50 years of freedom
Taos Pueblo celebrates anniversary of return of sacred Blue Lake by U.S. government
TAOS — Taos Pueblo Tribal Councilor Gilbert Suazo said he couldn’t describe the joy he felt from being able to practice his Native religion unencumbered by outside control since a spiritual burden was lifted 50 years ago.
That’s when the federal government returned the Blue Lake watershed to his tribe.
“Now we don’t have to hide when we go up into the mountains,” said Suazo, a former Taos Pueblo governor. “Now, we can freely go where we want to go on our lands and not have to worry about getting arrested or prosecuted.”
Suazo and fellow tribal members conducted their first ceremonials in December 1970 after President Richard Nixon signed legislation returning Blue Lake to the people of Taos Pueblo.
However, many who started the 64-year journey to have the sacred lands returned never saw its end.
The tribe is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the historic act — more privately than initially planned, due to the COVID-19 pandemic — on Dec. 15. It was on that day in 1970 when Nixon, surrounded by government officials, politicians and tribal delegates, signed HR 471. The measure would have far-reaching implications for Taos Pueblo and other tribes.
“Blue Lake is not just another place — it’s a touchstone for Taos Pueblo to sustain and renew their sacred ancestral traditions among culturally significant wildlife and a beautiful landscape,” retiring U.S. Sen. Tom Udall said recently.
He said his father, the late Stewart Udall, who was a senator and former interior secretary, “strongly believed that Blue Lake and its surrounding lands belonged to and should be managed by people of Taos Pueblo — and that the federal government’s 1906 seizing of the lake and surrounding lands was ‘tragedy and disaster.’ “
An uphill battle
The Blue Lake struggle began in the early 19th century with a federal move to preserve forests for public use without respecting original claims by the first people on the land.
Suddenly, ancient ceremonies the people of Taos Pueblo had conducted at the site required a permit from forest officials.
Tribal members were prevented from freely hunting for game there, as they had for centuries, and were forced to accept that non-Indian visitors could camp, fish and use the area for timber cutting and possible mining.
From the beginning, it was an uphill battle to regain Blue Lake.
As word spread, however, allies emerged among the artists and writers in the nearby town of Taos. Led by East Coast art patron Mabel Dodge Luhan, who was married to a Taos Pueblo man, scores of sympathetic non-Natives wrote letters to key federal officials and spoke on behalf of the cause.
The federal government made an early attempt to compensate the tribe for its loss of Blue Lake. The late historian Marc Simmons wrote in a 2014 column published in The New Mexican that in 1924, the Public Lands Commission “offered $300,000 to Taos Pueblo to give up its ancient claims to the mountains and Blue Lake. The offer was refused.”
“The tribe agreed to grant Congress a 50-year special-use permit for 32,000 acres surrounding Blue Lake. The Forest Service, however, still had ultimate jurisdiction,” Simmons wrote.
Taos Pueblo sculptor John Suazo said the federal restrictions did not keep tribal members away from Blue Lake.
In the 1930s, he said, his grandfather Jim Suazo, Doroteo Samora and other men were hunting in the mountains above the pueblo, just as their fathers and grandfathers had done — but with greater care to leave no tracks for rangers to find.
That morning they bagged a deer, and as they were bringing it up the canyon, they noticed rangers coming down the trail. They hid and then decided to leave the mountain without the deer, he said.
Samora decided to stay with the deer but was captured by rangers during the night.
“They took him down on the other side, near Eagle Nest,” John Suazo said.
The forest rangers knew who was in the hunting party and came to the village to arrest Jim Suazo and the others.
“There was a big commotion, and the [tribal] governor didn’t want to turn them over to the rangers, but he had no choice,” John Suazo said. “They said it might endanger the Blue Lake situation. They had already entered the battle to get Blue Lake back.”
Samora pleaded innocent but was convicted and spent a year in the state penitentiary.
Taos author Frank Waters’ acclaimed 1942 novel, The Man Who Killed the Deer, was based on the incident and brought it to national awareness.
‘An Indian national cause’
During the struggle, many people, Native American and non-Native alike, supported Taos Pueblo in its efforts to regain Blue Lake.
According to Simmons, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy pledged his help in the 1960s. “Also joining were the National Council of Churches, the American Civil Liberties Union and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall,” Simmons wrote.
However, opposition began to grow amid the ranks of the Forest Service, sportsmen, the timber industry, conservation groups and the Taos community.
“They charged that the Taos Pueblo had engineered a national campaign based on ‘emotion, sympathy and sentiment,’ and that if a proposed bill to grant them 48,000 acres was passed, then other pueblos, as well as Apaches and Navajos, would initiate claims to national forest lands,” Simmons wrote.
It was the latter issue that drew the most fire from New Mexico’s powerful Democratic Sen. Clinton P. Anderson, who once told then Oklahoma Sen. Fred Harris, a sponsor of the Blue Lake bill, “I don’t mess with your Indians in Oklahoma, and you ought not to mess with mine in New Mexico.”
Native activist LaDonna Harris, a former wife of Fred Harris, told The Taos News in 2010, “Up to that time there had never been an Indian national cause. And we made it a national issue rather than just a local issue.”
Paul Bernal, an interpreter for tribal officials who only spoke their native language, Tiwa, helped convince Congress and other federal officials of the importance of their cause.
Bernal did a stint in the Navy, according to his niece, Blue Lake delegation member Carla Apachito. “And during that time in the Navy, he became acquainted with so many people, and he began to understand a little about what violation was taking place in our pueblo with our land and our spirituality,” she said.
She said her family had been active in the military, and “we were out there losing our lives and fighting for the good Old Glory of the United States. I think there was a magnificent transformation going on for Native people. We were becoming empowered.”
Her mother, Eloisa Bernal Apachito, was an Army veteran from World War II and a staunch supporter of the Blue Lake cause; she died in October at the age of 102.
New era in Native affairs
Nixon, elected in 1968, supported restoring Blue Lake to Taos Pueblo.
“It was the symbolic center of Nixon’s message,” pueblo attorney Jerry Straus said, “which really changed things in Indian affairs, ending the determination era — where many in the Congress felt the solution to the ‘Indian problem’ was to take away all their rights and make them like anybody else.”
Straus noted the return of Blue Lake was the first time land that had been taken from a tribe was returned without being paid for, “and this set a very important precedent because since that time literally millions of acres have been restored to tribes all over the country.”
Straus said Nixon’s stance on the issue was greatly influenced by a Native American football coach at Whittier College in California who had made a big impact on the president’s life.
Nixon mentioned the coach at the signing ceremony, Straus said.
Bobbie Green Kilberg, who was a 23-year-old White House fellow in 1969, said in a recent interview Nixon “had an abiding faith in the fact that we needed to do something to correct the wrongs that had been imposed on the Native Americans.”
Anderson’s opposition nearly destroyed the Blue Lake bill, however.
He threatened to withdraw his support for the president’s Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty if the Blue Lake bill moved forward. Nixon called his bluff, however, and maintained his position.
Kilberg said in response to Anderson’s threat, Nixon “used words you can’t print in your newspaper.”
The Senate passed HR 471 on Dec. 2, 1970, on a bipartisan vote, 70-12.
Kilberg said the normally staid decorum of the Senate gallery that day was interrupted when Taos Pueblo’s cacique, Juan de Jesus Romero, raised two traditional canes in triumph, prompting senators and the entire audience to stand and applaud. Kilberg burst into tears.
Nixon held a signing ceremony Dec. 15 in the East Room of the White House, which was decorated for Christmas.
The ceremony began with the cacique’s blessing in Tiwa, which Nixon later told Kilberg was “exceptionally meaningful.”
“This is a bill that represents justice,” Nixon said at the signing ceremony. “… This bill also involves respect for religion. Those of us who know something about the background of the first Americans realize that long before any organized religion came to the United States, for 700 years the Taos Pueblo Indians worshiped in this place. We restore this place of worship to them for all the years to come.”
Celebration postponed
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of Taos Pueblo in March to all but tribal members and some essential workers. The grand Blue Lake commemoration that had been planned for September was canceled and will be rescheduled for a future date, according to pueblo officials.
In lieu of a public event, the tribe sent letters about the anniversary to supporters, congressional and government officials, and many others. “Taos Pueblo, with its whole heart appreciates the support, the leadership, the prayers, the contributions, and the sacrifices that brought Blue Lake back to our people,” a statement from the governor’s office said.
Gilbert Suazo said remembering the return of Blue Lake is important for all who value Native rights. Most importantly, he said, he wants to ensure young people never take Blue Lake for granted or forget the long fight to get it back.
“A lot of our younger generation, they don’t know what our people went through and the anguish we [endured] from 1906 all up to 1970,” he said.
It’s easy to look up from the village and see the majestic peaks and verdant forests and assume they have always belonged to the tribe, Suazo added. “I want our younger generation to realize that the land that is there for them to enjoy had a hard history. I hope they will feel closer, more value for the land and feelings for the land, so in the future they will continue to protect it.”
This is an abridged version of a story that first appeared in The Taos News, a sister publication of the Santa Fe New Mexican.