conflict and she said nonlethal methods can be used.
The killing of random cougars, she said, “disrupts the social structure of the cougars in that area and creates more social chaos.”
Most New Mexico families with infants exposed to drugs skip subsidized treatment, study says - By Morgan Lee Associated Press
Most New Mexico families with infants exposed to illicit drugs, marijuana and alcohol in the womb have been forgoing subsidized addiction treatment and other voluntary support services since the state's shift in 2020 that halted automatic referrals to protective services, a new study indicated on Friday.
The Legislature's budget and accountability office told a panel of lawmakers that New Mexico's revamped response to substance-exposed newborns — changes implemented in response to federal drug-abuse legislation — succeeded in keeping more parents together with their children, to avoid trauma associated with separation.
At the same time, evaluators said the approach does not fulfill its purpose of keeping newborns safe and directing families to treatment, as parents miss or decline services ranging from mental health counseling to home visits by nurses aimed at improving the health and development of infants. The study notes that drug and alcohol use by parents is a major risk factor in neglect and abuse of children.
"The vast majority of (these) families are not receiving support services or substance-use treatment," said Ryan Tolman, a program evaluator with the Legislature's budget and accountability office.
He said rates of newborns with substance-withdrawal symptoms in New Mexico have climbed to more than twice the national average. And yet only one-in-seven local families with substance-exposed newborns accepts referrals to addiction treatment, the study found.
Home visiting services for infants reaches about 50 families out of about 1,300 each year that receive state-mandated plans of care for substance-exposed newborns.
Even when families do accept services, the study cited obstacles to monitoring and tracking long-term participation — which is not required by law. Other states including Arizona require child protective services to monitor progress and participation when referrals are made for substance-exposed infants. Illinois has extensive requirements for meetings between caseworkers and parents.
The new findings arrive amid an overhaul of the state's foster care and child welfare agency. New Mexico's repeat rate of reported child abuse cases is among the worst in the country, amid chronic workforce shortages in the child welfare system.
The new approach to substance-exposed newborns was enacted by New Mexico lawmakers in 2019 at the outset of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's first term in office, requiring that hospitals and birthing centers develop a plan of care for infants exposed to drugs and alcohol before birth, in coordination with medical providers, insurers and state agencies.
The administration of Gov. Michelle Lujan defended its oversight of the program in a written response to the new study, saying it has "improved outcomes for hundreds of infants and families," and that infant mortality rates under the program are similar to the general population.
Still, the administration wants to hire 20 new professional "navigators" to help families with substance-exposed newborns access services, said Teresa Casados, secretary of the Children, Youth, and Families Department that leads oversight.
"That's really my hope, is that we can get navigators out into the communities that are more engaged with families," Casados said.
Leslie Hayes, a physician in Española who frequently treats opioid addiction among pregnant women with regimens including anti-craving medication, said many new parents hesitate to accept home visits from nurses — in part out of embarrassment about ordinary household messiness.
She said it's crucial to devote resources not only to babies but also to the well-being of their parents.
"I find with pregnant women in general and especially with postpartum women with substance-use disorders, they get so focused on the baby that they forget to take care of themselves," said Hayes, who works for El Centro Family Health at its Rio Arriba Health Commons. "Some of them end up relapsing and dying."
How extreme weather in the US may have affected the pumpkins you picked this year for Halloween - By Melina Walling And Brittany Peterson Associated Press
Alan Mazzotti can see the Rocky Mountains about 30 miles west of his pumpkin patch in northeast Colorado on a clear day. He could tell the snow was abundant last winter, and verified it up close when he floated through fresh powder alongside his wife and three sons at the popular Winter Park Resort.
But one season of above-average snowfall wasn't enough to refill the dwindling reservoir he relies on to irrigate his pumpkins. He received news this spring that his water delivery would be about half of what it was from the previous season, so he planted just half of his typical pumpkin crop. Then heavy rains in May and June brought plenty of water and turned fields into a muddy mess, preventing any additional planting many farmers might have wanted to do.
"By time it started raining and the rain started to affect our reservoir supplies and everything else, it was just too late for this year," Mazzotti said.
For some pumpkin growers in states like Texas, New Mexico and Colorado, this year's pumpkin crop was a reminder of the water challenges hitting agriculture across the Southwest and West as human-caused climate change exacerbates drought and heat extremes. Some farmers lost 20% or more of their predicted yields; others, like Mazzotti, left some land bare. Labor costs and inflation are also narrowing margins, hitting farmers' ability to profit off what they sell to garden centers and pumpkin patches.
This year's thirsty gourds are a symbol of the reality that farmers who rely on irrigation must continue to face season after season: they have to make choices, based on water allotments and the cost of electricity to pump it out of the ground, about which acres to plant and which crops they can gamble on to make it through hotter and drier summers.
Pumpkins can survive hot, dry weather to an extent, but this summer's heat, which broke world records and brought temperatures well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) to agricultural fields across the country, was just too much, said Mark Carroll, a Texas A&M extension agent for Floyd County, which he calls the "pumpkin capital" of the state.
"It's one of the worst years we've had in several years," Carroll said. Not only did the hot, dry weather surpass what irrigation could make up for, but pumpkins also need cooler weather to be harvested or they'll start to decompose during the shipping process, sometimes disintegrating before they even arrive at stores.
America's pumpkin powerhouse, Illinois, had a successful harvest on par with the last two years, according to the Illinois Farm Bureau. But this year it was so hot into the harvest season in Texas that farmers had to decide whether to risk cutting pumpkins off the vines at the usual time or wait and miss the start of the fall pumpkin rush. Adding to the problem, irrigation costs more as groundwater levels continue to drop — driving some farmers' energy bills to pump water into the thousands of dollars every month.
Lindsey Pyle, who farms 950 acres of pumpkins in North Texas about an hour outside Lubbock, has seen her energy bills go up too, alongside the cost of just about everything else, from supplies and chemicals to seed and fuel. She lost about 20% of her yield. She added that pumpkins can be hard to predict earlier in the growing season because the vines might look lush and green, but not bloom and produce fruit if they aren't getting enough water.
Steven Ness, who grows pinto beans and pumpkins in central New Mexico, said the rising cost of irrigation as groundwater dwindles is an issue across the board for farmers in the region. That can inform what farmers choose to grow, because if corn and pumpkins use about the same amount of water, they might get more money per acre for selling pumpkins, a more lucrative crop.
But at the end of the day, "our real problem is groundwater, ... the lack of deep moisture and the lack of water in the aquifer," Ness said. That's a problem that likely won't go away because aquifers can take hundreds or thousands of years to refill after overuse, and climate change is reducing the very rain and snow needed to recharge them in the arid West.
Jill Graves, who added a pumpkin patch to her blueberry farm about an hour east of Dallas about three years ago, said they had to give up on growing their own pumpkins this year and source them from a wholesaler. Graves said the pumpkins she bought rotted more quickly than in past years, but it was better than what little they grew themselves.
Still, she thinks they'll try again next year. "They worked perfect the first two years," she said. "We didn't have any problems."
Mazzotti, for his part, says that with not enough water, you "might as well not farm" — but even so, he sees labor as the bigger issue. Farmers in Colorado have been dealing with water cutbacks for a long time, and they're used to it. However, pumpkins can't be harvested by machine like corn can, so they require lots of people to determine they're ripe, cut them off the vines and prepare them for shipping.
He hires guest workers through the H-2A program, but Colorado recently instituted a law ensuring farmworkers to be paid overtime — something most states don't require. That makes it tough to maintain competitive prices with places where laborers are paid less, and the increasing costs of irrigation and supplies stack onto that, creating what Mazzotti calls a "no-win situation."
He'll keep farming pumpkins for a bit longer, but "there's no future after me," he said. "My boys won't farm."