Not far from where the Chama River meets the Rio Grande, about 30 miles north of Santa Fe, the Ohkay Owingeh—one of 19 federally recognized Native American Pueblo tribes in New Mexico—live on land they have inhabited for at least 600 years. For almost all of this history, daily life revolved around a series of plazas loosely delineated by attached adobe houses. This village center, known as Owe'neh Bupingeh, also served as the backdrop for the community's feast-day celebrations and ritual dances.
The 2,700-member tribe still considers Owe'neh Bupingeh the spiritual and cultural heart of the pueblo. However, in recent decades it had slowly depopulated and its condition deteriorated, as many residents left their traditional homes in favor of new, but nondescript, manufactured housing subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on subdivision-like lots elsewhere on the 16,000-acre reservation.
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