by Bryant Furlow, New Mexico In Depth
A report released Tuesday by the Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission (NNHRC) describes harsh discipline of Navajo students, pervasive discrimination and a climate of fear and retaliation in the Gallup‑McKinley County Schools district. The 25-page report draws on testimony from parents and community members at four public hearings in Navajo Nation communities within the school district. It urges the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office to release findings from a two-and-a-half-year investigation into the district’s discipline of Indigenous students.
On Wednesday, Attorney General Raúl Torrez’s chief of staff said its long-running investigation is complete and has found “troubling disciplinary practices.”
“It’s our kids, our students, who are suffering the consequences of entrenched racism,” said Wendy Greyeyes, Ph.D. (Diné), an associate professor of Native American studies at the University of New Mexico and chair of the commission, in an interview.
The NNHRC report cited an investigation published in December 2022 by New Mexico In Depth and ProPublica that found Indigenous students were punished more harshly than other students in New Mexico during the four years ending in 2020. Gallup-McKinley, which has the largest Indigenous student body of any local school district in the country, was largely responsible for that disparity, an analysis of student discipline records from across the state showed. Torrez opened an investigation into Gallup-McKinley Schools disciplinary practices in 2023.
Lauren Rodriguez, Torrez’s chief of staff, said Wednesday the agency’s “exhaustive” investigation into student discipline at Gallup-McKinley calls for the state Public Education Department to enforce student discipline data reporting requirements and better track that data. The agency should have caught the discipline disparities in the data it collects from districts, Greyeyes said. “There’s obviously not a clear auditing of data that’s being collected,” she said.
The AG’s investigation identified “troubling disciplinary practices,” but it’s not clear under state law that the AG can “pursue formal legal action against the district for this particular conduct,” Rodriguez told New Mexico In Depth.
That gap, she said, is why Torrez has pushed for comprehensive state civil rights legislation since 2023. Previous efforts failed, but Torrez remains committed to legislation that would provide his office with the legal tools necessary to address civil rights violations, she said.
Racial disparities in student discipline would be an example of such violations.
At the public hearings, parents, students, and community members described harsh discipline, language barriers, discriminatory hiring practices, problems with special education plans, and inadequate classroom heating systems.
“It’s very complex,” Greyeyes said of school conditions at GMCS. “It’s rooted in colonization. It’s rooted in institutional racism. A lot of these things are accepted sometimes even by our own Navajo people, and we need to bring this information out and figure out a way to address these issues.”
The report’s recommendations “begin that conversation,” she said.
“It goes beyond school disciplinary actions,” Greyeyes added. “It goes beyond the racism issues. A lot of other things were brought up in terms of systematic failures of funding structures, of keeping and maintaining buildings, and being responsive to creating a culturally inclusive environment.”
Greyeyes also described a pervasive fear of retaliation. Some witnesses cried at hearings, she said — afraid their words would get back to the district, and parents spoke on behalf of children too afraid to testify themselves. Transcripts of their testimony, therefore, were not publicly released.
The commission’s report seeks a formal agreement between the Navajo Nation and Gallup-McKinley for the district to adopt a restorative justice-oriented discipline policy, modeled on existing talking-circles programs at New Mexico’s Cuba Independent Schools district and the STAR School east of Flagstaff, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation, Greyeyes said.