On the Mescalero Apache Reservation, four days of dancing mark the passage into womanhood, testing a girl’s endurance — and enveloping her in tradition.
Michael Benanav
Michael Benanav is a writer, photographer and digital storyteller based in northern New Mexico. In addition to Searchlight, his work appears in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Sierra Magazine, and other publications. He's also the author of three books, most recently the award-winning "Himalaya Bound: One Family's Quest to Save Their Animals — And an Ancient Way of Life."
Posted inEnvironment
Parched in ‘Podunk,’ New Mexico
Water pipes are failing in rural towns across America. Is their future on the drink?
Posted inIn their own words
A chef sensation on the Navajo Nation
Diné chef Justin Pioche earned one of the country’s most coveted culinary honors. He serves a lot more than food.
Posted inTribal Affairs
Who gets to adopt Native children?
A Supreme Court decision will soon answer that question
Posted inEnvironment
In drought-plagued New Mexico, a city loses nearly half its water — to leaky pipes
Aging water lines burst near-daily in Truth or Consequences, but funding for repairs has run dry.
Posted inFeatured
Helter shelter
New Mexico cities resist building encampments, despite one’s success to the south
Posted inFeatured
Seven years after a spill turns a river yellow, Navajo farmers still seek justice
The 2015 Gold King Mine spill sent a toxic plume through the Navajo Nation. Why isn’t restitution in sight?
Posted inFeatured
‘I could go missing tomorrow’
A Navajo woman is walking from Arizona to Washington, D.C., as a call to action for her aunt and thousands of other missing or murdered Indigenous people.
Posted inFeatured
Redlined and reeling
Here’s what happens when rural New Mexicans are priced out of homeowners insurance. Or denied it altogether.
Posted inEnvironment, Featured
Against the flow
For centuries, Picuris Pueblo says its water has been stolen and shunted over a mountain to the Mora Valley — where irrigators claim rights to it, too. Can anyone win this battle?