BLUE LAKE RETURN
Taos Pueblo story of self-determination win goes worldwide
more effectively expended if the people who are most affected by these programs are responsible for operating them,” Nixon said before Congress.
Attorney Jerry Straus worked with Taos Pueblo for the return of Blue Lake in 1969 and 1970. He said forced termination “really was more of a land grab,” and self-determination “transformed Indian affairs.”
“Tribes have run these programs in a far better way than the bureaucrats ever did,” he said.
Right thing to do
Straus said Taos Pueblo had a special role in the policy shift, as monetary compensation for lands taken by the federal government had been the unvarying rule prior to Blue Lake’s return. He said people rallied behind Taos Pueblo’s cause because returning Blue Lake was the right thing to do, adding that the issue led to the formation of the “strangest coalition” of political leaders that was able to overcome even Sen. Clinton Anderson’s objections – despite New Mexico being Anderson’s home state.
“Even he lacked the power to stop this,” Straus said. “It became a story all over the world. People had just been carried away by this message.”
Straus said the return of the 48,000-acre Blue Lake area to Taos Pueblo symbolized the idea of “dramatic change in Indian policy” nationally.
“I don’t know that any of it would have been without Blue Lake. That was like a test case,” he said. “(Nixon) picked that tribe, Taos Pueblo, to receive the message for tribes all over the country.”
Following the taking of Blue Lake by presidential order in 1906, members and nonmembers of Taos Pueblo alike fought for decades for the area’s return. Those who supported Taos Pueblo faced the unique challenge of defending the pueblo’s exclusive use of the area while not revealing details about how it was used.
According to a memorandum prepared by the pueblo’s former special attorney William Schaab in consultation with Tribal Council, the return of Blue Lake was necessary for the preservation of religious privacy and natural ecology. It states that Blue Lake, as the source of the Río Pueblo, is “symbolically the source of all life” and the “retreat also of souls after death.”