Fearless: Veronica Krupnick is a voice for change in New Mexico

Alexandra Wittenberg | Navajo-Hopi Observer

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SANTA FE, NM. — On her great-grandmother’s 91st birthday celebration at Jemez Pueblo in April, Veronica Krupnick gave her the news she would be on the ballot for the New Mexico State Senate.

With tear-filled eyes, she looked at Krupnick, hugged her, and then sat her down to eat.

“She went from seeing Native Americans in New Mexico not be able to vote until 1948 to now seeing her great granddaughter on a ballot,” Krupnick said.

Krupnick is 28; her great-grandmother was 24 when Native Americans got the right to vote in the state.

 “If you’re bold enough to dream big and fight for the changes you want to see, you can see that kind of radical turnaround in one person’s lifetime,” Krupnick said. “But you have to feel the fear and do it anyway.”

Though Krupnick lost the Democratic primary election for District 24 in Santa Fe to Linda Trujillo in June, her work in the New Mexico House of Representatives and as a fierce advocate for child welfare has anything but slowed.

“(Running) taught me a lot,” Krupnick said. “This is something that I want to do, maybe not in the near future but down the road. It definitely takes a lot out of you.”

Krupnick said although an estimated 45% of New Mexicans are under the age of 35, they don’t really have representation.

She also thought her expertise in child welfare would fill a much-needed gap in the state, especially with the upcoming retirement of two long-time legislative officials.

“One of the biggest (changes) that could really shift things for child welfare is proactively getting people with experience involved, whether that’s at a local or a state (level),” Krupnick said. “Lived-experience people are going to tell you what works and what doesn’t…I think in child welfare we get really lost in the numbers and the statistics and we forget that there’s people behind them.”

 Krupnick uses her own experience in the foster and adoption systems to try and spark change, and she strives to bring others that have been in the system to use their own voices.

Early life

Krupnick was born in Tuba City, Arizona, to teenage parents. Her biological father is Hopi and she grew up in Moenkopi on the Hopi reservation. Krupnick also has Jemez and Navajo heritage.

“I kind of bounced around to different family members for those first couple of years,” Krupnick said. “My biological parents really struggled with addiction and were involved in the incarceration system and juvenile justice pretty early.”

When she was 4-years-old, Krupnick moved with her mother to Albuquerque to be closer to her mother’s family on the Jemez reservation.

“She was really hoping I think to turn things around … but you know, life doesn’t go according to plan,” Krupnick said.

Krupnick said her mother fell into the drug scene in Albuquerque, and got into legal trouble. By the time Krupnick was 6, her mother was facing charges of child abuse and neglect, and Krupnick was put into the foster care system, going between her mother and a group home at first, until it was determined she would be adopted.

At 7, Krupnick’s younger sister was born to an African American father. Though their mother had family on the Jemez reservation, she was not registered to the tribe. That meant Krupnick had legal kinship placement through her biological father’s Hopi side, but her half-sister had none.

 “That kind of made it complicated,” Krupnick said.

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 mandates that American Indian children should be adopted into American Indian families.

“Our legal case then became a question of, do we come from ICWA because it does apply to me and separate us, or do you keep us together? That’s why (adoption) took about a year, because we had to get my tribe involved.”

Until she was adopted at 10, Krupnick was placed in seven different foster care families, many non-tribal.

Stakeholders helped the girls’ team navigate through the hoops of the adoption process, and it was ultimately decided that Krupnick and her half-sister — who were very close — should be adopted together. However, a Native home that would take them as a package could not be found, so they were adopted into a white family.

“We were adopted and it opened up a whole new wave of different struggles,” Krupnick said. “Those first 10 years were just a struggle to survive, and then after adoption I feel like it was the first time I had processed any of the stuff that had happened before.”

Krupnick said although her adopted parents had the best intentions, she struggled with the disconnect from her culture and the struggle that many transracial adoptees — and regular adoptees —face.

“A lot of times in adoption cases like mine, once an adoption is closed, everything before that day in the child’s life is cut off,” Krupnick said. “Family, friends, schools, pets, home — all of that — it no longer looks the same.”

Krupnick got involved with the juvenile detention system at 14 for petty crimes like theft.

“I was a really angry teenager who kind of had an ‘I don’t know who’s driving’ period of life, (which) is not something uncommon to see in post adoptees,” Krupnick said. “(I was) living off of impulses and harmful decisions.”

At 16, Krupnick ended up at a residential treatment facility in Utah.

“I felt like for the most part, I was kind of given some space to kind of actually heal myself without the pressure (to also) fit into a new family,” Krupnick said. “I think that was what I really needed and I think I really thrived there.”

Krupnick graduated the program in 10 months and moved to a transitional/independent living program nearby before heading to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado.

“I showed up to college with two suitcases and that’s about it,” Krupnick said.

She paid for the majority of her schooling on her own, working as a student ambassador during the day between her classes, and a pharmacy technician at night. She majored in public health with a minor in psychology.

A taste of advocacy

Early on in her college career, Krupnick became a wellness peer advising counselor through a program called eMPAS.

“We focused on suicide and sexual assault prevention, both areas that I have struggled with,” Krupnick said. “(It) gave me a little taste of lived-experience advocacy, which I really enjoyed.”

Krupnick attributes the program to the start of her advocacy career, which started in 2018 with the Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) Program and Tewa Women United. She worked for the Casey Family Programs and won a national Casey Excellence for Children Alumni Award this year for her dedication to youth mentorship.

She still volunteers at CASA, now as the vice president on the board of directors, and volunteers on several other boards and programs while maintaining her full-time job as a Leadership Analyst for the New Mexico House of Representatives Majority Leader Representative Gail Chasey.

“I do a little bit of everything,” Krupnick said. “Everything from answering constituent concerns to serving as a child welfare specialist, vetting legislation, setting up meetings with stakeholders, helping with classifiers and going to community meetings.”

Krupnick said during legislative sessions, where she sits as senate liaison, she averages 16 hour days, but she loves the work and staying busy.

Cultural connection

 

Veronica Krupnick testified for U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland’s Supreme Court case, defending the Indian Child Welfare Act, in 2023. (Photo/Veronica Krupnick)

In spring 2023, Krupnick testified nationally during the Haaland vs. Brackeen Supreme Court case, which could have dismantled ICWA, but kept it intact after a 7-2 vote.

“I was using my voice as much as possible; I was speaking at summits, at rallies. I was writing op-ed pieces, all of that good stuff,” Krupnick said. “ICWA definitely became a really big part of my professional life and really I was trying to call the importance of keeping the adopted in Native communities, and in the worst case, if they are adopted outside of them, really working (to make sure) those children have a lifeline back to their culture and their community and those doors are open.”

In 2022, Krupnick played a role in establishing the Indian Family Protection Act (IFPA), New Mexico’s counterpart to the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

“It has things which the federal law doesn’t and is inclusive of what they call a cultural contract,” Krupnick said. ‘So that’s what is in the adoption decree … essentially saying if you are going to adopt this child from this tribe, this is the plan to keep this child connected to their culture and their connections.”

Krupnick is now helping to set up IFPA courts around the state, and said the first IFPA court has higher rates of success for adoption and foster youth than ICWA.

“I think (IFPA) gives clarity to the adopted parents and I think it gives the adoptee something to stand on,” Krupnick said. “If you are going to adopt this child you are going to take this cultural identity with them.”

Looking back, Krupnick expressed gratitude for the week-long visits to the Hopi reservation that her adoptive parents arranged. During these visits, she volunteered with the Red Feather program to help build houses. These experiences allowed her to form positive connections with other Hopi families and stay connected to her cultural heritage.

“My roots and my culture have been so foundational and so key to my healing that it always kinds of make me wonder — had those not been so distinctive, would it have been something that could have helped me?” she said.

She is now connected to her Hopi and Jemez family excluding her parents. She now has two other younger siblings on her mother’s side and four on her father’s. The half-sister she was adopted with is now 21, and the two are still as close as can be, roommates and dog moms in Santa Fe.

With the small amount of time Krupnick’s not working or volunteering, she relaxes by binging Netflix ‘junk food’ shows like Dancing with the Stars, The Bachelor and Bridgerton.

But she can’t help watching Law and Order and Criminal Minds, too.

“My brain apparently doesn’t like to turn off,” she laughed.