Jemez Historic Site, like all of New Mexico’s Historic Sites and museums, offers unique historical and cultural perspectives on the deep and wide-ranging communities, languages, and traditions across the state. And while New Mexico contains a complicated and layered history, these Sites not only honor history but vibrant and ongoing cultures that continue to this day.  Marlon Magdalena, the Instructional Coordinator Supervisor at Jemez Historic Site and member of the Jemez Pueblo, says that all aspects of his community, currently and in the past, are important. “My primary goal is just to ..read more

Traveling to some remote parts of Northern New Mexico can feel a little like traveling back in time. There’s the slower, rural lifestyle and lack of cell reception, for starters, but in some small pockets of rural communities, people still speak a 17th-century dialect of Spanish.  Encounter Culture host Emily Withnall speaks with National Hispanic Cultural Center’s executive director, Zack Quintero, archivist Robin Moses, and Librarian Amy Padilla about their work to collect and preserve this ancient Spanish dialect before it disappears—which they say could happen in just fifteen years. T ..read more

If you’ve ever been to a Sinclair gas station and see the green dinosaur out front, paleontologist Tony Fiorillo says it’s a fair approximation of New Mexico’s Alamosaurus—which was first discovered in New Mexico more than one hundred years ago. Not only is the Alamosaurus a “New Mexican icon,” as Fiorillo says, but it’s also the only dinosaur discovered in North America so far that appears to have migrated from South America. In addition to his work as a researcher and paleontologist, Dr. Tony Fiorillo is the executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science. His ca ..read more

What would it be like to see a symphony? How can you capture the rhythm of waves or a murmuration in constellations of light? If anyone can offer a visual representation of multi-sensory experiences, multimedia artist Leo Villareal can. As Villareal shares in his conversation with Encounter Culture host, Emily Withnall, “I think of my tools more like instruments in a way. And I'm making kind of visual music.” Leo Villareal is a world-renowned artist with roots in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and in El Paso and Marfa, Texas. He currently lives in Brooklyn where he owns a gallery and oversees a team ..read more

Meet Emily Withnall, the new editor of El Palacio Magazine and your new podcast host of Encounter Culture.  As a journalist and writer—and New Mexican, first of all—Emily is acquainted with all facets of the magazine publishing process. In conversation with Andrea Klunder, producer and story editor for Encounter Culture, Emily talks about her love of audio storytelling that goes all the way back to growing up on radio. With Encounter Culture, she strives for captivating storytelling with just the right amount of wandering.  Emily is passionate about artists experimenting with public ..read more

This season, Encounter Culture is sharing the story of Miguel Trujillo, an unsung hero of voting rights activism for Native Americans in New Mexico. His legacy forms the foundation for every conversation in our series. If you haven’t already, we urge you to catch up on the previous 5 episodes. When Indigenous people vote, they honor their past and forge a better tomorrow for their communities. The act itself remains a complicated exercise. Indigenous voters must contend with a history of colonial rule, the goal of which was to eradicate their way of life, as well as present-day attempts by sel ..read more

In this episode, Encounter Culture host Charlotte Jusinski and series co-host Stephanie Padilla, a member of Isleta Pueblo, trace a throughline from Miguel Trujillo to their guest Kara Bobroff (Diné /Lakota), an educator honored by President Barack Obama as one of the best emerging social entrepreneurs in the country. Kara’s exceptional career achievements include her current role as executive director of One Generation (One Gen) and founder of the Native American Community Academy (NACA) and NACA Inspired School Network (NISN). If knowledge is power, access is the key to unlocking its potenti ..read more

Voter participation often begins with a simple question: Why should I bother? For Indigenous people, the answers come tangled in hundreds of years of broken treaties, systemic racism, and voter access restrictions like those that Miguel Trujillo fought to overturn. And yet, Dr. Porter Swentzell (Santa Clara Pueblo) challenges the notion that engaging with the colonizer’s process can’t work in tribes’ favor. Judge June Lorenzo (Laguna Pueblo and Navajo/Diné) agrees. Judge Lorenzo works tirelessly to connect with Indigenous voters and ease their way once at the polls. Welcome to the fourth episo ..read more

Long before colonizers imposed their political ideologies upon Indigenous people, many tribes governed themselves by community consensus. Today, Native people who are citizens of federally recognized tribes are afforded a kind of dual citizenship in the US: subject to the traditional rule of their tribal government and also that of the federal government.  How does the tribal ideal of cooperative agreement square with the “founding fathers” vision for majority rule? And what obligation do tribal communities have in honoring the settler system of governance? Encounter Culture host Charlott ..read more

How do you take the measure of a man, especially one as reticent about his history-making accomplishment as Miguel Trujillo? If you’ve never heard of Miguel or Trujillo v. Garley, the landmark 1948 case that provided Native Americans residing on tribal lands in New Mexico the right to vote, settle in for this intimate portrait of a true American hero. This is the second episode in Encounter Culture’s collaboration with the New Mexico History Museum, exploring the fascinating story of Native American suffrage before and after Trujillo v. Garley. If you haven’t already, we recommend you check ou ..read more