Whose Truth?

This is an ancient land; one that defies categorization. Santa Fe is the second oldest Anglo city in North America, behind St. Augustine in Florida. It’s old, and it’s rich: a polyglot of art, culture, history, spirituality, food and architecture. It is a millennials-old exercise not so much of assimilation, but of addition. Over a period of about 200 years, control of this land passed from Indigenous to Spanish to Indigenous to Mexican to Anglo. Walk up any street and you’ll see it. Pueblo architecture next to Territorial next to Spanish Colonial next to Victorian. And sometimes, elements of all of them in the same buildings. The San Miguel Chapel, the oldest Catholic Church in America, was built by Tlaxcalan (Tas-cal-len) Indians under the direction of Franciscan Padres. It is adobe, brown in color, its graceful curves hugging the ground as if drawing its spirit from the earth. A few steps away, St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral is Romanesque Revival, with rounded arches, Corinthian columns and a Rose Window. St Francis is the legacy of Jean-Baptiste Lamy, a French Catholic archbishop who declared that the heathen adobe was no place for a human to be close to God. Another delightful contract are the Tribal dances that take place at almost every pueblo around Christmas. These Native rituals celebrate pagan, earth-based systems of faith. But they take place on Christian holidays: Christmas, Easter, the Feast of the Kings. A woman photographer I met from the Laguna Pueblo told me this compromise was struck between the Natives and the evangelizing missionaries who swept through here in the 18th century. You want me to celebrate the birth of your God? Fine, we’ll do it on your day, but with my rituals. It seems to me that New Mexico has, throughout its history, often found better ways than slaughter to settle differences. That’s not absolute, of course. But it is a big, messy, glorious mass of contradictions, this place.

There’s a great deal of truth and reconciliation focus in New Mexico; an attempt to reconsider history from other (read, non-White) points of view. It finds its way into a reckoning about public art and monuments. One example is the “Soldiers Monument” in the center of Santa Fe Plaza. Last year, it was pulled down by vandals as it memorialized a victory of Civil War soldiers over “savage Indians.” There is a spirited public debate raging right now about how to re-imagine that memorial. One suggestion is a four-sided obelisk that honors the four threads of history here: indigenous culture, Mexican culture, Spanish culture, Anglo culture.

This Thanksgiving, we are strangers in a strange land; far from our family and friends. There would be no large gathering, even if Covid allowed it. There would be no table laden with turkey, even if Cal’s vegan diet allowed it. The planets do not align for tradition. Like so many things now, I feel a call for something different. In this part of the West, I am surrounded by many Americans who view this day not as a time of thanksgiving, but as a day of “National Mourning.” I grew up believing in happy scenes of Natives helping Pilgrims, celebrating a harvest feast together. It’s what most people I know believed. But it’s not true. What really happened was a story of conflict and battle and brutality. And the even bigger problem: it’s not just an untruth. It’s a lie, an intentional lie, designed to perpetuate a mythology about American exploration, self-determination, and cultural superiority.

Instead of a feast this day, we seek a hike—preferably one along ancient paths walked by indigenous people. Our quest leads us to the White Rock Rim trail, on the Pajarito Plateau. This mesa is built on volcanic rock—soft enough for Puebloan people to carve homes in its walls a few miles from here, at Bandolier. From around 1100 AD to 1500 AD, these Anasazi thrived, growing corn, beans and squash in the arid land; weaving, trading, building kivas with hundreds of rooms and conducting their rituals. Then they disappeared, a mystery that archeologists have never definitively solved. To the east, the Pajarito Plateau yielded to a more natural force. A few feet from where we walk, sheer cliffs drop off into the Rio Grande River Gorge, a verdant riparian ecosystem that stretches for hundreds of miles in the high desert.

Just above us, another site carries its own echoes of mystery and destruction. Eight years ago, scientists from around the world gathered in secret on the mesa at Los Alamos. They toiled and dreamed, experimented, failed—and then ultimately succeeded in unleashing a force so powerful it could destroy the world. As much as anything about Los Alamos, it’s the secrecy amazes me. Can you imagine such an effort happening undetected today, in our internet world? Perhaps just as amazing: what they wrought has not destroyed us, yet. Perhaps that’s one thing for today’s gratitude list?

We walk the rim. Far below, the Rio Grande snakes its way down the canyon, a twisting ribbon of green. High overhead, thousands and thousands of birds call. We’re not sure what type—geese maybe? Are there geese here? They sound like it. Some are in organized lines and V’s. Most a just a noisy mass; balls of birds milling about, crying and calling high above the mesas, echoing down the canyons. It’s a primal, ancient, wild sound. Maybe exactly what the Anasazi heard when they walked this cliff 1000 years ago.

What is the truth, and who gets to tell it? What endures, and what vanishes, or washes away? We lose our people—to disease and accidents; violence and oppression; or the plain old passage of time. We mourn them. We also lose our stories, and we mourn those, too—even when they are stories that should die. What dies can be reborn, sometimes closer to the truth. But it’s still hard. We are humans. Whether it’s our people or our stories, we are afraid to let go. We try to hold them close.

I know I am not the arbiter of truth. I am not sure I even recognize it most of the time. But I do stand here on this mesa, and I listen to the wind.