Aug. 10—SANTA CLARA PUEBLO — A look of disappointment fell over Santa Clara Pueblo Gov. J. Micheal Chavarria as he observed the squalor that has invaded the tribe's ancestral lands, a place he calls a spiritual sanctuary and place of worship.
"It wasn't like this before," Chavarria said before walking into a blanket of trash on the banks of wetlands adjacent to the Española Pathways Shelter for the homeless.
"It makes your heart feel sad to see what we're seeing on our land," he said, adding the pueblo has paid contractors to clean up the mess multiple times, only to see it reappear.
Chavarria and tribal law enforcement officials attribute the filth, from empty beer bottles and plastic cups to discarded clothes and hypodermic needles, to homelessness — a problem plaguing the more populous parts of the state but which has spilled into the sovereign and often more rural lands of New Mexico's pueblos.
The problem confounds the area's Native leaders as they grapple with an issue that can't be contained by lines on a map.
"Just recently, we've had homeless on our reservation that come because it's cooler, because of quiet, because of peace," Craig Quanchello, governor of Picuris Pueblo, which is located in the heart of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains far from any city, said during a news conference in July before the start of a special session Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called to try to deal with repeat offenders with mental health issues and other societal ills.
"They get dropped off there, and we get stuck with them," Quanchello added. "We don't have the resources to deal with that. I was even surprised, you know, to see homeless out there."
Pojoaque Pueblo Gov. Jenelle Roybal, who was also at the news conference, said homeless people are showing up on its tribal lands, too.
"We have bridges. We have areas where they can go and hang out, too," she said.
"And for the most part," Roybal added, "there [is] a lot of mental illness, and that needs to be addressed because it's not safe for anyone when they can't even protect themselves against these people."
Chavarria, whose pueblo is surrounded by a checkerboard of city of Española and Rio Arriba and Santa Fe county property, attended the news conference armed with photos of hypodermic needles, unauthorized camping and trash on tribal lands.
"We do see, unfortunately ... people using the restroom in our wetlands, in our water," Chavarria at the news conference. "We use those resources for traditional, cultural, religious activities and ... it poses an environmental justice issue."
For Santa Clara Pueblo, one of only a small number of pueblos so close to a municipality, the effects of homelessness are more pronounced, particularly since its tribal lands are adjacent to an overcrowded homeless shelter and two homeless encampments, one of which the city of Española established after several dozen people living in tents were forced off nearby Ohkay Owingeh land by tribal police.
"Do you want to see something unfortunate?" Chavarria asked on a recent weekday afternoon while standing a few feet from the city-sanctioned homeless encampment along the Rio Grande.
"There's a bag of human feces right there," he said while standing on tribal property and pointing to a white plastic bag on the ground.
"What we're currently experiencing, unfortunately, is impacting the surface water but also our springs, our bogs and the wetlands," he said, adding the environmental contamination ultimately affects drinking water.
The pueblo also is living under the threat of fire.
Chavarria said at least four fires, three of which have been deemed human-caused, have been started in the bosque in recent years.
Though widespread, the litter on pueblo land is the most noticeable and includes a sea of shopping carts near the city-sanctioned homeless encampment.
On Friday, Española city officials cleared out the homeless encampment along the river after the City Council adopted an emergency ordinance that prohibits sleeping on public property.
Michelle Fraire, Española's social services director, wrote in an email the city "has worked with the encampment on several occasions and have provided services to help clean areas as needed. Trash bins, dumpsters and trash bags have been provided throughout the encampment. Recently the surge of debris has caused the area to become unsafe and a threat to public health."
Fraire referred questions about the encampment next to the Pathways shelter to them. She wrote the pueblo "voiced their concerns about the encampment" during a recent town hall Lujan Grisham held in Española to discuss public safety and that the city has reached out the pueblo "with no response.
"The Department of Social Services [has] been able to work with multiple agencies and will continue to do so," Fraire wrote.
What impact, if any, the sweep will have on Santa Clara Pueblo remains to be seen.
'Hit and miss'
The problems the pueblo is dealing with are not just environmental.
Chavarria said pueblo police are constantly trying to keep homeless people off tribal land even though "no trespassing" signs are posted at the boundaries, preventing officers from handling their regular law enforcement duties.
"Officers can issue a civil citation [to a non-pueblo member] to tribal court, but yet they don't show up in tribal court," he said. "We have no arresting powers because they're non-Indians."
There have been instances when tribal police encounter people with outstanding warrants. When they call local law enforcement, those officers don't always show up, he said.
"It's definitely been a hit and miss," tribal police Chief Mitchell Maestas said. "Sometimes they come or don't come, so we have to release them because we don't have no authority for any kind of criminal charges. But times they do. It's a still an issue of concern because most of the people we're finding in there are non-Native, and we don't have any jurisdiction over them."
The pueblo's hotel and casino and neighboring travel center, which is adjacent to the homeless shelter and an encampment in the shelter's parking lot, also had to hire additional security. In addition, break-ins have occurred at an old Dodge dealership on pueblo property across the street from the casino.
"Over the past year, the pueblo businesses have experienced over 300 crimes at our properties, which is an average of 25 per month or almost one per day," the governor said. "This does not include the constant trespass or nuisance incidents, which are well over 1,000 over the last year. Due to jurisdictional gaps, 99% of these individuals are not arrested, and most of the incidents are caused by repeat offenders."
Phone messages left at the Española Pathways Shelter were not returned.
Chavarria said tribal and city, county and state governments have to work together to address homelessness and its environmental and other impacts, as well as to improve collaboration.
"The issue is land jurisdiction, so my chief or my lieutenant or the officers cannot enforce any laws on private claims, county lands [or] city lands, but because [the homeless shelter and homeless encampments] are so close to our property, there's no policing in those areas, then it spills over and makes it a problem for us," he said. "Even though they're off our land, it's now our problem."
Chavarria said he's working on a letter to try to schedule a meeting with officials from various levels of government, as well as Ohkay Owingeh to the north, to try to develop solutions, as well as build collaboration.
"We can't work in silos any longer," he said. "It has to be all of us working together."
The hunt for a solution
Former state Rep. Roger Montoya, who was among a group of four people who founded the Pathways shelter but is no longer involved in its operations, said he's sympathetic to the issues the pueblo is dealing with as a result of homelessness.
"The challenge that we've had is there's not a long history in Rio Arriba County and in the politics, and intertribal as well, of actually working together from a deep and honest and authentic place," he said. "There's a lot of residue, historic trauma, that has separated [the community] and so when you put an issue as complex and as tragic as homelessness in the middle, it just exemplifies or it makes those divisions worse."
The tribes and local governments and the Natives and local Hispanics don't have a history of trust, he said.
"Ironically, we're all mixed blood, really, if we did the science, but the reality on the ground is that there's just so much mistrust over the generations that people aren't willing to come to solutions," he said.
State Rep. Joseph Sanchez, D-Alcalde, whose district includes Ohkay Owingeh and borders Santa Clara Pueblo, said he's working on a proposal that could potentially reduce the number of homeless people in the Española area.
Sanchez said the city is home to a treatment facility where judges across the state are sending people to receive treatment. But he said they can leave if they choose.
"These people are getting driven there from other counties, and they don't have a way back," he said. "So, I'm in talks with the state about figuring out a mechanism of getting them transportation back to their home counties. That's just a small part of the big problem, but I know that is contributing to [homelessness] in Española. ... Our town doesn't really have the infrastructure to support this influx."
Sanchez said the homeless population in the Española Valley has exploded in recent years.
"You just see them walking around at all hours of the day," he said. "You have to be careful at night to not run over them. My heart goes out to them, so we need to figure out something."
Montoya said the hardships the homeless are facing hurts his soul.
"It's not just Española, but to see it in our community is really distressing given that we had worked hard to create an ecosystem, a continuum of care that we thought would be appropriate and functional and because of various reasons, it has moved into a different pathway of chaos and death and destruction," he said. "I mean, it's just hard to see that we're not moving the needle in the right direction."
On Santa Clara Pueblo land next to the Pathways shelter, tribal officers have to watch where they step to avoid the hypodermic needles left on the ground.
"It's just a free for all," the governor said.
Follow Daniel J. Chacón on Twitter @danieljchacon.
