Advocate for Native children Marie Reyna dies
Director of Taos Pueblo’s Children’s Art Center was daughter of revered elder Tony Reyna
The last part of Marie Reyna’s life was a seemingly endless physical struggle with complications resulting from the rare autoimmune disease scleroderma. Now, she is at rest. Reyna, born June 11, 1956, died at sunset March 21, according to her daughter Aneva Concha.
“My momma gone … I love u my momma, look the sun peaked thru. I know that you flying high momma I still can’t believe my momma gone,” she posted to Facebook the day of Marie’s passing.
During her life, she, like many people of Taos Pueblo, followed the lessons of her elders, to nurture those who have less than you, to help others when needed and to pave the way for a brighter future. Since 1985, Marie Reyna, an accomplished silversmith, put those lessons to use as director of the Oo-oonah Art Center. Along with artist Joseph Concha, she took up the reins of the center after it had stopped operating for several years.
The center was established in the early 1970s on a site donated by Rose Cordova along what is now Veteran’s Highway at Taos Pueblo. This was after a concerted fundraising effort led by Constantine Aiello, a teacher at the Taos Day School who worked to publish a book of artwork by seventh and eighth grade students of the school in 1967-68. Sadly, Aiello died when the center opened, but it continued with the help of supporters.
Marie Reyna, who was recognized as an Unsung Hero by the Taos News in 2009, told the paper, “The future of our community lies in the building of self-esteem, traditional Indian life-skills and a positive learning atmosphere for our children.” At the time, Reyna was promoting the center’s Heritage Project. “The project insures that our children have a strong sense of identity and are culturally tied to their community.”
The Oo-Oonah students have been juried into local, national and international exhibits and received numerous awards and ribbons over the years. Student work has been exhibited at Santa Fe’s Museum of Indian Art and Culture and at the Governor’s Gallery in the State Capitol. Works have also been seen internationally in the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Kyoto and Yokohama, as well as in Poland during the Krakow 2000 festival.
“The reason we want them to learn these ways is because they will need to produce these things,” she said for the Unsung Heroes article. “We have to use the knowledge from the past thousand years from now on,” so the old ways continue unbroken. The Heritage Program teaches children to behave well; to participate in their culture; to vitalize the Tiwa language (the tribe’s native tongue); to respect the site of Taos Pueblo, its buildings and lands, the vegetation,
the animals and, of course, the community.
She added, “To be Indian means we have a moral obligation to our ancestors — they didn’t know who we were, but they were willing to lay down their lives for us and we’re doing the same thing for the kids coming up,” Reyna said. “They have a moral responsibility to their Taos Pueblo, to keep it right, to keep it strong.”
In 2008, Reyna nearly died from scleroderma, but, she rallied and that spring, she “started feeling like a normal person again … Last year was just a matter of trying to survive. This spring I was able to provide my students with the full program. Once I got on dialysis, my body was able to recharge through that technology and now I’m able to address things not done last year, like applying for money for stuff.”
“Oo-oonah” means “children” in the Tiwa language of Taos Pueblo.
Marie has served as a member and Chair of the school board for the the Taos Day School. As the Chair she served as a member of the 8 North Pueblo School Board.
Marie was a charter member of the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center’s Native American Advisory Group, having joined in 1995, and served on the Pueblo Advisory Group. “This has been an educational experience that has given me a cultural education of ancestral Pueblos of New Mexico and Southern Colorado,” she said.
Carly Concha said her mother had recently been to Crow Canyon to help raise funds for the Oooonah Art Center. It was after she returned that her health began to seriously decline. Carly said she is now concerned after her mother’s passing what may become of the center. “That was her life’s work,” she said. “I don’t want all that work she did to be in vain.” Aneva said she has been in contact with Viola Romero and Ronnie Martinez, Marie’s closest allies at the center, to plan a series of fund-raising events to keep the center open.
Marie Reyna is the daughter of the late Tony Reyna, a Bataan Death March survivor from World War II, and Annie Cata of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. She also had a daughter, Marlene Platero, a scientist who died in 2011.
Marie and her partner Carl E. Concha have two daughters Carley Aspen and Aneva Concha. She is survived by her sister Diane Reyna, brothers John Anthony Reyna and Phillip Reyna, four grandchildren and numerous relatives of Taos Pueblo’s Reyna family and Ohkay Owingeh Cata family.