The tearing down of 18 historic buildings in Santa Fe by the All Indian Pueblo Council may be somewhat shocking for many non-Indians, but to at least one board member of the Council seeing the walls come down was a spiritual cleansing. The Santa Fe New Mexican shed a little bit of light over the weekend on the reasons behind the demolition of the Santa Fe Indian School, although the Board members themselves aren’t saying much.

A timeline tells the story, with an assimilationist agenda driving the construction of Indian boarding schools throughout the country, including Santa Fe. Indian children were separated from their families and sent to these schools where "…English was the only language allowed; children were punished for speaking their native languages. "Kill the Indian to save the man" was the theory for complete assimilation or "Americanization."

Additionally, students in Santa Fe were utilized for labor: "When school was out, boys were sent to work in Albuquerque’s woolen mills; girls often became domestic maids in Santa Fe homes. "In 1904, forty students spent the summer working in the sugar beet fields in Colorado," says the history." Things began to change when a Brookings Institution report in the late 1920’s found that the schools were overcrowded, and that the students were undernourished and overworked.

See Denise Tessier’s story here at NMI last week for more analysis.

The Albuquerque Public Schools building program is giving a serious boost to the ailing construction industry, reports the Albuquerque Journal. Commercial builders aren’t seeing near the slow-down of the residential sector, but they’re still seeing much less activity than a year ago. Thankfully, they have 12 new schools to build.

A real estate company has been sued for fair housing discrimination against women with children. According to the Las Cruces Sun-News report, Monarch Real Estate Corp. refused to rent spots in its mobile home park to women with children due to what it called prior complaints about children from residents.

After Las Cruces resident Mary Hernandez reported that she was denied for that reason to the Border Fair Housing and Economic Justice Center in El Paso, the center investigated further by sending out "testers." Two women who said they didn’t have children and two women who said they did have children went to the company to inquire about renting a spot. The women with children were denied, while the women without children were not.

It’s illegal to deny housing to someone based on the fact that children will live in the housing as well.