Rural literacies, postindustrial countrysides: Resolana, Entre Seco y Verde, and the shadow of the atomic age

By the closing of the twelfth century, the Ohkay Owingeh and their fellow Tewa-speaking sisters and brothers, of what is currently known as northern New Mexico, had established complex agrarian systems and trade routes across Pajarito Plateau and the northern Rio Grande countryside. While the Spanish Conquest of the sixteenth century wrought violence and brutality upon these indigenous communities, the cultures of the "Old" and "New" Worlds eventually formed an extensive, interdependent rural economy across the region. Spanish settlers and friars brought metal tools, horses, fruits and other crops to the Rio Grande valley, resulting in profound changes to indigenous ways of life. Simon Ortiz of the Acoma Pueblo recalls that eventually a cultural mosaic evolved, one that made it obvious that Spanish and Pueblo peoples came to embody valued and indispensable aspects of one another's culture. Emerging Indohispana/o literacies, for example, began to include sacred knowledge about how to live in accord with the earth and the rhythm of the land. The current northern New Mexico landscape is inextricably entwined with the past and present literacies of these local communities.