I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
New Mexico isn’t like most other states. That’s because we’ve had First Americans living here continuously for at least 10,000 years.
We’ve also had Spanish settlements here since nine years before Jamestown was settled in 1607. In short, we never developed in the same colonial model as did most other states, through Eastern seaboard-based, Anglo colonization.
As a result of the complex First American cultures that developed in New Mexico and the fact that the European settlers who first arrived spoke Spanish, New Mexico has a rich language heritage.
For example, the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center reports that the 19 pueblos of New Mexico belong to three distinct language groups that are further differentiated into five separate languages and many discreet dialects. The New Mexico Pueblo language groups are Keres, Tanoan and Zuni and these encompass the Keresan, Tewa, Tiwa, Towa and Zuni languages. Add to that Apache and Diné languages and you begin to see the rich language mosaic that still thrives in our state.
Having traveled through most of Mexico, parts of the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and Spain, I can personally attest to the viability of New Mexico’s Spanish. We get along just fine throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
So why is it that the blow-dried, color-coordinated young TV reporters who parade across our TV screens in what passes as local news these days are turned loose on a helpless population to butcher Spanish and First American surnames and place names?
Shouldn’t local news stations require at least one session on New Mexico history of all its reporters? Shouldn’t there be a class that all TV journalists take on Spanish-language and First American languages pronunciation?
Perhaps acclimating new reporters to the place in which they work doesn’t happen because local news stations forget they operate in a unique cultural landscape and fail to make the small effort it would require to provide orientation to these “newbies” on the local beat.
I’ll even bet there are many First Americans and Latinos who would be happy to volunteer to teach these classes free for the local stations.
Why does it matter if they Anglicize and or butcher all of these First American and Spanish surnames and place names?
Well, it matters because there are a majority of New Mexico residents who speak these other languages. And there is increasing pride among First Americans and Nuevo Mexicanos to revitalize their languages.
Besides, we need to retain our rich cultural legacy. We’re all better off if we learn to respect our neighbors and what better way than to learn a few place names in their original language?
Look at San Juan Pueblo, so named by the Spanish colonizer Juan de Oñate in 1598. The pueblo people there changed its name back to its original Tewa name of Ohkay Owenge in 2005. And in case you wonder what the Tewa name means, it’s “place of the strong people.”
It took the people of Ohkay Owenge more than 400 years to revert back to their original name, but the process of decolonization isn’t determined by time, but by the collective consciousness of a people.
Similarly, two new overpasses just constructed at Pojoaque now spell out the original indigenous place names. Now it’s “Po-suwae-geh,” or “the water drinking or gathering place.” And Cuyamunge, which was the Spanish adaption of the original Tewa name, has also reverted back to its original Tewa spelling.
Hopefully, this trend among First Americans to revert back to naming many of the places we now know in either Spanish or English to their original Tewa, Tiwa, Towa, Keres and other First American names will continue.
I’m all for it.
In fact, I hope we arrive at a point in time soon where we actively ask our First American citizens to re-name the places and villages in their native languages. Those villages, towns and cities that were created under Spanish colonial rule can revert back to their original Spanish names (Dixon would go back to Embudo, for example). Those settlements created by American colonists would retain their original English nomenclature.
Picture this: an official map of New Mexico with up to three names for each place and pueblo, town or village: one name in its First American configuration; another in Spanish and the third in English.
P’oosoonge (“Long water” in Tewa). Río Grande. Sounds good to me.
