In New Mexico: Privacy Without Reservation

By Gregory Jaynes

"I assume you believe in something, I some God, something?" the Pueblo councilman Domingo Atencio was saying in a voice as soft as the surrounding terrain: New Mexico.

"I occasionally hear a church bell," the visitor said, immediately thinking what an insolent thing that was to say, given these or any other circumstances.

Atencio brushed the dust off the toe of a moccasin--sensible footgear, the color of bare earth after rain--and in the doing he seemed to dismiss the impertinence. He continued gently, "If you are sitting in church praying and someone knocks at the door, what happens to you? That is what we are talking about."

This Indian's people, the Santo Domingo tribe of the Pueblo, one of 19 Pueblo tribes in the state, had been buzzed during an important dance by a low-flying photographer from up the road in Santa Fe. In another day, some of the more outraged Pueblo might have divided him into several parts. In these litigious times, they sued for $3.65 million. How quaint the tale appeared from afar. (Damages? "Infertility." Sex or soil? "Both.") And how levelheaded and 20th century it turned out to be from the ground. (Damages? "You can never put a monetary value on disturbances of this kind. What we want more than anything else is to follow our religious practices without interference. Besides, juries in New Mexico are notoriously penurious.")

As it happens, of course, lawsuits are old hat for the American Indian. Most common are contested land titles--the phrasing itself has the ring of Indian argot: "clouded title." Then there are the occasional contested mineral rights. And now there are the very popular--here the parch in everybody's throat--contested water rights. In a region where you have to drill down practically to the Yangtze River to bring in a well, at a cost of $5 or $6 a foot, water is wealth. You rarely find surface water without finding Indians who found it first. This arrangement begets harsh feelings and busy courts. Into the thick of things, the crowded docket, come now the plaintiffs, the Santo Domingo, who charge that their privacy has been invaded by a lensman.

This pueblo has a resident population of about 3,300, and it controls about 67,000 acres. If it has its way, it will eventually control about 277,000 acres. Through the property runs the Rio Grande and Interstate 25. The Indians sold the right of way for the highway for $1.4 million. When they are not negotiating rights of way for roads, railroads, power lines, phone lines and gas lines, they can be found in Santa Fe or Albuquerque selling their jewelry or their property or Navajo blankets they have traded for. They also farm and tend cattle and celebrate the Roman Catholic Mass. When they have satisfied the demands of their own ancients, they dance for the good of humanity. One day in late January, while dancing for world peace and prosperity, a plane crossed their dusty plaza at the height of "about three telephone poles," its engine drowning out their thundering drums and cutting off their prayerful thoughts, they say. Somebody got the serial number.

Directly, Bennie Atencio, the tribal secretary and brother of Domingo Atencio, called on Albuquerque Attorney Scott Borg. The photographer had been identified as Michael Heller, who had published the photographs of the Santo Domingo in the New Mexican, a Santa Fe newspaper. Atencio told Borg that "they wanted to sue them and sue them to make them hurt."

Other tribes may allow photographs or charge for photographs, said Borg, "but the Santo Domingo are the most conservative Indians in the state--and everybody knows it, especially the newspapers." The New Mexican is making no public comment; in fact, its editor, Larry Sanders, actually said, "No comment." The paper's lawyers have collected over 100 photographs of the Santo Domingo, the preponderance of them from the Museum of New Mexico, in an attempt to show that picture taking at the pueblo is nothing new and that the suit should be dismissed. Borg argues that the tribe has authorized photographs on only two occasions and that the rest were taken back in the days when "the Pueblo were fearful of Indian agents; they acquiesced to the Bureau of Indian Affairs." The dollar figure the plaintiffs attached to the damage is many times what they expect to realize; their practical eyes are leveled on an injunction against further photography. That, then, is the long and the short of it.

And yonder stand the thirsty cottonwoods (planted there a century ago by Army officers trying to please their wives) that indicate water, in this case the Rio Grande. And there, by a washed-out footbridge, a bandanna round his forehead and a bolo tie, secured by a silver-and-turquoise slide, round his neck, stands Domingo Atencio, the beginning of this tale.

"This bridge was only maybe five years old," Atencio was saying. "The young ones do not build them as good as the oldtimers." Below, the river ran shallow, clear and green. Beyond sprawled the lion-toned territory. Everywhere else was a deep-blue sky like an inverted bowl; everywhere, that is, but along the terribly littered bank. Atencio gave the trash a tearless but disgusted eye. Tourists had not been responsible for the beer cans, the dead radios, the broken whisky bottles and the rump-sprung chairs. The Indian knew that. Standing there by the mess, gray hair pulled back into a ponytail, he recalled a cleaner season. His youth had preceded plumbing, he said, and in those days, in winter, the only way a boy could prove to his mother that he had truly bathed was to sprint home from the Rio Grande while the ice still cleaved to his locks--a star-spangled boy.

Now down the corduroy road from the high ground and the village padded the stooped and broken father of a boy of this age. Atencio said the bandannaed figure, a former governor, had a wild son who had destroyed his father's truck in a stupid wreck. The son had since run away, taking with him some of his father's most prized possessions. "Look at him," Atencio said pityingly. "He has to walk."

Time and the river have a way of getting hung up at this pueblo--the Indians, like Atencio, on a reflection; the river on a log. A sun-brushed morning does not tick by so much as it unfolds. Conversation, slow, thoughtful talk, can range as wide as the vista. Planting is nigh. An elder had a stroke the other night, poor creature; today he cannot even sign his name. There are white people who are friends of the Indians, and there is the other category, the arrogant ones: Aha! they say, why then, if the Indians had this country to themselves for thousands of years, why then did they not come up with the Bank of America? In New Mexico, there are people who do not like gringos, there are people who do not like Hispanics; but the people no New Mexican can abide are the Texans. Texans are the most discriminated-against people in the state: they are looked upon as rich and obstreperous, wet-lipped, slack-jawed barbarians, for some reason. Is the visitor a Texan? No?

Ah good. Then it is time for lunch. We can speak of the lawsuit. Is that not why we are together? The governor of the pueblo, Ramon C. Garcia, will eat with us.

Lunch is chili and corncakes, strong coffee, canned peaches. Governor Garcia struggles for words to describe the rigid and changeless ways of the Santo Domingo, to throw light on the reason for their anger with the airplane, and with an unidentified helicopter that had harassed them some weeks before, and another plane before that. All of a sudden, he hits upon an anecdote:

Driving onto the reservation one night just after dusk, he was repulsed by the guards. He had forgotten that a sacred dance was being held, and nobody gets in after one commences. "I had to spend the night on the north rim with my cousin, and lam the governor." --By Gregory Jaynes