Legal Group Backs US Review Of Indigenous Boarding Schools By Susan Montoya Bryan - Associated Press
The American Bar Association's policymaking body has voted in favor of a resolution supporting the U.S. Interior Department as it works to uncover the troubled legacy of federal boarding schools that sought to assimilate Indigenous youth into white society.
The resolution, adopted Monday by delegates at the bar association's annual meeting, calls for the Biden administration and Congress to fully fund the initiative and provide subpoena power to the Interior Department as it gathers and reviews reams of records related to the schools.
The measure also supports legislation that would create a federal commission to investigate and document all aspects of the boarding school system in the U.S., including issuing reports regarding the root causes of human rights abuses at the schools and to make recommendations to prevent future atrocities.
"Putting a light on what is occurring here is so critical because we know that if we do not learn from this history, we are doomed to repeat it," Mark Schickman, a San Francisco-based attorney who serves as a special adviser with the bar association, said as he introduced the resolution.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico and the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency, announced the boarding school initiative following news that hundreds of bodies were being discovered on the grounds of former residential schools for Indigenous children in Canada.
Experts say the initiative will be difficult because records are scattered across jurisdictions — from the bowels of university archives to government offices, churches, museums and personal collections.
"The department is compiling decades of files and records to begin a proper review that will allow us to organize documents, identify available and missing information, and ensure that our records system is standardized," said Melissa Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department.
The agency also is building a framework for how it will partner with outside organizations to guide the next steps of the review.
Consultations with tribes are expected to begin in late fall. Schwartz said those discussions will be focused on ways to protect and share sensitive information and how to protect gravesites and sacred burial traditions.
In the United States, the Indian Civilization Act of 1819 and other laws and policies were enacted to establish and support Native American boarding schools nationwide. For over 150 years, Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools that focused on assimilation.
The discoveries in Canada and the renewed spotlight in the U.S. have stirred strong emotions among tribal communities, including grief, anger, reflection and a deep desire for healing.
Patricia Lee Refo, president of the American Bar Association, said the resolution adopted Monday was born from her visit to the Navajo Nation in July. She met with tribal President Jonathan Nez, the speaker of the tribal council and the all-female Navajo Nation Supreme Court.
Nez has said the troubling history of Indigenous boarding schools deserves more attention to educate people about the atrocities experienced by Native Americans and the intergenerational effects of the boarding school experience.
The Native American Bar Association last year adopted a resolution calling on Congress to introduce legislation focused on reparations for the treatment of American Indians and Alaska Natives.
The resolution adopted Monday by the American Bar Association includes language in support of legislation that would establish the first formal commission in U.S. history to investigate, document and acknowledge past injustices of the federal government's cultural genocide and assimilation practices through its boarding school policy.
Brad Regehr, a member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in Saskatchewan and the first Indigenous person to serve as president of the Canadian Bar Association, spoke Monday at the American Bar Association meeting. Choking up, he said he and his grandfather were survivors of Canada's residential school program.
Between the 1880s and 1990s, he said 150,000 Indigenous children in his country were forcibly removed from their families and placed in schools far from home. As many as 25,000 children, including toddlers, never returned, he said.
Regehr talked about the calls to action crafted following nearly a decade of work by Canada's truth and reconciliation commission and the ongoing discoveries of children's remains.
"That has hit me hard, and it hits and it continues to hit many Indigenous people hard," he said, "but it's also hit many Canadians hard for the first time ever."
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This story has been corrected to show that the president of the American Bar Association visited the Navajo Nation in July, not June.
New Mexico Hospital Officials Push For More Vaccinations By Susan Montoya Bryan -- Associated Press
Top officials with New Mexico's largest hospitals made another plea Tuesday for more people to get vaccinated, saying they want to avoid the staffing and bed shortages that hospitals in other states are seeing as COVID-19 cases rise nationwide.
Officials with University of New Mexico Hospital, Lovelace Health System and Presbyterian Healthcare Services said during a briefing with reporters that they have been busy this summer with patients needing care for other illnesses and medical needs that had been put off over the last year. They are worried that if the latest surge worsens, resources could be be stretched thin again.
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 infections currently are about one-quarter of what they were last winter. The latest data available from the state Health Department shows close to 100 people were admitted over a seven-day period as of Aug. 2.
The data also shows that people 35 and older accounted for most of the hospitalizations and that Hispanics and Native Americans were among those more likely to be hospitalized.
Hospital officials said that while most patients admitted for COVID-19 are unvaccinated, they noted that about 7% had been fully vaccinated. They also said the demographics of those who are becoming ill is changing because most older people have been inoculated.
"We're seeing people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. We're seeing people who do not have chronic underlying immuno-compromising diseases," said Dr. Vesta Sandoval, the chief medical director at Lovelace. "They're people who are relatively healthy who are not vaccinated who have been exposed and then are developing severe disease."
At University of New Mexico Hospital, Chief Quality and Safety Officer Dr. Rohini McKee said there have been only a handful of vaccinated patients who have required hospitalization for COVID-19.
"No vaccine is 100% effective. We know that from all the vaccines that we have been used to all these years, and this is no different," she said. "But it does keep you out of the hospital and it keeps you alive and we have overwhelming evidence to prove that."
In all, the state has recorded nearly 2,100 breakthrough infections — or about 334 cases per 100,000 fully vaccinated people — from February through Aug. 2.
About 65% of residents 18 and older and more than 40% of those 12 to 17 have been fully vaccinated, according to the state health department.
Dr. Karissa Culbreath, the medical director of infectious disease at TriCore Reference Laboratories, said her company is seeing increasing positivity rates and that testing is still important regardless of vaccination status.
"It could be possible to transmit the virus to those among us that may not yet be vaccinated either because they're not eligible based on their age or they just haven't made the decision yet," she said.
The doctors also stressed the importance of hand washing, social distancing and wearing masks as a hedge against COVID-19 and other illnesses such as influenza.
Retired Court Justice To Take Reins Of Child Welfare Agency
By Morgan Lee and Cedar Attanasio - Associated Press / Report for America
The head of the state's foster care and child welfare system was replaced Tuesday as New Mexico grapples with the effects student isolation during the pandemic and wages a longstanding struggle to improve childhood wellbeing.
Recently retired Supreme Court Justice Barbara J. Vigil will take the reins of the Children, Youth and Families Department on Oct. 1, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced at a Tuesday news conference.
Vigil previously worked on issues of juvenile justice and recidivism with the Republican administration of former Gov. Susana Martinez, leading a multi-agency review in 2017 that called for more services that prevent young people with infractions from reverting to crime.
Lujan Grisham highlighted Vigil's roots in the community as a native of New Mexico and lengthy career in public service, including a decadelong stint in the state Children's Court division.
Vigil briefly recalled her own personal encounter with family disruption as a 12-year-old, when the death of her mother marked a sudden transition from life in a home with five siblings to Catholic boarding school.
"That understanding will enable me to come to the table with a perspective of service and understanding that the decisions that we make in government about children and how we protect them and ensure that they're safe is made with the utmost transparency and with the utmost commitment to their well-being," Vigil said.
She'll take over an agency with more than 1,000 full-time employees and an annual general fund budget of $170 million, where challenges abound.
New Mexico this year ranked 49th among states in broad measures of child wellbeing from the Annie E. Casey Foundation that measures childhood access to education, health care, economic resources and social stability at home. The pandemic upended access to classrooms and community services for children.
The new appointment marks the departure of agency Secretary Brian Blalock, a former San Francisco Bay Area lawyer and child welfare advocate who is expected to return to California to support his wife's career.
Blalock, appointed at the outset of the Lujan Grisham administration in 2019, helped vastly reduce a backlog of investigations into child abuse and neglect reports as the agency also expanded its employment of front-line workers at its protective services division.
The state also has increased services for infants and expanded "kinship care" that places neglected or abandoned children with extended family or close family friends, according to an agency progress report.
Blalock's tenure was marred by concerns about the agency's use of an auto-deleting messaging app.
Two former officials with the Children, Youth and Families Department have sued the state under whistleblower protection laws after raising concerns that automatically deleted messages ran afoul of state record retention laws. The agency has shifted to new software.
Vigil said the agency must strike a balance with public disclosures and safeguarding the privacy and welfare of children.
"We also must be open and responsible to the public with respect to how we investigate and the processes that we follow to make sure that we are caring for the public's trust," Vigil said.
Other key Cabinet positions are in transition, as Lujan Grisham runs for reelection in 2022.
The state is still looking for new permanent secretaries to lead the departments of Health and Workforce Solutions. Last month, the education secretary was replaced and a new head of public safety was named.
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Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.
New Mexico Customers Sound Alarm Over Major Utility Merger - By Susan Montoya Bryan Associated Press
New Mexico customers are sounding the alarm over a proposed multibillion-dollar merger of the state's largest electric utility provider with a U.S. subsidiary of Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, citing a sordid track record of reliability and customer service.
They voiced their concerns during a virtual hearing Monday as state regulators prepare to hear from attorneys and experts representing Public Service Co. of New Mexico, Connecticut-based Avangrid and other groups that have intervened in a case that has the potential to change the way electricity is generated and distributed in the state.
The companies have been running television, radio and newspaper ads in an effort to win more support.
Some politicians, environmental groups and labor union bosses have signed on, but others say regulators need to consider Avangrid and Iberdrola's histories when it comes to providing reliable service in other states and parts of Latin America where they operate.
Critics also pointed to Avangrid's efforts to rollback provisions of a rooftop solar program in Maine.
"We feel past performance is a better indicator of future performance than ads and promises," said Paul Gibson, co-founder of the statewide advocacy group Retake Our Democracy.
Gibson and others listed poor rankings for Avangrid's utility in Maine and noted that the company has been hit with millions of dollars in penalties and regulatory enforcement actions.
Even a member of Maine's legislature has warned New Mexico regulators about approving the merger.
Spanish officials also announced in June that Iberdrola executives would be investigated over alleged bribery, breach of privacy and fraud. The company has maintained that the executives did nothing wrong.
A hearing examiner for the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission had blasted Avangrid and Iberdrola earlier this year for failing to disclose information about the problems elsewhere.
Avangrid has dismissed the criticisms, saying PNM will remain a New Mexico-based utility with "strong ties and responsiveness to the communities and people it serves."
Supporters, including statewide business groups, say Avangrid and Iberdrola could drive more renewable energy development in the state.
Experts have suggested that New Mexico could serve as a platform for producing power that could be exported to larger markets, but critics worry the state's customers would be reduced to a secondary consideration for Avangrid and Iberdrola as they look to expand their renewable energy holdings.
When asked how it would work to ensure that New Mexico customers are protected, Attorney General Hector Balderas' office said in a statement Monday that it "will enforce the law and demand improved customer service." Balderas, a Democrat, has come under fire for his connections to one of the New Mexico-based attorneys hired by Iberdrola and for dropping his opposition to the deal.
Balderas has argued that recent concessions by the companies will result in more economic benefits for Indigenous communities and workers. On Monday, he said the state can't afford to miss "a historic opportunity to modernize our energy infrastructure for both production and distribution."
Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has voiced her support, saying the merger would help New Mexico meet its mandate for having carbon-free electricity generation in the next two decades.
Nora Meyers Sackett, the governor's spokeswoman, said in an email Monday that anything that contributes to generating renewable energy to combat climate change and establishing meaningful economic opportunities in affected communities is welcome.
However, she added that anything that would harm New Mexicans now or in the future or result in residents being anything less than a first priority would be problematic.
"The governor's expectation is that the PRC, as an independent body, will rigorously and thoroughly vet the proposal as to the prospective benefits and/or drawbacks New Mexicans could expect," she said. "Like all interested New Mexicans, she will continue to follow the course of the application as well as constructive professional and public feedback."
The hearing will wrap up later this month, but it could be early fall before regulators make a final decision.
Navajo Nation Reports 6 COVID Deaths; 1st Deaths In 9 Days - Associated Press
The Navajo Nation on Monday reported 15 new COVID-19 cases and six additional deaths.
It marked the first time in nine days that the tribe reported any coronavirus-related deaths.
The latest numbers pushed the Navajo Nation's pandemic totals to 31,650 cases and 1,383 known deaths.
Based on cases from July 23 to Aug. 5, the Navajo Department of Health issued a health advisory notice for 19 communities due to uncontrolled spread of COVID-19.
"Our health care experts recently reported that the majority of the Navajo Nation's positive cases that were sequenced in the month of July were found to be the delta variant," tribal President Jonathan Nez said in a statement Monday. "Just as the rest of the country, we are seeing higher numbers of the delta variant in our communities."
The Navajo Nation reservation is the country's largest at 27,000 square miles and it covers parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
Northern New Mexico Plagued By Smoky Air Due To Wildfire – Associated Press
Residents in northern New Mexico are waking up Monday morning to smoky air mostly due to wildfires in California.
An air quality alert from Albuquerque environmental regulators deeming the air's current state as unhealthy remains in effect until noon.
While particulate levels are expected to decline later in the day, the ozone levels could rise.
The City of Albuquerque Environmental Health Department advises that people avoid vigorous physical activity outside and stay indoors as much as possible.
Jeff Stonesifer, who oversees air pollution programming for Albuquerque, told KOAT-TV that this is the worst smoke he's seen since the Wallow Fire a decade ago.
He says there's been no rain or thunderstorms to disrupt the path of particulates from the wildfire so they can linger.
Officials say they may extend the alert.
Prosecutors Offer Plea Deal To Cowboys For Trump Founder – Associated Press
Federal prosecutors have offered a confidential plea agreement to Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin that might resolve misdemeanor criminal charges against him linked to the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol, according to discussions at a Monday court hearing in Washington.
The county commissioner from New Mexico still denies federal charges that he knowingly entering barricaded areas of the Capitol grounds with the intent of disrupting government as Congress considered the 2020 Electoral College results.
Griffin reached an outside terrace of the Capitol without entering the building and used a bullhorn to try to lead a tumultuous crowd in prayer. He was arrested after his return to Washington to oppose President Joe Biden's inauguration.
Griffin's case inched toward trial in U.S. District Court in Washington as federal prosecutors have introduced vast troves of evidence about the Capitol siege from security cameras, police lapel recordings and social media posts.
The charges against Griffin carry a maximum prison sentence of one year and implications for Griffin's future in public office.
As a first-term commissioner in southern New Mexico's Otero County, Griffin faces a petition drive to recall him from office with a special election and a probe by state prosecutors of allegations that Griffin used his public office in coordination with Cowboys for Trump for personal financial gain.
Griffin forged a group of rodeo acquaintances in 2019 into the promotional group called Cowboys for Trump that staged horseback parades to spread President Donald Trump's conservative message about gun rights, immigration controls and abortion restrictions.
Universities Lead Vaccine Push For Young New Mexicans – Associated Press
Universities and colleges across New Mexico appear to be getting COVID-19 shots to young people at higher rates than the general public.
With and without vaccine mandates, leaders of colleges and universities say they’re on track to increasing vaccination rates on the state's campuses to levels far higher than their surrounding communities.
The state’s largest public universities announced vaccine mandates last week, requiring virtually all students and staff to be vaccinated by the end of September, a few weeks into the fall semester.
The University of New Mexico system, the state's largest, said it’s already vaccinated 48% of students, higher than the state average for the 18-24 age group, which is 42%.
People traveling to campus who opt out through medical or religious exemptions must undergo regular COVID-19 testing.
In the state’s rural, conservative southeast, one Christian college says it’s having success vaccinating students without a mandate.
“I suspect we’ll probably be 80% to 90% vaccinated by the time the term starts,” said University of the Southwest Dean Ryan Tipton.
That’s an ambitious goal in Lea County, where the college is located and where the adult vaccination rate stands at 43%.
About half of the campus’ approximately 375 students were vaccinated by the end of the spring term, after being driven to clinics in groups of 20, Tipton said.
He said athletes were the first to line up for vaccines because of the perk of competing without wearing masks. Students who share dorm rooms are also required to be vaccinated, meaning they must do so if they do not want to pay for more expensive single dorm rooms.
Many incoming freshmen are reporting that they have already been vaccinated, Tipton said.
Larger universities are turning to mandates, as they try to vaccinate students by the thousands.
“We are about to put 20,000 people in a blender and some of them are not going to be vaccinated without this policy,” University of New Mexico regent William Payne recently said. He joined a unanimous vote by the university system's board of regents approving vaccination mandate.
New Mexico State University, centered in Las Cruces, followed suit.
St. Johns College, a small private college in Santa Fe, will also require all returning students to be vaccinated, with exceptions for specific health conditions and sincerely held religious beliefs, said a college spokesperson, Mike O’Connor.
Highlands University, in Las Vegas, New Mexico has not yet announced a plan. Officials at the New Mexico Institute of Mining & Technology met to discuss COVID-19 measures Monday.
New Mexico Congresswoman Renews Request For Border Help – Las Cruces Sun-News, Associated Press
U.S. Rep. Yvette Herrell has renewed her call for Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to deploy the New Mexico National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border.
As the lone Republican member of the state’s congressional delegation, Herrell has been a supporter of the border wall and immigration reform. In her latest request, she cited an increase in COVID-19 infections amid high levels of summer border crossings.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently renewed emergency powers that allow federal authorities to expel families at the border on the grounds it prevents the spread of the coronavirus.
“The situation is dire, and the Biden administration continues to ignore the crisis they have created,” Herrell wrote. “States must step up to the plate and do what the Biden administration will not and supplement the existing federal resources at the border. Instead of placing unscientific mandates and restrictions on New Mexicans, we ask you to work to blunt the surge at our border that shows no end in sight.”
The letter was also signed by Republican colleagues from Texas, Arizona, Florida and Virginia.
Herrell made her first request in April in response to large increases of traffic at the border. At the time, she said Border Patrol agents were overworked and under-supplied.
The congresswoman, whose district covers all of southern New Mexico, is asking Lujan Grisham to join her for a visit to Luna and Hidalgo counties to see “how this situation is affecting our farmers, ranchers, and ordinary citizens.”
Nora Meyers Sackett, the governor’s spokeswoman, suggested that Herrell's concerns were partisan and based on disinformation. She also said the state National Guard has been engaged in pandemic-related missions — from staffing testing sites and helping at vaccine clinics to delivering food, water and personal protective equipment.
The governor’s office did not respond to Herrell’s request for a joint visit to the border, the Las Cruces Sun-News reported.
Lujan Grisham visited the border soon after taking office. But Herrell said in her letter that she is disheartened that the governor hasn't visited more recently.