Taos Pueblo, an ancient tribal village || A designated UN World Heritage Site
Population. US Census 2005, 1,500 individuals. Probably closer to 2,000.
frequently updated (all photographs and art by the author ©2008)
(above || Taos Pueblo at high noon, June 19,2001. Photo by the author (©). This big house (called the "North House" is about 1,100 years old and has been continuously inhabited until quite recently. Now very few people actually sleep or stay in the old pueblo. The rooms that open onto the main plaza are operated as tourist shops.
Taos Pueblo || People of the Red Willow || Poverty, Corruption, Isolation
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.
Taos Pueblo is a World Heritage Site, listed near the top of their most prized list.. As such it makes an international agreement to preserve its structures in a traditional way. However, in recent years all the repairs and new building on the pueblo is from outside workers using modern materials. This is a complete violation of the charter which the pueblo signed with the International World Heritage Foundation.
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.
Education Vacuum and Resource Poverty at Taos Pueblo
left || Late "Strawberry Jim, a much beloved and respected
Taos Pueblo elder of the last generation. He would be broken-
hearted to see how things are going in his beloved community.
My friend for many years at Taos Pueblo. ©2008
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.
left || large display advertisement run in the local press for some weeks by the tribal membership at Taos Pueblo.
Residents In Support of Education
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.
left || Home of Jonathon Warmday, artist and writer at Taos Pueblo.
Photo by the author. ©2008.
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.
If this situation existed in an American city there would investigations, prosecutions, revelations in the press and generally hell to pay. The most important newspaper in the village almost completely ignores the Taos Pueblo. The newspaper (Taos News) is dominated completely by its Spanish culture managers and no love is lost between these ancestors of the Conquistadores and the Taos Pueblo Indians. We are left with a situation where the tens of thousands of visitors to the Pueblo and to the economy of Taos County know nothing, perhaps even less than nothing. Meanwhile the children wait, and fall, and bleed. The Taos News will cover their suicides and their homicides. On the front page. Along with the full color advertisement for the Taos Mountain Casino.
World Heritage Site -- Fail !!
Taos Pueblo has been listed as a world heritage set for many years.
The problem with this is that the uneducated, brain-dead and selfish leadership clique, which has been in charge since they built the casino, is violating all the rules and policy required by the World Heritage Foundation to maintain their status honestly.
In recent years none of the fat, lazy pueblo boys in the leadership families do their traditional work on the pueblo mud. Today they hire Mexican immigrant workers, who know nothing about the old pueblo. They use cement and power tools to restore and repair the old structures, instead of traditional adobe. This is strictly forbidden by the religious rules of the pueblo, as well as the bylines of the World Heritage Foundation.
At this point, most of what is said about the Taos Pueblo in the World heritage program is no longer true.
At this point the leadership, for the last 15 years, is so corrupt and lazy, most of them can barely sign their name or make a complete sentence. Truly, the leadership at Taos Pueblo have become fat, useless, stupid and morally indifferent to their own culture and relatives. After so many generations of excellence, it is tragic that the present leadership has lost its way, and seems proud of it.
World Heritage Site: Taos Pueblo. Fail. I hope those in position to understand and act upon these matters will pay attention. Someday.
Fall Equinox, 2009.
No Voice
The only dissenting voice for reform at Taos Pueblo was a group called RISE, lead by a famous stone carver at the pueblo. After a few years of trying to stand up (and being ignored) the RISE membership has gone back to sleep….cowed by poverty, indifference and random intimidation by the leadership….and sabotaged and destroyed within by a fat old, crazy Taos Pueblo woman named Gladys……of whom the RISE men are absolutely terrified. The cowardice of these men in refusing to stand up to this crazy woman destroyed RISE, plain and simple. Today it is nothing.
There is not a single voice active now. It is like the situation of a dog that has been abused so often, he just curls up and goes to sleep in an unnoticed corner. There are a lot of Taos Pueblo citizens asleep and dreamless in lives of poverty, isolation and indifference. While the tens of thousands of visitors to the poor Taos Pueblo continue to poor in, not one of them has a clue about what is going on right in front of them. The tourists get to "see an Indian up close", so that is all they care about I guess.
Life and Death
In a recent study by a psychologist (2002), the leading cause of death for young people at Taos Pueblo is homicide, drug-related death, and suicide. A Taos Pueblo child is 90 times more likely to fail in school than the rest of the population. The town of Taos has no American Indian teachers in the school. the tension between the Latino population and the American Indian children is severe….supported at home by the racist attitude of the Hispanic majority's parents and a Hispanic controlled local government.
The tribal government has no program to help in violence, poverty or education. perhaps alone among the more famous American Indian tribes, taos Pueblo has no program at all to help the children advance in school, go to university or funding of any job training, at all. Zero. Nothing.
the tribe receives an undisclosed amount of money from their casino. They receive 4-6 million dollars from the tourist entry fees each year, and an enormous amount of Federal dollars. No one knows where this money goes. There are essential NO PROGRAM AT ALL to help tribal members do anything. meanwhile the families of the leadership have new and expensive SUV, beautiful, spacious expensive homes and the finest clothes. Everyone else has nothing.
There is tremendous ned for the Federal government to investigate this pueblo. While the Federal government is legislated by congress to conduct oversight on American Indian reservations, the situation at Taos Pueblo is completely invisible to the Federal authorities. It would require a petition signed by seventy percent of the enrolled membership to force the US Government to initiate reform. This will never happen.
frequently updated
Anonymous
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Corruption in Many Pueblos in NM
As an enrolled member, when I finally was able to get financial aid from my pueblo, the process was so abusive. It ended my daughters in jail for entering into their own tribal lands for making complaints. It caused bia and near tribes to help with the harassment. My story may be more than tribal corruption, but nevertheless, it is real and can no longer be tolerated.
I feel for those who are dependent upon their tribal lives as they deserve to be taken care of. I am less than 1/4 Native American and I have been forced into this culture of which now I despise. Perhaps the day will come when a solution can be made, but what is that solution, for now, there is not one. For now, they are forgotten and will only get worse until those of us who are willing to speak for them... as yourself and myself. I hope that this is not another form of genocide in the making... but it looks clearly like it is and that is a shame.
Tribal Corruption is real and oppression is alive to this modern date and those in power, refuse to see what they are being set up for. I can no longer tolerate it.