Surviving Columbus Final Revision for 1st Hour

Surviving Columbus, the story of the Pueblo people now continues. Freedom gives life. Freedom is life. The Indian Pueblo Revolt of 1680 gave life. We exist today as Indian communities because of the Revolt. Now our Pueblo people knew it was the time to be patient and determined to be enduring. Now we the people were to keep struggling for the existence of all things in creation. The Pueblo Revolt brought 12 years of freedom for our people. But in 1692, Dandiego de Vargas visited the Pueblos with promises of peace and our leaders agreed to let the Spanish return.

Each year in Santa Fe, the so -called Peaceful reconquest of New Mexico was celebrated, complete with Indians dressed in Hollywood costumes and looking happy to see their concurs. Unfortunately, the real reconquest began when De Vargas returned with settlers, priests, and cannons. The coming of De Vargas back into New Mexico has been depicted as one of being a bloodless conquest. But we know different that De Vargas was just as brutal as Coronado and Oñate. However, we've managed to survive and I think there's a lesson there for all people in terms of enduring atrocities imposed on people.

The first thing that De Vargas did after a long night of siege of the Vial Rial de Santa Fe was to order some 80 Pueblo Indian warriors to be shot, summarily shot. And the remaining 400 mostly women and children were ordered to be partitioned out in Spanish families to serve as servants. Two years later, another revolt broke out, only to be put down by Governor De Vargas and his Pueblo allies. While individual Pueblos would continue to resist whenever their way of life was threatened, the Spanish had regained control, but they had also learned tolerance and respect for the Pueblo peoples. While the relationship to the Spanish improved, the world was

still violently out of balance. Once living Pueblos were now abandoned to the wind, a Pueblo world that once held 50 ,000 people and 100 Pueblos was reduced to 14 ,000 people and 22 Pueblos. The whole land is at war with the very numerous nations of the Heathen Apache Indians, who kill all the Christian Indians they encounter. No role is safe. The Apache's held themselves a danger like a people who know not God. Know that there is a hell. By the 18th century, violent raids had become all too common by other nomadic tribes, the Navajos, Yutes and the Fierce Comanche, who were

not only mounted on the descendants of Spanish horses, but armed with French guns. With the instruction of the horse, it just made it more difficult for the Pueblo Indians to secure their Pueblos from outside intervention. It enabled the mounted raiders to appear and disappear very quickly and make them highly efficient as raiders, as well as warriors. The Spaniards and Pueblo peoples needed to pull every resource at their command to protect themselves effectively. The need just based on survival for Pueblo people to not only defend themselves, but defend themselves very well. They grew among the northern Pueblos a class of warriors because of many, many different kinds of engagements which they

were called upon either individually or through acting as a part of the Spanish militia. The Teüas, especially and also the Teüas in northern New Mexico, became very well known for their fighting ability. The alliance between the Pueblos and the Spaniards after 1692 was in a way an alliance of convenience, I would say. In terms of protection against the Plains Indians or the Indians who were roaming the Yanostecado and the Plains, this forced the villagers and both villages, Indian as well as the Spaniards to come closer together. The alliance of Pueblo Indians and Hispanic farmers and ranchers would last into the 20th century, but its roots went far beyond the need for defense. I think the alliance between the Pueblo people and Spanish really was part of working with the land.

When the Spanish came to the southwest and found that there was no gold here or wealth, great riches to be had, they still had to survive, find a way to survive, and they really had to then cooperate or find out how the Pueblo people were doing it. The earth remains the symbol of the place where people connect. What was happening right after the revolt was a search for common ground, that common ground was found first primarily through trying to establish an understanding of each other's ways, and also finally or secondly through a process of coming new terms with living in this place, which is New Mexico, there was indeed a new kind of Spaniard,

primarily an individual who was looking indeed to make New Mexico their home. After the Spanish returned, they recognized Pueblo lands through a series of land grants. This legal recognition of our lands, the center places of our world, would be crucial to our existence in the centuries to come. Under the Spanish flag, we were well protected by under the loss of the Indies, which were Spanish policies. We were given land grants, which we still have today cannot be touched by any government. But reaching an accommodation with the church was far more difficult. The clergy and civil authorities still sought to replace our traditional beliefs with Christianity. Again, there was a reassertion of Catholicism

and the pressure to convert a number of different Pueblos attempted to convert outwardly and yet at the same time practice their own traditional native religious practices as they had always done. And that of course varied from Pueblo to Pueblo. Each Pueblo evolved and developed their own kinds of strategies in relationship to the specific kinds of things that they were faced. We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, even to this day my grandmother will recite the Catholic prayers in Spanish. She'll say them in Spanish like before she goes to sleep. But yet my grandmother will go to the Kiva and she'll dance when she really

wants to pray, she prays in Indian, she prays in Tiva. One of the things that we can be thankful for is a foresight of what our forefathers did to take our religion underground so that what we know of today, what has been preserved, our language, our ritual, our ceremonialism, our sons, that they took all of that underground and developed a level of secrecy that still is very much a part of our way of life so that much of what takes place as the most meaningful in our lives ceremonially is often close to the public, is often performed at nights. While the public peoples and most Hispanic settlers depended on subsistence agriculture, there was money to be made in Yamexico through trade,

trade with the same Comanches, Apaches and Navajos, whose attacks threatened the colony's survival. Every autumn, a great trade fair was held outside of Taos Pueblo. Human beings were one of the most important commodities at these trade fairs. In 1776 the going rate for an Indian girl between 12 and 20 years old was two horses and a blanket. Young men were substantially cheaper. The Comanches would take captives, Pablo, men and women and they used people as a sort of medium of trade with the Spanish for goods that they wished to obtain. In many times they would trade with planes tribes for the captives that the planes tribes held. Those captives were then inducted into the Spanish

households and this really is where the Hinasito and Mastiso population begin to blossom in Yamexico during that century. Historically, Hanesados have referred to the tribalized Indians Indians that were captured and ransomed by the Spaniards and brought into Yamexico and placed in mission communities, select mission communities throughout the state and these are those are Indians that settled into permanent communities but they bridged two worlds, the Hispanic world and the Indian world. Most Pablo's had achieved a stable relationship with the Spanish government, the Catholic Church and their Hispanic and Hinesaro neighbors. This stability ended in 1821 with Mexico's independence. While the Mexican period was short, it was marked with the laws of Pablo lands.

The Mexican period for all intents and purposes was a very dire period of time for Pablo people because of the change in the way that Pablo people viewed and also with regard to the way in which Pablo lands were handled. They were no longer looked upon as being special and as they had been with regard to the case of the Spanish colonial laws and that period of time, they were viewed as being just the same as any other Mexican citizen. In some ways the selling of land or the loss of land began to really occur extensively. dissatisfaction with the Mexican government was not

restricted to the Pablo's and in 1837 an alliance of Pablo leaders, Hinesaro's and Hispanics, flamed into armed rebellion in Santa Cruz and Chimayo. The revolt was crushed. It's a Nistoro leader Jose González, who for one brief moment had been New Mexico's only Indian governor was executed. But the conflict between rich and poor would continue and would become even more severe after the Americans invaded New Mexico in 1846. Well I'm very lucky to have a grandmother who listened to many of the stories of her grandparents and her great grandparents. One time when I was a little girl I went into her bedroom and I saw a saint and it's always the saint that I thought was the ugliest because it was well you know when you're a child it was kind of

burned out looking and you can't really see the face and you can't see the eyes but it's a figure of a saint and and I asked my grandma is it how come this saint looks so ugly how come you keep it and you have all these other saints and she told me that that was the saint that was thrown out of the church during the rebellion of 1847. The rebellion of 1847 that took place here at Taos Pueblo was a result of our Taos Pueblo people here having very strong feelings regarding the imposition of a different way of life again here and this part of the country. Our Taos Pueblo leadership here took a very serious stand about to take over by the United States government of this area. The last armed struggle of the Pablo peoples began in January 1847 under the leadership of Tomas Romero from Taos Pueblo.

At dawn a group of Pablo men, Hispanics and Hinesaros, surrounded the house of the American governor. Instead of fleeing with his family the governor stayed only to be killed and scalped by the angry crowd. Five more Americans in Taos died that day and as the news spread so did the rebellion to a loyal hondo, mora and other parts of New Mexico. Armed with artillery and modern guns the U .S. Army set off from Santa Fe to answer this challenge to American authority. In battles at La Canyada and Ambudo a poorly armed group of Pablo men and Hispanic farmers was easily defeated and forced to flee back to Taos and the fortified Pablo which had protected them so many times from command she raids. The Americans were not intimidated by the thick adobe walls. They surrounded the Pablo and deployed their artillery and began to reduce the village to rubble.

Many of the women and the children here to refuge within the interior of the and the large Pablo structures. Tunnels were dug from one room to another in order to get to the deeper part of the village as the soldiers stormed the walls of the village. On the second day the defenders gave up and sent the women and children to the church but any hopes of sanctuary were quickly dispelled by cannon fire. And so when the soldiers came in there was a lot of fighting that occurred, fighting broke out and somebody set the church on fire. They started throwing the sands out because they didn't want the sands to burn and one of my aunts or one of my other uncles caught that saint and that's how we had that saint. Over

150 people died and the Taos revolt ended. The American conquest of New Mexico was complete. The religious leaders were taken to Santa Fe under the pretense of negotiations and talks with the representatives of the United States government. Our people never saw these religious leaders again. These men were all hung by the neck until the in Santa Fe. The American conquest of New Mexico did have one benefit, a respite from violent raids by nomadic tribes which allowed the public population to increase once again after reaching its lowest level in history in 1850. Seven thousand survivors in a world that once contained

50 ,000 people. Unfortunately the practice of Indian slavery was accepted and continued by the Americans even after the civil war and the freeing of the slaves. American progress finally made an impact on New Mexico. Mining towns popped up overnight. Forests were cut down to build houses and Hamas Pueblo lost its mountains. The transcontinental railroads linked the nation and cut pueblos in half. Let's go up and get you know all the half to ride horses. I used to heard horses in town along the railroad. I was in my house to see passenger crinkum. I used to gallop over there with my horse as they go right alongside the railroad and when people start waiting and I have a long hair

and everything I wore was handmade and I have always killed bull in my back to ride around the side of the railroad but there's those people too. Look at that really Indian I guess is it. The influx of people following upon the railroad and even before also served to reduce the land base of the Pueblo peoples have been accustomed to using a lot of pueblos of which had traditionally been left alone to grace or horses and cattle their stock. On certain areas lost those areas to the aggressive expansionist activities and policies of new ranchers. Along the real grand the new Anglo -American immigrants pushed Hispanic farmers off their

lands. U .S. courts did accept the old Spanish land grants to the Pueblos and to their Hispanic neighbors. All that was required was a simple survey and a review of the grant. A simple procedure that was used to defraud the Pueblo people and Hispanics out of hundreds of thousands of acres. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo theoretically ended the Mexican -American War and as provisions of the Treaty the rights of the Pueblo people were to be protected and respected just as they had been under the government of Mexico. The Pueblos were legal citizens but there were some disadvantages because we were not recognized as American Indians under the 1834 Trade and Intercourse Act. This was an act which was proposed for other Indian tribes to protect them against land speculators and traders. The court

encouraged the non -Indians to settle into the within the exterior boundaries of the Indian Pueblos. In our case up here there were something like 3 ,000 non -Indians who squattered on Indian land and they really refused to give up and to go out off the reservation even if they were asked. The government not only stood by as our lands were taken but actively joined in the theft. In 1906 President Roosevelt created the Carson National Forest. Its heart was the Taus Pueblo's sacred blue lake. Our people belonged to Mother Earth just like the trees, the living

things, the water, the mountains, everything is a part of Mother Earth. Blue Lake is a part of the land that our people have used and occupied for hundreds and hundreds of years. It is a link to our origin, a link to our past. At the first snow, one winter in 1893, a white man came and took all of us on a train to a new kind of village called Carlisle Indian School and I stayed there seven years. They told us that Indian ways were bad. They said we must get civilized. I remember that word, it means be like the white man. It was a warm summer evening when I got off the train at Taus Station. The

first Indian I met, I asked him to run out to the Pueblo and tell my family I was home. The Indian couldn't speak English and I had forgotten my Pueblo language. All this time, I was a white man. I wore white man's clothes and kept my hair cut. I was not very happy. The federal government decided that maybe they did have some responsibility for educating Indians to become Americans. So they built these boarding schools removed for the most part from reservations and brought children there, severed from their parents and to get them away from their own cultural influences and make them into little Americans. In those experiments, especially in the

1880s, when the Daus Act said we will detribalize Indians and I think Theodore Roosevelt put it well. He said the Daus Act was like a mighty machine at pulverized family and culture. The manifest destiny of the nation has moved up to and sometimes over or through Indian people. Like the Spanish before them, the American conquerors decided that Pueblos could only progressive our religion was eradicated. A new wave of missionaries was unleashed. Only this time they were Protestants and rather than missions, they built schools to teach our children how to speak English and reject the ways of their mothers and fathers as pagan, bestial and half animal. When the Americans began to settle in with their own mission of civilizing Indians and making good little Christians, so by

1860s they decided to bring the missionaries who were apparently in competition with each other, different kinds of denominations, in competition with each other to see, to get their own territory of Indians to civilize and Christianize. Oh, my father sang, you know, he was singing all the time and so he said one day, one day there was this young, young women missionaries coming with a little box. He said and it was a big troll. And so my mother went to the door and and that she said I'm sorry about wear Catholics and so that my father said, oh, let them come in. Let them come in. They have a music box. I like to hear music. He says, let them come in and we're not going to be contaminated. If we didn't know any better, we might, you know, we

might turn and so then she let them in and so that they started playing that little music. And of course, I said, he said, I liked it. He said, I said, listening to to the music and they were talking to us about, about, you know, God and and of course, they they don't understand that we know God more than they do. At the beginning of the 20th century, our lands, our religion, and even our children were all under attack. The modern world with all its wonders and problems began to invade once isolated publics. The myth of the vanishing American Indian was created. It was only a matter of time they said before native cultures were swept away by the march of progress. The

modern world had arrived at our doorsteps in trains, cars, and tourist buses. As anthropologists, photographers, and visitors flocked to see our quaint customs before they disappeared. But our people refused to vanish because they knew the beauty of the public way of life. Generosity, unselfishness is one of the greatest values that our Indian people taught. And especially in my family because my mother and father always say, never refuse a strange or never refuse a person when they come to the house. Those are the things that we had before Columbus came, before education was put upon us. And those are the things that I call surviving Columbus. Some of the best moments of my childhood were when I knew that feast day was coming. And all

this activity would be going on, and I would of course have to be a part of helping to make the bread and sweeping the yard and sweeping the plaza, helping to plaster, bring the mud. But when the day finally came, I would get this wonderful sensation of walking through the crowds, hearing the sound, hearing the beat of the drum. Whether we wanted it or not, the U .S. government decided that our culture, our heritage would have to be destroyed before we could progress. More boarding schools were built so that all children would be forced to learn the white man's ways and forget those of their parents. We went to a school at Albuquerque Indian School or Santa

Fe Indian School, some went to Haskell and other places. Many of us were taken away from home during the time when our culture was at its strongest peak. Many of the elders were still living. And I feel that by being away from home, we lost out on many of the teachings that our elders would pass on to the people during the wintertime. Yes, there were some negative things happening in the Indian schools because a lot of them were not allowed to talk the Indian language and punished very severely for speaking them if they were caught speaking the language. I went to the day school here in San Juan and then from 5th grade we get sent to the boarding school in Santa Fe. Then I entered Santa Fe boarding school. I didn't

like that at all. Night time is when it was lonely. When you go to bed, you have nice clean sheets waiting for you, a nice bed. But there's no grandfather, there's no grandma there to sit on their lap and listen to the stories. Columbus goes back to Europe and claims that he found a new world. What right did Columbus have to make such a claim? Or what proof did he have that it was a new world that he found? This world was not lost. Our principal needs today are that you eject all non -Indian trespassers off our lands. Instead of reimbursing the Indian for what land the non -Indian holds, why not reimburs the non -Indian trespasser

and make him get off? He knows that he is holding land illegally, only you know that he won't vote for you if you don't kick us into submission. The U .S. government had taken more than 60 years to realize that we were Native Americans and entitled to the protection of our lands and water rights. It would, however, ignite a legal store. Another threat that was faced by the public people came in the 1920s in the form of the rights of squatters on football lands. It would leave squatters both Hispanic and Anglo right where they were by legalizing their rights to the lands they were living on. If it had been uncontested and gone on through the Congress

and been signed into law, it would have probably met the end of public culture. The failure of Protestant missionaries to eliminate Native religions led to yet another assault on Pablo Life, the religious crimes code. In direct violation of the Constitution, the U .S. government made our religion illegal. Until the old customs and Indian practices are broken up among these people, we cannot hope for a great amount of progress. The secret dance is perhaps one of the greatest evils. What goes on I will not attempt to say, but I firmly believe that it is little less than a revolts system of debauchery. Our most fundamental right is threatened and is actually being nullified. Our religion is sacred and is more important to us than anything else in our life. The religious

beliefs and ceremonies and forms of prayer of each of our Pueblos are as old as the world and they are holding. We Pueblo Indians have not consented to abandon our religion. The government was tempering with something very deep and sincere in the minds of the Pablo people because the religion, ceremonies and dances are at the heart of who we are. If you start messing with that people are going to take care of themselves and protect themselves. So very often what happens is the intent is one thing but the result is just the opposite because it just forces people to clam up even more to guard themselves even further than ever before. The leadership of the All -Indim Pueblo Council and widespread public support defeated these threats

and by the 1930s the policy of the Bureau of Indian Affairs under John Collier had changed. For the first time the BIA admitted that it was good and honorable to be in Akhama, Azuni, a Hopi. But at the same time the Bureau of Indian Affairs tried to impose its political system and federal rules and regulations on our way of life. Out here at Laguna that was a time that they recall when their sheep had to be driven into pits and slaughtered because of the drought that occurred but in their own minds they were able to manage that drought and by rotation of the sheep through various pasture lands but somebody else came in and posed certain quotas and limitations on grazing capacity that were external but yet they had to live with them so that was a great period, a great time of devastation. My grandfather used to always

talk about the survival of Indian people and he would always say that there's no question that we as Indian people are going to survive but the more important question that we should be asking ourselves is how and that our answer to that how is the extent to which we continue to maintain the rights and powers of a sovereign entity. Like other Native Americans the public peoples defended the United States in its wars. At home women and children pitched in to support the boys in the front and the war effort. On Bhutan I was with the 31st Infantry Regiment. We were ambushed, machine gun started firing all around us and we hit the ground.

By the time I looked up there were Japanese guards all around us with their rifles pointed at us and then they walked us. We walked the group I was with for three days. We walked and walked and walked I came back we could not vote and then I asked myself why did we go why did they accept so many Indians drafted you might say to be in the armed forces when there are still awards when we are still awards of the government. We had hoped that World War II would end all possibilities of other wars but it didn't come out that way and I thought that if any of our boys had

to go to other wars they should have to write to vote for the people who sent them out there. We had to sue the state of New Mexico before we got the right to vote in 1948 but the changes set in motion by World War II would have an even more profound impact on the Pueblo world. The Pueblo people paid an additional price to defend the country. Lands from San Adafanzo Pueblo were taken to create Los Alamos National Laboratory, the top secret research center which developed the atomic bomb. Uranium was discovered at Laguna Pueblo and bulldozers, earth movers, and dynamite created a vast pit mine. When the armed forces veterans came

back return home in the absence of farming people began to work outside of the Pueblos. Los Alamos was established as a wartime project, the Manhattan Project, so at least for the northern Pueblos a large number of Pueblo people began to work at Los Alamos, both men and women. Many had sold their livestock during the uranium boom because they, I guess, couldn't handle livestock and a full -time job, so now often I hear, I wish I hadn't sold my livestock. I envy you because you still have livestock, but that was another thing that the old -timers used to tell us, don't ever sell your livestock because it's food on your table and clothes on your back when the going gets tough. In the 1950s, the

U .S. government attempted to terminate its treaty responsibilities for all tribal people and turn administration over to the states. At the same time, the Bureau of Indian Affairs began a program to relocate Indians to urban centers across the country. I have an uncle who was part of that relocation program who has lived in Oakland for over 40 years. Their feeling at the time was that they were going to do the best they could for their children, but one of the devastating outcomes of that is the offspring has rejected their parents and are very bitter towards their parents because they never gave them an opportunity to learn about coachity, never having an opportunity to learn the language. I think that until the 1970s, not only Indian policy, but the federal government, but in a way the reality of making a living or finding a way to stay in the pueblo was very

difficult. Policy said, go away, 1950 it was, we take you away with the relocation and termination policies. The U .S. government's efforts to destroy native cultures finally ended in the 1970s with the recognition that we were capable of determining our own destinies. The return of Tows' Blue Lake marked the first time the U .S. government actually gave land back to a native people rather than just providing compensation. This victory kept a 60 -year -long struggle by a community determined to maintain its sacred relationship to the land.

It wasn't until the 1970s that Blue Lake was finally giving back to the Tows Indians. It was a time of celebration. I remember seeing my grandmother crying and my grandfather crying in the house. It was at night when we heard the story and heard the news and they were crying and they said we never have to worry about people desecrating our area. I remember my older brother and I, David, we are flashing the lights off and on on the porch light because we were so happy. Blue Lake, a symbol of perseverance because indeed this was a very strong symbol of a people enduring great hardships, great difficulties and persevering in what they wanted done in a way of justice for our people, justice for Indian people. While the sacred Blue Lake was returned,

other sacred areas were taken. The Akima people have come to worship in the starkly beautiful lava flow of the Melpai since our publa was built over a thousand years ago. Yet in 1987 these sacred places were made part of a national park and exposed to the influx of tourists. Land is critical to the survival of the publa people in this day and age because as elders have put it, unless we can bequeathed to the children a place on which they may plant their feet as well as their crops or whatever they want to plant, then the community will dissolve, then they'll scatter like leaves in the autumn. For centuries, our ancestors have successfully defended our culture, religion and lands against the

attacks of the Spanish, Mexican and American governments. But today, we face perhaps our greatest challenge, how to maintain our existence as publa people in a rapidly changing world, replete with alcohol, drugs, aids, urban encroachment and television. At the same time, the traditional roles of publa women are changing as they too enter the workforce. When I was growing up as a child, I remembered that the role of a woman being in a home, being the nurture, taking care of the family. But as time changes, I see women getting more involved in the working field, getting education and

because of social economics, we have more single parents that need to get out and work. Now we have more women working in the publa here. The role of the women has changed drastically with times, even the education that women have gotten and the career that they want. And then to try to be a part of Indian life, it's a very difficult role to have. It's extremely critical that Indian women hold on to and maintain our lives that involves the traditional aspect of being Indian. Because if we don't, then we're going to lose it completely because the woman is the most important part of the home when it comes to the teaching of children. And if we're going to have our children continue this way of life, then

it's up to us as mothers and teachers to instill our proudness of our children. At the same time, traditional family roles are changing. Our culture is also being threatened by an even more severe problem, the loss of our native languages. Language has been lost by the people. And when that happens, we have to worry and wonder about how long our traditional dances, our songs and our prayers will continue to survive. But qualities that help the public to survive with their culture up till today is first religion, their native religion. And in order to have their native religion, they have to have a language. So these are the two outstanding qualities that help the public to survive, religion

and language. You need one to operate the other. It's very hard to be from a community where language is so important, where custom and tradition are so important and not to be a part of it, not to have grown up in it, to not know the language that was really difficult. I talked to my mother about this because I would ask her about language. I would ask her, what are they saying when they say those, when they pray? And she would try to explain it to me and then she would say, I don't know the words. She said, that's, that's, um, she's, I know what they mean, but I can't explain it in English. And she said, I don't even think I could explain it in my own language because those are words that are so special that they feel awkward in my mouth. I

think they can learn, I think they can learn how to pray the right way in Indian and I want them to if they can. It actually feels good because I feel that I'm learning it and it just comes to you. We have to say it too. We can't. Worsandia, Pueblo Indians and if we don't grow up speaking it, it's like our, it's our responsibility to learn. I think for a long time there's been this expressed fear by tribal elders that somehow we were losing something that as they were pushing their children to get educated, they were the same time sacrificing their

own tradition, their language, their culture. I know it would be very sad for me if they do lose the culture but I still want for them to carry it on and that's one of the reasons why I try to reinforce this in the classroom. If they can't get it at home, they surely can get it here at school. If we just maintain to carry our language, carry our cultural practices that we still can survive next 500 years, that we still can go beyond that to carry our identity but it's entirely really up to us. Nobody has a part to come and destroy our culture and do away our language and if we only carry this idea not back and off, not given up life, not

shunning anything, the kids still can survive in time to come because we are unique people all the way through history and we still have to look forward to carry this. And so we find ourselves on the eve of the consent tenio faced with some of the greatest challenges that Indian people have ever faced over the last 450 years and that is how we survive into the 21st century. It makes me very proud to have the heritage that I do have because I feel that my people were opposed to Spanish colonization later on. US intrusion makes me very proud that my people think that their culture and their traditions are so important. I don't consider myself

a citizen of the United States, I don't consider myself a citizen of New Mexico, I am a Taos Indian and that's what I am, that's my nationality, we were to call it a nationality and I am very proud of my history of resistance, very proud of that history of resistance. My hope for a lot of people is that we're going to be here in a thousand years, still very clear and very strong on who we are and why we are. It's mainly that the celebration of humanity will still be very much a part of our prayers. There is hope. It is in what past generations of our people have always said. As long as we keep believing in and living by the ways of our people, we will continue. As long as the story of our struggles, which is

like the story of all people who deeply love and respect themselves and their culture, community and land is told, we the people will continue. Even after 450 years, the encounter of the Pueblo peoples with white men's culture continues. What will be our children's future is unknown. Still, we have a genius of enduring, of surviving the descendants of Columbus. Oh, oh, oh, oh,

oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh gözsho个丸情生活 Let them know, ask for their support This programme has been provided by The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the financial support of viewers like Thank you. Additional funding has been provided by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium.