This Miserable Kingdom

The notion that America is in harmony with itself is a fractured belief that continued to die with Civil Rights, Vietnam, and the destruction of the Twin Towers. Racism and antisemitism continue to exhibit overt reactions upon targeted minorities, while all human rights are under assault. This country continues to be at war with herself, perpetuating brutality and aggression, and remains threatened when America’s religious, political, and economic dogma is attacked within, “Make America Great Again.” 

The greatest environmental catastrophe to occur on our continent was the systematic slaughter of eight million Bisson, providing an end to the American Indian’s food source.1  It is not ironic that this final solution was first  discussed by George Washington;  “ The immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their (Indian) settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible.  It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more.”

Ethnic cleansing was introduced by the use of germ warfare administered through smallpox infected blankets given to the starving Indians under forced relocation, thus eliminating another threat to our ordained Manifest Destiny. Such are the continued actions and reactions of the inhabitants that make up this miserable kingdom, creating a cultural collision within society’s melting pot, and developing a recipe for the possible demise of our democracy while providing other nations a glimpse into our sordid past.

This Miserable Kingdom is a photographic survey documenting minorities who have withstood the onslaught of our government’s radical form of genocide upon its own indigenous peoples. The Pojoaque (Po-wah-kee) Pueblo located in Pojoaque, New Mexico is the primary focus, as it has been repeatedly victimized because of its religious, cultural, and historical identity. The survey documents the tribe’s continued survival, and its ability to live in cultural harmony while protecting their sovereignty.

Background

Archeological studies of the Rio Grande have dated inhabitation of the Pojoaque Pueblo as early as 500 BCE with the population peaking in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. During this time, Pojoaque maintained its strong cultural identity because of the confluence of three rivers at the heart of its nation. The abundance of water encouraged and perpetuated an economy based on an agrarian society, but this coveted resource eventually became the demise of the Pojoaque Pueblo.

Although Pojoaque was one of the six Northern Tewa-speaking Rio Grande Pueblos, each nation had its own government, autonomous from each tribe. If Navajo or Apache warring parties attacked the Pueblo, Pojoaque defended itself alone, but the warring parties were aware that complete annihilation of the defeated Pueblo would also limit food provisions for the victor’s spoils in years to come. Such was the sacrifice of living in a fertile land.

The early 1600s introduced the Pueblos to a far more menacing foe than the Apache or Navaho. The Spaniards’ Entrada brought missionaries, and conquistadors; their primary agenda to convert the Pueblos to Christianity while inflicting cultural, social, and economic hardship and suffering to the indigenous peoples. The Spanish church forced its North American inquisition upon the Pojoaque natives and surrounding Pueblos. If the populace didn’t convert, they were deemed heretic, punishable by hanging, severed limbs, or a life of indentured labor or slavery in Mexico. Kivas were desecrated, kachinas and ceremonial masks and robes burned. Despite certain reprisal, the Pueblos continued to practice their own religion under the cloak of darkness.

After generations of continued abuse, the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 gave the Pueblos twelve years of freedom, but the Spaniard’s second Entrada of New Mexico (This Miserable Kingdom) caused the desertion of the Pojoaque Pueblo. In 1706, five Pojoaque Pueblo families returned to resettle the Pueblo, and by 1712, their population had grown to seventy-nine. The Pueblo was finally given an official land grant as well as the Lincoln  Silver Cane, commemorating Pojoaque’s autonomy (as were the other eighteen New Mexican Pueblos). Shortly thereafter, Pojoaque was devastated by smallpox. Drought, encroachment of non-Indian settlers, and their loss of irrigable soil forced its people to desert its sacred land once again. Its members—including the last known Governor, Jose Antonio Tapia, and his family—left the Pueblo to live and work in neighboring Pueblos and surrounding communities. There were now fewer than forty descendants remaining.

Word of the 1924 Pueblo Lands Act, authorizing payments to the Pojoaque Pueblo for lands deserted through federal negligence eventually reached the ears of Governor Tapia who was residing in Colorado. In 1932, the Governor along with five Pojoaque families made their journey in covered wagons to reclaim the land of their ancestors. Upon arriving at the Pueblo, the Pojoaqueans had to rely on the surrounding Northern Tewa tribes for re-education of their traditions, including their native tongue. It wasn’t until 1973 that the Pojoaque Indians danced for the first time in over one hundred years.

 Our Sphere of Influence

As I continued to document This Miserable Kingdom, the past actions of the United States upon its indigenous peoples became all too familiar with the atrocities associated with Nazi Germany. Did our genocide of the Native Americans create a blueprint for Adolf Hitler’s final solution? Long before Hitler’s hatred of the Jews, our twenty-sixth president, Theodore Roosevelt expressed his opinion towards Native Americans, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are.” He later clarified himself during a speech in New York, January 1886, “And I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.” 

During his youth, Adolf’s favorite game was cowboys and Indians, reenacting the fictional stories of the American West written by the German author and pacifist Karl Friedrich May. Hitler continued to read May’s novels as Fuhrer and insisted that his military commanders read May’s books for inspiration.  He even referenced the Russian populace as “Reds.”  Being a student of the American West, Hitler became fascinated with the United States’ methods of ethnic cleansing; the Long Walk(s) of the Navajo, and Cherokee (one of the five civilized tribes), and how the effects of starvation and disease from forced relocation and reservation life (Bosque Redondo) contributed to the efficiency of extermination. This ideology along with the Immigration Act of 1924 ( Johnson-Reed Act) undoubtedly became the blueprint that greatly contributed to the Nuremberg Laws formulated and written in 1935.

The forced walks and relocation of native Americans on government reservations in Oklahoma and the New Mexico Territories is parallel to the establishment of Jewish Ghettos in Eastern Europe, and the eventual transport of second-class citizens, and mongrels to concentration camps, and their eventual extermination.  

America has provided the backdrop for her final solution of its indigenous peoples to the global community. Our rise of Nationalism and right-wing extremism has unknowingly fed this open wound creating a cancerous scab residing in this country’s psyche, perpetuating a toxic environment that cannot heal within This Miserable Kingdom, condoning the eradication of human rights, and an indifference to the pandemic of human suffering.

1. Jim Stiles, “Where the Buffalo Roamed.” The Zephyr, (June/July 1999), p. 22.
2. Orders of George Washington to General John Sullivan, May 31, 1779
3. Don Antonio de Otermin, “Account of the Pueblo Revolt by Don Antonio de Otermin, governor and captain-general of New Mexico.” September 6, 1680.

4.Alysa Landry, “The Only Good Indians are Dead Indians,” June 28, 2016, Indian Country Today.