Contested Homelands: Knowledge, History and Culture of Historic Santa Fe

FAIN: BH-50434-11

Regents of the University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001)
Rebecca Maria Sanchez (Project Director: March 2011 to September 2013)

Two one-week Landmarks workshops for eighty school teachers on the history of interactions between Native Americans and Spanish and Anglo settlers in Santa Fe.

"Contested Homelands: Knowledge, History and Culture of Historic Santa Fe" consists of two one-week NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops held during summer 2012 for eighty schoolteachers on the history of interactions between Native Americans and European settlers in Santa Fe. The program considers the ways in which Native Americans, Spanish and Mexican colonists, and settlers have interacted in Santa Fe and the surrounding communities over the past 400 years. The workshops begin with a discussion of the framing concept of "homelands," examining the processes of colonization and resistance that characterized the Santa Fe region. They then turn to the ways that religion, artistic production, history, and memory shape the relationship of peoples to their homelands and consider how historic sites reflect contested claims to, and conflicting perceptions of, homelands. Sites under examination include Pecos National Park, where participants learn about the pre-colonial Pueblo system; vestiges of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the road linking Santa Fe to Mexico City; the Palace of the Governors, built in the early seventeenth century as Santa Fe's administrative center and the site of many workshop sessions; the Governor Bent house, home of the territorial governor who was killed by a group of Indians and Mexicans in protest against American rule; and Taos Pueblo, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Participants also visit the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Wheelwright Museum of the Native American and work with primary sources from the New Mexico State Archives and Library. In addition to project director Rebecca Sánchez, an expert in social studies education, workshop faculty members include historians Estevan Rael-Gálvez (New Mexico State Historian), Joseph Sánchez (Spanish Colonial Research Center, University of New Mexico), and Thomas Chávez (independent scholar and director emeritus, Palace of the Governors); anthropologist Frances Levine (Palace of the Governors); and education professors Quincy Spurlin (University of New Mexico) and Glenabah Martinez (University of New Mexico), as well as artists, archivists, and curatorial staff.

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