Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

In a parallel development, the Pueblos continued their vigorous battles for land and water rights, which often conflicted with Hispano land claims. Land tenure, along with water rights, without exception remain the major political and social issues of northern New México. Federal land comprises 30 percent of the state, or 25.7 million acres, most of it the result of the settlement of Hispano land grants. These forested areas, lava beds, and mountains are all areas that Pueblos traditionally considered sacred and contain particular sites of ritual; they are analogous to what Christians call churches and cathedrals and pilgrimages. The various federal agencies—Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and others police the lands and create barriers to Pueblo traditional usage. Meanwhile, without much attention paid by the Alianza, Pueblos in New México were continuing their ceaseless claims to land and water, with Taos Pueblo winning a major victory in 1970, thanks to decades of pressure bolstered by the Native rights movement and the more militant Red Power movement. After more than a half century of litigation, mass struggle, and congressional debate, forty-eight thousand acres of land, including Blue Lake, were returned to Taos Pueblo, land and water sacred to the Taos people that had been appropriated by the United States Forest Service as the Carson National Forest in 1906. The victory of Taos was one of the few instances of land being returned t...