MCN 2024

The New Mexico State Land Office leases and manages New Mexico state trust lands. Much of that land has been leased for extractive practices such as oil and gas drilling. During her tenure, Commissioner Stephanie Garcia-Richards works closely with Indigenous communities to return stolen land to displaced tribes. In 2022, just over 2,000 acres were returned to the Fort Sill Apache Tribe. The tribe had been separated from their ancestral land since the US Government captured their forebears and put them in military-run internment camps in Oklahoma. The exchange was completed last fall and the land is now under the management of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe.

Every fall semester, NMHU’s Media Arts Seminar class collaborates with a cultural or community-based organization to develop an exhibit. In the fall of 2023, Professor Lauren Addario’s students Destiny Zukevich, Emily Clark, and Marlene Bad Warrior, worked with Ethan Ortega, Assistant Commissioner of Cultural Resources, and archeologists Carlyn Stewart, Anne Curry, and Adesbah Foguth at the New Mexico State Land Office (NMSLO). The resulting exhibit highlights the recent accomplishments of the New Mexico State Land Office’s Land Back initiatives.

The exhibition includes a video with perspectives from Indigenous youth talking about what land back means to them, a screen-based mapping component that draws attention to how tribal lands in the southwest are impacted by climate change, two graphic panels, and bookmarks that feature endangered animals and insects in southern New Mexico.

New Mexico Highlands University’s Media Arts & Technology Department has partnered with the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs since 2005. The program cultivates a homegrown pool of multimedia specialists working with cultural content and committed to serving their communities.