Pueblos Seek to Retain Culture and Create Jobs

Chris Ahmie used to commute each day between his past and his future--his Indian world on the Laguna Pueblo and his Anglo workaday world in nearby Albuquerque.

For years, Ahmie’s ancestors had kept the two worlds separate. The half-dozen pueblos bordering the city on three sides remained islands of traditional ways amid the Sun Belt boom, preserving their culture by resisting the encroaching development.

But no longer.

Several of the pueblos are slowly beginning to develop, searching for ways to replace lost federal aid and keep younger tribal members on the reservation while still preserving traditions and culture.

Ahmie supervises 70 other tribal members on an assembly line churning out military communications equipment for a tribal-owned manufacturing business. “People realize that you need employment on the reservation so people will stay on the reservation,” he said. “Some people might think this is taking away from our culture, but I think it enhances our cultural ways because it keeps people here.”

“We’re seeing tribes come out of a 400-year shadow and step into the economic spotlight,” said Jerry Folsom, regional credit officer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. “They’ve been in contact with Europeans for 400 years and basically kept to themselves. Now they’re being forced to step out.”

Albuquerque is virtually surrounded: To the east, mountains block growth. In three other directions, an Air Force base and sovereign Indian lands dating back as far as 10,000 BC hamper expansion of the city--a newcomer, comparatively, since it was established in 1880.

Despite the recession, pressure to develop on the pueblo lands continues to mount, since Albuquerque already is pushing up against its limits.

At some pueblos, especially those bordering the city on its fast-growing north side, developers drop in with proposals every week and new plants are built right up to the Indian fences.

“There’s tremendous pressure for development because we do have land,” said Neil Smith, real estate officer for the Sandia Pueblo.

Besides land, tribes around Albuquerque have two other precious commodities today--vast water rights and available capital, whether in the form of cash in the tribal treasury or the ability to borrow from commercial banks with the backing of government guarantees.

In June, the Santa Ana Pueblo, also a Northside neighbor, opened a $4.36-million golf course near the stylish nouvelle cuisine restaurant it already owns. A 10-acre hotel project is in the planning stages, and a proposal to build a velodrome complete with Japanese-style betting on professional bicycle races cleared the New Mexico Legislature and won Gov. Bruce King’s approval.

For every dollar Santa Ana receives in federal aid, the tribe now brings in $2 through its own enterprises.

“The federal money is getting cut back and the tribe wants to be self-sufficient,” Santa Ana Lt. Gov. Ivan Menchego said. “We’re not reluctant for development to come in, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the traditional lands.”

For the last 10 years, Santa Ana actually has been buying additional land to develop so that the tribe can stimulate business and at the same time safeguard sacred lands. The golf course and planned hotel and velodrome sites are all on those new lands, which are west of the Rio Grande, while the traditional village lies east of the river.

Despite the physical separation, the tribe still worries that the changes ultimately will change their lifestyle, that the influx of Anglo ways will lessen the importance of their religious activities and ancient practices.

“I’m not sure at this point whether it is going to change the traditional ways or not,” Menchego said. “But one way or another, we’re going to need the money.”

The Sandia Pueblo owns a bingo hall and an Indian jewelry outlet north of Albuquerque that generate as much as one-third of the tribe’s annual budget, which must cover basic services such as police and fire protection, health services, schools and local government. Recently, the Sandias opened a fishing camp catering to tourists.

Like the Santa Anas and the Lagunas, however, the new projects are away from the pueblo village.

“We are all very much aware that we are trying to preserve our village and our culture, and that means physically distancing ourselves from the development,” said Frank Chavez, a tribal member in charge of business development. “And that’s what’s getting harder and harder to do.”

“I hope that the development won’t simply overwhelm us as a people,” he said. “But even the development that has occurred had changed things to some extent.”

Pueblo historians and observers say the Lagunas, located west of Albuquerque, already have lost some of their traditional ways because of greater exposure to the Anglo world than the other pueblos. Lagunas worked the Santa Fe Railroad for years, and at one time the largest open pit uranium mine in the country was on Laguna land, employing 800 in its heyday.

It was uranium royalties that the tribe used to launch 5-year-old Laguna Industries, the manufacturing enterprise where Ahmie, himself a former uranium miner, and more than 300 other tribal members work.

Laguna Industries, located on the reservation, is a sheet metal fabrication operation that churns out everything from wastebaskets to parts for postal sorting machines, as well as assembling pickup truck-sized communications shelters for the military, which are deployed in the field to link radio, video and satellite communications.

The company has grown to become the largest user of sheet metal in New Mexico.

“Laguna Pueblo has been pretty progressive,” said Ahmie, product manager for the $60-million communications shelter contract, which recently shifted its assembly line to a refurbished uranium mine maintenance shop.

The tribe, which offers members adult education and training courses in skills such as reading blueprints, also has launched a project to remove the eyesore and environmental hazard of the abandoned uranium mine, which was closed in 1982--and the Lagunas own the company doing the reclamation work.

“We have to be more aggressive, because nobody is going to come and give you anything,” Laguna administrator Russell Ellis said. “Those days are gone.”

Five years ago, Pete Homer found himself discouraged at the lack of interest in pueblo development. A Mojave from Arizona, he had founded the American Indian Business Technology Corp. in Albuquerque to help tribes win contracts.

“Five years ago,” Homer said, “I saw it fading because the pueblos were too cultural and too traditional.”

Now, he said, “It’s turned around. They realize they have to get involved because that’s what young people want--jobs.”

“We as Indians live in two worlds now. We drive cars and we wear Levis, and we have to realize economic development is here and we’ve got to be a part of it.”