Taos Pueblo || Free Taos Pueblo

Taos Pueblo is an ancient Tiwa American Indian village in the north of New Mexico, in the United States. The old adobe mud pueblo is very famous for its beauty and receives tens of thousands of visitors each year. It is arguably the most photographed American Indian dwelling in the world. It remains the longest continuously inhabited structure in the United States (about 1,100 years).

It receives thousands of visitors each year who pay a fee for entry, a seperate fee for photography. Estimated revenues at 2/3 million US dollars. The tourist visitations to the old pueblo has been the single force which created the wealthy culture of the town of Taos, six miles from the reservation. While the town has been made famous because of the pueblo, there are virtually no relationships between the town, the county, and the reservation. No one knows where the gate money goes at all.

Inside the shadows and behind the scenes of this public spectacle there are many problems. Poverty is the biggest one, followed by poor education, domestic and family violence, government corruption, financial mismanagement and a suppression of personal freedom unheard of, even for an American Indian Reservation.

The tribe is governed by an archaic system imposed by the Spanish Conquistadores in the 1600s, and never changed. A new Governor and full staff are appointed EVERY YEAR. They are appointed by an aging tribal council of 50 members, of which only a handful vote or propose actions. So every January this broken group of lost old men appoints the same family members over and over. 

These corrupt tribal officials who are in the middle of this situation have grown rich while everyone else on the Pueblo of Taos has nothing. The repression of the people in almost every basic human right is defended as being part of the historic tribal religion. However, other tribes who share the same religion ....there are 8 northern pueblos....have made the transition to a constitutional government without any religious conflicts at all.

Some years ago the Taos Pueblo opened a small casino. This unit brings in something like 4 million cash dollars that go in but no one knows where this money goes. It does not go to the tribal enrolled members. It does not go to education, health services or any known service for the members. We do know that the managers of this casino and the tribal leadership all have new and beautiful houses, new SUV vehicles to drive and show all the other signs of having a lot of money that they cannot explain.

The tribe charges entry fees to come into the pueblo grounds, and many people pay. One family controls this flow of cash, estimated to be several millions of dollars each year. No one ever sees where this money goes. The tribal members receive nothing.

The other Pueblo cultures in New Mexico have thrown out the old Spanish system and replaced them with a tribal constitution which elects leadership for 4 or 6 years and lets the entire membership vote on its leadership. Taos Pueblo does not do this. The leadership at Taos Pueblo does everything within its power to ensure that the people know nothing. It takes 70 per cent of the enrolled membership to present a petition to the US Government before it can intervene. Under present conditions at this Pueblo, it would be impossible for that number of people to organize themselves against the tribal government, without help.

The young people at Taos Pueblo have a 70 per cent fail rate in the school system. The tribe provides no education services or money to anyone. A Taos Pueblo male is 3 times as likely to die by homicide or alcohol related injuries than any other young people in the USA. These details are from a study commissioned and kept a big secret by the tribe. RISE members were able to find a copy and circulate it among a few people.

The list of problems is formidable. A few people on the reservation have tried with very little success to organize reforms in the tribe but have had little support and little success.

This bad leadership is composed of people with very little education, no work experience and poor leadership qualities The leadership is imposed upon the tribe and the membership has no say in who their leaders are. This has lead to a tragic failure in the services and quality of life for all the enrolled membership. It is a tragedy being acted out right in front of an indifferent ocean of tourists and a local Spanish culture dominated community and government that is indifferent to anything happening on the reservation. remember, this tribal community is in the United States.

To make matters worse, the tribal leadership issues no statements, conducts no interviews and will answer no questions. From anyone. If you call them to ask questions, they hang up the phone. If you write them, they put your mail unopened in the trash. They keep no records, and are accountable to absolutely no one.

I have a 35 year history of friendships and life in and around Taos Pueblo. In this document I will try and show an honest picture of what is going on at Taos Pueblo in 2008.

While many of the 19 New Mexico American Indian Pueblo villages have great programs to help their young people get an education, Taos has almost nothing...only a small and troubled school for the youngest children. In this school for children there are a few non-Indians and non Taos Pueblo Indians. Because of this the tribe refuses to offer classes in their native language, because they forbid the teaching of the language to anyone who is not of their tribe. Making their own native language secret means it cannot me made available to the children. It also cannot be made available to friends who might like to respect these tribal people enough to learn their own language. It is typical of the repressive and reactionary policies of a misguided and angry tribal leadership.

Zuni and Hopi Pueblos, for example have fantastic education for their members that starts early and goes with them all the way through professional college graduate studies. At Taos Pueblo there is not one official program to help even one child with education. Taos Pueblo teens drop out of the Spanish-culture dominated public school system at a rate of about 70 per cent.

The tribal leadership has refused to even consider educational programs. People who go to talk to the Pueblo Governor (for that single year) about these issues are never seen. Their letters are put unopened into the trash.

The telephone is impossible. Try it sometime.

In the year 2000 the tribe wanted to buy a hotel in the American town of Taos, which exists just south of the Taos Pueblo (six miles separates the two communities). This world-famous southwestern village has made millions and millions of dollars from providing services to the many visitors who come to visit the old American Indian village.

The towns people were bitterly opposed to an American Indian casino right up in the so-called historic and scenic (money) district of the town. There was tremendous resistance and the towns-people eventually prevailed. A small group of Taos Pueblo enrolled members started their own opposition group to the planned casino expansion and centered their organization around better educational opportunities for the Taos Pueblo young people. This came as a big surprise to the families of the corrupt leadership. Never before had any sort of organized statement against the bad leadership been made in a public place.

RISE was very supportive of the towns peoples efforts to stop the casino expansion. The towns-people welcomed and celebrated their support. RISE, meanwhile hoped that the towns people would help them in their struggles to improved education at the Pueblo and support them in the quest for reforms. However (surprise) as soon as the white townspeople won their fight to stop the casino expansion, they disappeared and no one has heard from them since. Very nasty and selfish they are. They are still there. Making money as you read this.

RISE tried to continue on its own. They raised money with silent auctions and gave most of this money in small amounts to young people going off to school. Local artists, including the author, donated fine art to help RISE raise this money. RISE reached out and made many public statements. The tribal opposition ignored them as much as they could.  They created quite a bit of interest and did a good job of showing how corrupt and unresponsive the tribal government has become at last.

After a few years RISE just collapsed when they allowed  the craziest person in their circle to set the agenda. This angry and disturbed older Taos Pueblo woman assumed leadership and so aggressively intimidated and confused everyone that RISE just collapsed and became ineffective. She was used shamelessly to generate copy and defective "insider information" for one lost and corrupt minor newspaper in the town (The Horsefly). Her behavior so alienated everyone that RISE just stopped and holds no meetings or takes no actions at all for a few years now.

Now there is no one organized in any way to seek reforms at Taos Pueblo. However, disappointment remains very high from most tribal members over the poor state of educational opportunities at Taos Pueblo. And the children continue to fail at alarming rates in the school in the town. And no one, except the children of the casino managers and the tribal governor, have any money or any hope to get a higher education.

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