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For over a century, El Palacio has been a forum for voices exploring New Mexico’s art, archaeology, history, and landscape. Explore the writers, photographers, historians, and scientists whose perspectives have defined the magazine’s pages—past and present.
Arthur Sze is the current U.S. Poet Laureate. Sze is a poet, translator, and editor. He is the author of twelve books, including Into the Hush, Sight Lines, and others. Sze’s poems have been translated into fifteen languages, and he is the recipient of the National Book Award among many other honors. He lives in Santa Fe.
Deborah Jackson Taffa is a citizen of the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo. Her memoir Whiskey Tender was a 2024 National Book Award Finalist and was longlisted for the 2025 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. Taffa serves as the director of the MFA in creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts.
Cara Romero is an award-winning contemporary fine art photographer. An enrolled citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Romero’s expansive oeuvre has been informed by formal training in film, digital, fine art, and commercial photography. She maintains a studio in Santa Fe, regularly participates in Native American art fairs, and was featured in PBS’ Craft in America (2019).
Marla Redcorn-Miller is the director of the Osage Nation Museum in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. She is also a former deputy director of the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. Her interest in art and the museum field stems from the influence of her father, who was a prominent Osage artist, and her mother’s people from the Redstone Kiowa community. Other notable roles include education curator positions at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe and the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa. She has a BA in art history from Dartmouth College and an MPhil in art history from Columbia University.
![A person wearing a patterned headband and traditional clothing stands outdoors, looking to the side with a neutral expression. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Mateo-Romero-by-Rima-Krist_4C_400ppi-scaled-1-400x225.jpg)
BY MARLA REDCORN-MILLER The following interview with Mateo Romero (Cochiti) describes a more abstract form of cultural appropriation that takes place in intellectual spaces such as academic institutions, museums, and art venues. Romero is a contemporary Pueblo painter and was raised in Berkeley, California. Although he grew up in an urban area, he formed a connection to Cochiti Pueblo through Santiago Romero, his father.
![A large, colorful piñata sculpture displayed in a museum gallery with blue walls, next to an information plaque and a digital screen showing exhibit details. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Chullu-installed-400x225.png)
BY AMY GROLEAU AND MARLA REDCORN-MILLER As artists, Aymar Ccopacatty (Aymara) and Nora Naranjo Morse (Santa Clara Pueblo) each explore the question of non-biodegradable waste in Native communities through their art. Independently and on separate continents, Ccopacatty and Naranjo Morse both noted the overshadowing presence of landfills on their respective ancestral lands, and saw the trash as a kind of natural resource—similar to the way that artists have harvested natural fibers from sheep to make weavings, or pulled clay from the earth to make pottery.
![A man stands outdoors holding up a handmade mask adorned with feathers and face paint, surrounded by trees. [gen-ai]](https://elpalacio.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/EP_Cannupa-Hanska-Luger.-Artist-Portrait-by-Marco-Pavan-2017-397x225.png)
In the spring of 2018, eight dynamic Santa Fe cultural institutions joined forces in a collaboration called Project Indigene to examine perspectives and create awareness of some of the issues facing indigenous art: authenticity, appropriation, activism, and artistic identity. These complex issues sparking public discourse are addressed in works in the permanent collections of these institutions, or works that will be investigated in upcoming exhibitions.
