Explore Local History: Native Americans

For the past month, Pojoaque Pueblo Gov. George Rivera's family has been busy preparing for feasts. Wednesday's Three Kings Day culminated the celebrations after the Dec. 12 festivity of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the pueblo's patron saint.

The Ohkay Owingeh Housing Authority's newest residential development recently won an award from the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development as an outstanding example of tribal governance.

Eric Blinman originally thought the idea of hanging a canopy of arrows from the ceiling of the new History Museum's exhibit on the Pueblo Revolt was "nuts." He admits he's more about reality than image.

At the same time, knowing what bad arrows are sold on the open market, the Museum of New Mexico's director of archaeological studies said, "I didn't want to turn this into a Route 66 roadside attraction."

Carl Turner “was a renaissance man if ever there was such a person in New Mexico,” said Rodger Beimer, who worked with Turner in the 1980s. “He appreciated this state and really loved the people.”

Turner, 87, died Saturday after a yearlong fight with prostate cancer.

Turner served as the first executive manager of the New Mexico Rural Electric Cooperative Association in Santa Fe for exactly 29 years, from one April Fools’ Day in 1960 until another in 1989.

He was pivotal in the creation of the Cumbres and Toltec Sce-nic Railroad. The train runs between Colorado and New Mexico and captures the feel of a late-1800s steam locomotive.

The Pueblo Indian people of the southwestern United States are as indigenous as Americans can be, having lived among the rugged mountains, dry mesas, and cottonwood-lined rivers for thousands of years. The culture they maintain today, with its earthen houses, strong family and community ties, and rituals evoking the mystical connection between all things, is one that evolved naturally and gradually as a response to life in the landscape.