![A white antelope skull with long, dark, straight horns mounted on a plain white background. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Chormicle_Oryx12-e1741814763512-400x225.jpg)
Ritual Killing: Oryx in New Mexico
As the desert transitions from deep blacks to dim greys and blues, we creep through the mountain pass. We leave the city lights behind us and roll into the dark nothingness.
New Mexican history
Father, I Hardly Knew Ye
Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, was attacked at 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time. It was 10:55 a.m. in Seattle on Sunday, December 7, 1941, which also happened to be my fourth birthday. My mother often talked about that day, telling of the two tall white men who entered our home that evening: the FBI.
The Art of Survival
The engraving on the side of the cup is painstakingly scratched out of the silver metal. The top line reads “PNM”—the Penitentiary of New Mexico. Below are two simple statistics that together tell a brutal story with remarkable concision.
Almost Yuman (1972)
Remembering the Animas River helps me forget, at least for a moment, the challenges, fears, and feelings of inadequacy I experienced in my childhood. Memoria praeteritorum bonorum. My own set of rose-colored glasses.
Feet, sandals,and the power of political agency in the ancient southwest
Illustrations by Marty Two Bulls Sr. Eight hundred years ago, something profoundly interesting happened in the American Southwest. Over the course of about one hundred years, the Puebloan world consciously transformed itself from a stratified hierarchical society to a system with no apparent markers of classor status.
Returning Home
Santa Ana Pueblo / Tamaya Santa Ana Pueblo calls itself Tamaya and its people, the Tamayame, speak Keres. To the rest of the world, however, it is known as Santa Ana Pueblo because it is the official government title for the sovereign nation.
“¿Tecolote d’ónde vienes?”
Four dancers take the stage. Their headpieces cast a striking resemblance to the headdresses of los soldados from the tradition of Los Matachines. Long colorful ribbons flutter down their backs and fringe covers their eyes.
Monuments of Mutuality
The documentary begins with a close-up view of an apparent snowscape. The camera eye sweeps slowly across what must be packed snow, glittering in the sunlight of the Southwest. Text surfaces on the screen, revealing haunting lines that confirm what we must be seeing: In the field of white snow I starve for the love of my own people.
Acequias de Santa Fe:
By Adele Oliveira Kyle Maier, Shrine alongside the Acequia de la Muralla, 2020. Courtesy of the Historic Santa Fe Foundation. Last spring, after a wet winter yielded a decent snowpack, if you walked the narrow dirt path alongside the Acequia Madre in Santa Fe, between the ditch and the curb, the water gurgled companionably downstream beside you, following its centuries-old course, banks choked with green grass and apricot blossoms.
So Far From Paris or Santa Fe
BY SAMANTHA DUNN · PHOTOGRAPHS BY ALEX TRAUBE Las Vegas, New Mexico. Fifty-four miles east of Santa Fe and worlds away from its golden adobes, art galleries, trustafarians. Across the ragged current of the Pecos River, beyond piñon and juniper to taller Ponderosa pines.