Santa Fe Indian School joins community schoolyards program

Written by Margaret O’Hara of Santa Fe, New Mexicans

SANTA FE, New Mexico (AP) — Kristi Abita envisions the Santa Fe Indian School as a thriving campus, filled with spaces that promote Indigenous culture, art, language, and teachings—something closer to reality now that the school has been selected to receive a new schoolyard development through a federal pilot program.

“We want to stay consistent and in tune with the place, as the place is important to the indigenous people. Everything revolves around your place in this world,” Abita, principal, told Santa Fe New Mexican.

She said the campus’s outdoor environments—a community garden, outdoor classrooms with facilities for preparing traditional meals, and plazas where students interact, dance, and sing together—are a start. But she said she believes the school community and tribal elders will have more ideas for ways to strengthen the campus as the school joins the Tribal Community School Pilot Program, a new partnership between the American Indian Bureau of Education and the nonprofit Trust for Public Land. .

The Santa Fe Indian School is one of nine Native American schools across the country—and one of two in New Mexico—selected to receive an upgraded schoolyard.

The new program is designed to transform vacant or lackluster schoolyards in Indigenous communities into vibrant spaces for outdoor learning and play, said Danielle Dink, director of the Community Schoolyards Initiative at the Trust for Public Land.