Getting Accustomed...

Summary

Pueblo Indians have successfully managed social and environmental situations for thousands of years by moving our villages. However, after the Spanish invasion and the Anglo imposition, we were no longer as free to move. We've had to engage foreign ideas at our home villages in some cases very rapidly. Those in the 1950s were unlike anything we had seen in my pueblo. Seventy years' changes in America happened in ten years not giving us much time for careful thought as to what side effects these carried. Among the many were paving the road that increased contact with tourists and the cash economy. Subsistence farming, our mainstay went to the wayside. The automobile, electricity, our diet and much more changed. This new trajectory in life threatened old values that sustained us over time as a people. Life became more individualistic and stressful in order to have regular cash to support the American Dream. It pulled us from our strong cooperative orientation. Evening gatherings and storytelling gave way to television. The English language overshadowed Keres right in our homes through the radio and television. Today we struggle to revive our language and many other culture gifts of our ancestors.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Pueblo Movement and the Archaeology of Becoming

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15907