In honor of 50 years of coeducation at Albuquerque Academy, Alumni Council member Ted Alcorn ’01 is telling the stories of women alumni.
When Phoebe Suina describes her feelings for the mountains, fields, and rivers of New Mexico, even the word “love” doesn’t seem adequate. “It’s in my bones, and it’s in my blood,” she said.
She has forged that connection over decades of study and work as an environmental engineer. It’s also a product of her lineage as a daughter of San Felipe and Cochiti Pueblos, a history it took her time to embrace and revere.
In her infancy, Phoebe began learning Keres, the language spoken by a few thousand people in a handful of Middle Rio Grande pueblos. But when her parents separated, she and her mom moved to Rio Rancho where it was easier to find work, and Phoebe was only exposed to the language on weekends in Cochiti, visiting her dad. A treasured fifth-grade teacher encouraged her to apply to the Academy.
Her mom worked long hours, so Phoebe was often the first to arrive at school and the last to be retrieved. There were only two Indigenous girls enrolled at that time, but she remembered how Mr. Vincent Cordova, an early champion of diversity at the Academy, would often check on her. Sports helped bring the quiet girl out of her shell. When faculty and staff held pickup basketball games in the middle school gym where she lingered after school, they often drafted her to play.
In particular, she was a free throw ace — such a sharpshooter, in fact, that in eighth grade she won a citywide contest and advanced to nationals. Her entire class gave her a sendoff party and a giant card scrawled with well wishes, which she has kept to this day. “Maybe I still have it because I cherished that my entire class got behind me,” she said.
The competitive spirit discovered on the athletic field also spurred Phoebe and her friends in the classroom, where they organized study groups and pushed each other. After graduating, she headed to Dartmouth to major in engineering. Electrical classes stumped her, but hydraulics was another story. “I saw how water moved,” she said, “and it clicked.”
The real turning point arrived when she was back at home on a break and was invited to help with a language revitalization program being undertaken in Cochiti Pueblo. Re-immersed in the community, Phoebe spoke with older generations and delved into the history of the dam on the eastern side of the pueblo, which the Army Corps of Engineers had installed to control the flow of the Rio Grande.
Contrary to assurances made to the community at that time, seepage from the dam had eventually destroyed the pueblo’s farmland, altered traditional ways of life, and contributed to social dissolution that had imperiled the language she was working to revive.
Looking at the engineering drawings, Phoebe thought to herself, “This can’t happen again.” The community needed someone who could decipher this type of document, parse the Flood Control Act, and protect their interests and the environment they were a part of. “It reignited my passion.”
Now decades later, Phoebe fully inhabits that role, heading her own project management and environmental consulting business High Water Mark, which has helped communities across New Mexico recover from natural disasters while improving their long-term stability and sustainability. She has also been appointed to two influential government boards, where she volunteers her time and expertise to make consequential decisions for the whole state. She sees herself as a bridge, navigating the intricacies of tribal, state, and federal governments while leveraging the traditional ecological knowledge her pueblos have developed over millennia.
And she’s bridged generations, too, giving her kids the language that nearly eluded her. Her daughter was one of the first students at the Keres Children’s Learning Center, a Montessori program that immerses students, and enrolling her there prompted Phoebe and her partner to be more mindful about speaking at home in their everyday lives.
Thinking of the vastness of eternity and the responsibility she feels for future generations, she said, “It’s less than a blink of an eye that we’ll be here.” She won’t let her time go to waste.
