>>For close to four centuries, the pueblo Indians of New Mexico have held a ceremony on King's Day, January 6, to confirm their leaders for the coming year.

>>During this ceremony the Canes of Office are passed from the old tribal officers to the new and with them the responsibilities of leadership.

Gifted to the pueblos first by the Spanish around 1620,then the Mexican government in 1821 and in 1863 by the American President Abraham Lincoln, the canes symbolize the sovereignty of the pueblo people and the authority of their tribal governments.

>>In the 1860s New Mexico was a remote frontier of the United States, populated mostly by native Indians and descendents of Spanish settlers, it was considered uncivilized >>The United States was divided North and South, torn apart by the bloody conflict of the Civil War.President Lincoln's heart and mind were consumed by his efforts to win the war and re-unite the country.

>>At the same time, his administration was waging another war out west against the Indians.

In New Mexico Territory, President Lincoln's policies starved and imprisoned the Navajo and the Apache, yethe honored the pueblos as worthy >>Luarkie: Those canes symbolize our authority to govern.

They grant us the responsibility and those canes are symbols of that authority.

Whether it's been the Spanish, whether it's been the Mexicancane, whether it's been the federal cane, whether it's been the State of New Mexico cane or some other cane, it acknowledges our sovereign authority.

>> Vicente: Before the Lincoln cane came to the Pueblo of Acoma, we had our own canes.

We had our traditional leadership referred to as the Field Chiefs.

They carried the (native word for cane), thecane that's bestowed upon them that we recognize as leadership.

It's got a life.

It has a heartbeat.

It has many blessings that come from many different societies that give it the power.

Whereverwe are, those canes guide us, lead us and speak for us.

>>Montoya: Before the canes were adopted in the pueblo, we had a traditional side, which was a War Chief and a Assistant War Chief which did all things that were sovereign as far as indigenous way of life.

On the secular side, which I now hold the position as governor which would deal with the non-Indian world; and then the governor has to get back into the traditional side and the War Chief department.

But that whole concept about respecting the position was already inherited eons ago before the canes were introduced by the modern form of government.

>>Medina: It's a living entity.

It's a living being.

It's a living spirit and within that living spirit, it has power.

>>Vicente: Every cane has its own power of authority.

Every cane, once you've asked it a special task to help you, guide you, lead you, you just feel it.

It's unexplainable.

>>Around 1620, the King of Spain made a royal grant of land to each of the 19 pueblos in order to protect pueblo lands from encroachment by Spanish settlers and to secure their loyalty to the crown.

>>He also decreed that each pueblo choose a governor and other officers to govern themselves.

A silver headed vara, or cane, was given to each pueblo governor as a symbol of his authority.

>>Hendricks: The cane is the symbol of office and this goes back way, way into Spanish history.

Thevara, the Justicia that was given, the Alcalde, he took to all the meetings; you know this goes back to Roman times.

When that very old, old tradition of the person who has authority and the other really key thing about it is the transfer of authority.

>>Udall: If we go back in history, we first go back to the pueblos being here originally.

They werethe first people.

And you can g o back 9, 10 thousand years.

As you move forward, you come into Spanish sovereignty over the area.

And the Spanish were very specific about giving land grants and sovereign status to the pueblos.

They recognized that they controlled their particular area.

>>Suina: The first giving of canes to pueblo leaders was at Santa Domingo shortly after Onate becamethe governor of the new colony.

He gathered pueblo leaders there and made them submit to the authority of the Spanish King; probably didn't make sense at all to the pueblos at that time.

>>The Spaniards may have seen already we have our own governing system in place or what we call now-a-days, the War Captain and his assistant and his staff.

We had that when they first arrived.

>>Montoya: We've always had the canes in recognition of authority for our people.

When the Spaniards came in, they recognized that our war chiefs (native language words) already had the canes.

>>Hena: Perhaps they were amazed by the fact they found these primitive tribes exercising governmental responsibilities.

>> Vigil: When the Spaniards first came into our area, they found the people that were living in communities.

They had a structure to them.

They had a form of government that the Spaniards could understand and so in the acknowledgement they provided these canes.

And of course with them they brought their own culture.

They brought their ways.

And while we had a form of government, they introduced the Spanish form of government also at the time.

And that's what you see today, is a combinationof our traditional government and the Spanish government Maybe the other reason was that they wanted to have one person to deal with instead of having to deal with 10, 12, 15 people.

>>Aquino: They didn't like the fact that too many of Indians were talking at the same time or wanting something at the same time, so they wanted to get a certain individual to be the spokesman of the tribe.

>> Rivera: How Spain, Mexico and the U.S. saw the pueblos, is they saw them as unique because of theculture and the land and the ties that pueblo people had to their land.

They weren't migrating.

They were very permanent.

They had a very solid social structure.

The physical structures that the villages looked like what they were used to seeing in Europe.

For some reason they paid attention to that and saw something different than what they were seeing throughout the rest of the United States with other tribes.

>>When Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821 the pueblo land grants were reaffirmed and new canes were presented to each pueblo by the Mexican government.

>>Mexico was only in power in New Mexico for a very short period of time.

But even the Mexicans understood there must be something important about these canes.

The Mexicans had a very different viewof Indian sovereignty.

Under Mexican rule, everyone became a citizen.

There was no special ward relationship that they had under the United States or that they had enjoyed with Spain.

The second cane we got was the Mexican cane.

That was from the Mexican government acknowledging ourright to self-govern; not the church, the government, because in pueblos there's a lot of influencefrom Catholicism, but that governing acknowledgement came from a government, which was the Mexican government.

>>There were some very powerful people in Washington who wanted to see the United States become a continental nation with ports on the Pacific that could trade with the Orient.

And foremost among these was Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri who had done a lot of reading about the great empires of the world and believed that the United States would never become a great nation until it could carry on an active trade with China and India.

And he really coveted the lands to the west of his state, Missouri.

And thought the United States should claim it by whatever means necessary.

Either waror buy it out right or just take it, basically.

>>It wasn't until James K. Polk assumed office in Washington, Manifest Destiny became a reality.

During the Mexican war, James K. Polk looked at the western third of the continent and he said, "I want it all."

He negotiated a large part of it with Great Britain, in the Pacific Northwest.

The resthe took from Mexico in one of the great land grabs of world history.

But what happened was the United States found out that conquest can sometimes seem tantalizingly easy; the hard part is occupation - the hard work of actually occupying a land that they knew nothing about.

>>With the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848, New Mexico became a territory of the United States, ceded by Mexico along with Texas, Arizona and California in the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

>>The big question for the pueblos is how were they going to be treated by the American government.

The American government saw land as a commodity.

And in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, they werewondering "Are we going to be treated as a commodity where our land can be bought and sold or are these Americans going to treat us more like the Spanish and Mexican governments treated us?"

>>It's very important in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to recognize that all of the people, not just tribes, but all of the people were recognized in the United States to have certain rights.

And that was embodied in the treaty: their property rights, their religious rights.

And it made the commitment for the federal government to say "We are going to protect those rights."

>>Under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States government agreed to recognize land grants made by the Spanish and Mexican governments.

However, the American occupiers failed to honor the terms of the treaty and made no formal acknowledgement of the pueblo nations.

>>President Lincoln was Congressman Lincoln during the Mexican American War.

He delivered a very emotional speech in 1848 stating "What are we going to do when we get all this property from Mexico?

Are the people going to become slaves?

What are we going to do with their property?"

And there wasno answer for that.

What came out of his passionate speech was the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

What is the first thing that the pueblos do when they find out that the American government has takenover and their title to their land is up in the air?

The first thing they do is they run down to the office of Mr. Calhoun, the Indian Agent.

And they ask Mr. Calhoun, "Please protect us.

We've been in a state here under the Mexican government and the Spanish government where our lands are beingencroached upon.

Please help us."

>>Mr. Calhoun had went from Indian Agent to actually territorial governor before he passed away.

Mr. Calhoun's last wish was that he would accompany the Tesuque delegation in 1852 back to Washington,D.C.

He had his own casket made before he left because he knew he may die on the trip.

He dies inIndependence or outside of Independence, Missouri.

That is commitment in my mind to the pueblo's cause that they should be protected.

>>Back in 1852, five members of Tesuque Pueblo had ventured to go back east to visit the President.

The journey took have a year to get up into Washington by these 5 men from Tesuque Pueblo.

Back then it was of high importance once upon up in Washington, they were blown away by the massive buildings.

They stayed at the White House, the West Wing.

>>In 1852, the Pueblo leaders from Tesuque met with Millard Fillmore in the White House.

They were given large medals to commemorate the visit.

Millard Fillmore was a Wig.

Abraham Lincoln was a Wig.

We know that they did meet together.

Did Congressman Lincoln know about the pueblos?

I would hope that he would know about the pueblos; he talked about them in Congress.

>>Abraham Lincoln's relationship with attitude toward American Indians evolves over the years.

And what you have to start with in understanding Lincoln's relationship to native peoples is that his grandfather and his namesake was killed by an Indian.

His father, Thomas, was with him when he was shot by this Indian on the prairie.

That's a powerful memory to have grown up with.

So he's born withthat story.

He's raised with that story.

>>We cut now to his early adulthood.

Chief Blackhawk invades Illinois and Abraham Lincoln and his pals join up to fight the Indians.

So in this frenzied atmosphere of "We're gonna get 'em.

We're gonna send them back to where they came from" an old Indian wandered into camp one day, perplexed, lost, petrified that he'd wandered into a camp of volunteer military white people.

And the company, starved for action, decided let's shoot or hang this old man.

Who intervened?

Abraham Lincoln.

And he said anyone who wants to harm him will have to harm me first.

And Lincoln is of course the biggest guy in the camp.

He's already proven his acumen as a wrestler.

He's famous for his strength, so no one dares touch the Indian.

He gets a little bit of food; he goes off on his way, never to be heard from again except as an example of Lincoln's innate humanitarianism, even in a situation as provocative as this.

>>After serving one term in Congress from 1847 to 1849, Lincoln returned home to Springfield, Illinois to practice law and became a lobbyist for the railroad.

In 1858, he challenged U.S.

Senator Stephen Douglas for his seat and lost.

His stirring debates with Douglas gained him national attention.

In 1860, he was nominated to run for the Presidency.

Lincoln won the election and was inaugurated president in 1861.

>>In the time that Lincoln is in the presidency, we're already starting to see the U. S. Military pursuing a policy of, in some cases, almost extermination; certainly, what the Navajos underwent and the people in the Sioux.

We're going to move right on in, as soon as this war is over, we're going to move into the area of what's called the Indian Wars when the only good Indian was a dead Indian.

>>I think they were pretty brutal.

And pretty rough and I think, you know, Lincoln, again, he's the grandson of a man killed by Indians.

He has reports from Generals and from his own personal envoy, John Nikolay, about the innate brutality and drunkenness and wantonness of Indians.

These are racial stereotypes that I see no evidence that he rejected.

>>The real goal of Indian policy in the 1860s was to deal with what were called the "wild tribes", the nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes: the Navajo, the Apache, the Utes.

Basically, United States policy-makers wanted these tribes to settle down.

>>Right around this time, Lincoln has his most famous or maybe infamous encounter with native peoples.

And that's in Mankato, Minnesota with the Sioux uprising which resulted in murder convictions and sentencing of death for hundreds and hundreds of Sioux Indians.

>>Abraham Lincoln would not allow this mass execution until he had reviewed the files personally.

There are records in his own hand-writing of his writing out the names phonetically of each of the Sioux who were condemned to death and then writing a note.

And what he did ultimately was of the hundreds who were condemned to death, he spared all but 36.

And the rap on Lincoln is that it is still the biggest mass government execution in the history of the United States.

>>There was an ancient war that had gone on between the Spanish and the Navajo especially; kind of awar of attrition in which they stole each other's cattle and sheep and women and children.

And thiscycle of violence had gone on for a long, long time.

>>The two most influential people to Lincoln on the subject of Native Americans were Commissioner Dole, who was the Commissioner of Indian Affairs and entrusted by Lincoln, not only to watch over the varying tribes in the west, but to keep them in place, keep them pacific, peaceful and keep them unaffiliated with the Confederacy.

That was an important thing.

That was probably the most important thing to Lincoln.

Then the second most influential is probably his private secretary, John George Nikolay, whom he sent out west to report on the developments of American relations with the Indians.

And I'm afraid Nikolay was not a very sympathetic person in this regard either.

He regarded Indians as savages and let Lincoln know that that's the way he felt.

>>During the first months of the Civil War, the five civilized tribes in Oklahoma Indian Territory were left unprotected by the Union and vulnerable to the Confederacy.

Chief John Ross of the Cherokee, met with the President several times asking for support, but Lincoln, distracted by other mattersof war was slow to act.

In September, 1862, Ross wrote to Lincoln that the Cherokee were forced to negotiate a treaty with the Confederate States.

>>Once the war starts, you have the situation of the Cherokees seceding from the Union, joining the Confederacy.

In 1860, the Navajos attacked Fort Defiance.

And in response to that the U.S. military decides that they're basically going to wage war on the Navajo.

And of course, the Apaches are also at war, so you have this very conflictive situation.

And you have largely the pueblos staying out of it.

>>In 1862, the Confederacy invades New Mexico.

There are a few brief important battles in New Mexico: Valverde, then Glorieta which is a defeat and the Confederates leave.

At the same year you haveCarlton coming in with the California column into southern New Mexico.

And he's the one who reallypursues the aggressive campaign against the Navajo.

>>James Henry Carlton thought he really had the solution to the problem.

His idea was to round up the Navajo Indians and to move them about 500 miles away from their ancestral lands to a place on thePecos River that he had personally surveyed.

And to sort of teach them overnight at gun point to become Christian farmers living in pueblo-like apartment complexes.

And it was Carlton who, when theexperiment began to fail, could not admit that this was not working.

More than 3,000 Navajo had died within the first 2 years.

That's one third of the tribe.

And it was an experiment that was destined to fail.

>>President Lincoln probably did a little bit of homework on his own.

There might be a lot of reasons one can speculate why he did what he did, giving the canes of authority to pueblo tribes.

>>The burdens of Lincoln's presidency were diverse and complex.

In November 1863, Lincoln deliveredthe Gettysburg Address.

By the end of the same year, he had authorized delivery of the canes to the pueblos, but he had also approved the forced removal of the Navajo and Apache from their homelandsto the Bosque Redondo where thousands died from starvation and disease.

>>Despite of all the many reasons why the pueblos were singled out and given canes, you know, by Abraham Lincoln, I think that the pueblo people had proven themselves to be responsible, just and very effective functional governments here in the southwest.

And I think at that same time Abe Lincoln was looking for a good example out here in addition to everything else.

>>In the rush toward secession and war, the federal government under Buchanan and Lincoln alike had been pretty foolhardy about abandoning their relationships with the native peoples.

And their indifference and their premature hostility turned a lot of native people against the Union.

The policy of reaching out to the pueblos as a stable group was something that Lincoln endorsed and it was to counter the original foolish, ill-advised policy of allowing the native peoples to be sort of seducedby the Confederacy.

>>He wanted to be able to secure the United States position and supporting expansion all the way to California.

And if he could reach out to us as independent governments that we would garner supportfor him.

And that he could an easier way of actually coming in and coming through New Mexico on toArizona and on to California.

>>The single most important influence on Lincoln was Michael Steck.

He came to New Mexico in 1849.

He becomes an Apache Indian Agent.

In the fall of 1863, he's going to go back to Washington, presumably to get his confirmation as the Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory.

He also isgoing to pick up whatever patents, whatever land grants have gone through the patent process and already could be returned to the pueblos.

The pueblos were interested in having the patents.

>>Michael Steck was one of the more progressive thinkers about Indian affairs in the southwest.

There'd been a lot of scalawags and ne'er-do-wells and people who were clearly just trying to get some money out of the deal being an Indian Agent or whatever.

But Steck was somebody who actually studied the cultures and was curious about the people.

And he was particularly intrigued by the pueblo tribes.

He realized that American society, Anglo-American society, was coming fast and furious and their culture was going to be eaten up and eroded over time.

So Steck saw that trend and thought "What can we do to ensure that these pueblos will remain in perpetuity?"

>>His having lived among Indians in New Mexico, his understanding for how important the Canes of Office were to the pueblos, how carefully they had been guarded for hundreds of years.

>>Steck understood that this was a tradition that went way back and now that this was American territory, perhaps it was time for the United States to issue a new set of staffs that would acknowledge this new line of authority emanating from Washington.

>>It's hard to really know what Lincoln was thinking during this time.

He was so consumed with the Civil War and just all the millions of decisions and the logistics involving wining that war, here he was fighting the right to secession, here he was fighting the right to sovereignty of these southern states and then out west, Steck is talking about granting sovereignty to these pueblo Indians along the Rio Grande.

So there's a paradox there.

>>I think it was Steck who conceived the idea of creating the canes for the pueblo people, because he went from Washington to Philadelphia and had them made in Philadelphia.

I think there is enough records now surviving, including the price, the magnificent sum of five dollars and 50 cents per cane.

>>Probably February of 1864 when he gets the canes; they're manufactured in Philadelphia.

They're ebony canes.

They're silver-topped and on the top of the cane there's a likeness, a facsimile of A. Lincoln and the name of the pueblo to whom the cane will go and also the date.

>>You will find that Lincoln apparently also gave canes to other people during his administration.

>>The man got canes all the time.

I mean he was awash with canes.

He carried walking sticks all over Washington.

He got gifts of walking sticks.

He understood that they were a symbol of elegance but that they were also a symbol of esteem.

>>There's so many legends about the ceremony and the handing of the canes.

For years there were people that insisted that Lincoln had come there.

There others who suggested they went there.

But there's really no evidence for it so I can only assume that once they were ready they came through Philadelphia.

It was really quite brilliant.

Not only to help with patents and give this great seal of approval to the transfer of the land to the pueblo peoples, but also to give the pueblos something to bind their own authority to that of the federal government.

>>In September of 1864, at the same site the Spanish canes had been given over 200 years earlier, the Lincoln canes were presented at Santa Domingo by Indian Agent John Ward with the speech in which he said, "These are delivered in the name of our government and his Excellency Abraham Lincoln.

Thisis a firm declaration of the affection and friendship of the government toward the pueblos."

>>President Lincoln got some confirmation back then saying who these people were, how they lived.

And of course being an educated man and how he grew up in his own world and he was the president, I think he wanted to validate our sovereignty.

>>I don't think the U.S. government was ignorant to the fact that the pueblos were the only ones that had a pueblo revolt, our revolution against a major European power and our only successful one.

Being aware of this close relationship to the Hispanos, the possibility that they could join up with the Navajos, the possibilities that they could join up with the Confederate Army, all of these things I think were running in the back of the minds of Lincoln and his administration.

>>I think Lincoln was very shrewd and he was very savvy politically.

And it's a very good move!

>>They felt that Abraham Lincoln got it.

He understood that these lands were pueblo lands and that they were sovereigns and that they had the right to govern themselves.

That is to me what President Lincoln was thinking those canes symbolized; that the pueblos, their lands and sovereignty are one.

>>Something happened spiritually that for whatever reason we ended up with the canes here.

And that's the way that I look at it; that maybe our prayers, maybe our way of life just perpetuated this thought process and it came back on a positive note, because here it is.

We didn't create this.

It was given to us by the United States government.

>>In my household as I was growing up, I didn't know who Abraham Lincoln was.

However, from my parents and from my grandparents, the core values were already set in me saying who I respected.

There was (native word), there was (native word), there was (native words), which is the fiscali.

I was taught to respect these leaders.

>>The officers for the coming year are installed on December 29th.

On December 29th the story told by the casiqui, the religious leader of the community, and it takes 3 or 4 hours to recite.

It the origin story of our people, the Zia people, and brings that story up to the present.

Once the storyis brought up to the present, then he names the individuals that are going to be serving in those positions for the coming year.

>>So on January 6th, there's a celebration where the new officers celebrate the day; that's the day starts with them taking their canes of authority up to the church and during mass the catholic priest blesses all those canes for the year.

And then once that's over, they get the canes back and theygo home and place it in a prominent location within the house.

And all the people in the village are invited to come join in the celebration.

They have to feed the canes as part of the prayer and that's how children in the community at an early age start to learn the importance of those canes.

>>The officers keep those canes in their homes for one hear, or the time that they're serving in that office.

And to show respect, they always carry them in such a way, holding them close to their heart.

>>I remember when the cane was first brought home, how much respect and reverence there was towards the cane.

Both my grandmothers were there, my mother, all of us children, aunts and uncles were there to receive the cane when it was first brought into the home directly from the church.

And we treated the cane with prayers in the mornings, in the evenings; every time we had something to eat there was a little offering for the cane as well.

>>My nieces and nephews today understand that the cane has a life, has a name, dapu.

And their mother, my sister, tells her kids, "Before we head out to school, before we head out the door to catch the bus, go pray to dapu to help you make your learning easier today."

>>The children, they ask why do they feed the cane.

Basically, I tell them that they're feeding spirits, the spirits that will help them grow and help them become the young man and women.

And when they feed the cane, we're not only feeding the cane, we feed all of Mother Nature's creations.

>>Each morning when I wake up and at the end of the day before I go to bed, I ask my cane, the governor, the spirit to guide me and bless me and bless the people that I'm going to be taking care of for this year.

And I do that with honor and pride.

>>Those canes represent that honor that the people have placed in us.

Those canes symbolize the authority that has been acknowledged, and in my mind, I'm very clear to say, has been acknowledged by other governments.

And it's a clear distinction from saying granted.

In my mind we already had authority.

It was just not acknowledged.

These canes acknowledged that.

>>President Lincoln did not do it out of the kindness of his heart.

It was more of a urging by tribal leaders and a tribal organization.

In this case, we're talking about an organization that existedsince 1598, All-Indian Pueblo Counsel.

Therein lies the importance of why the canes are held with such high respect.

>>Sovereignty is, for the tribes, (and I think this is recognized also by the federal government forthe most part) you're talking about ruling your affairs, controlling your destiny, controlling yourarea that is your domain.

And those pueblo nations are recognized in the law and they have the ability to control their affairs.

>>When the canes were given by Lincoln to the tribes, the tribes saw them as a symbol of sovereignty.

Remember ,they were trying to establish that people weren't supposed to encroach upon their lands.

They got not only the canes, but the patents at the same time.

And with those two together, it would seem to me by looking at the contemporary writings that they felt that they were a symbol of sovereignty.

>>President Lincoln tried to reassure them, you know, you have sovereignty.

You have this land.

Youare governing what happens within your land.

And that's really what the cane embodies; the cane issovereign to sovereign.

>>It was not the federal government that gave us sovereignty; not the nation's call.

It's somethingthat we believe in bestowed upon us by the Creator, not by any government.

>>The President of the United States can't give us sovereignty; Congress didn't give us sovereignty;the State of New Mexico didn't give us sovereignty.

It's an inherent right that we establish by who we are and our culture and our traditions.

And for us it's in our stories, our creation story andour history that makes us sovereign.

>>I truly believe as a human being I cease to exist if I lose my sovereignty and my identity as a human being, as an Indian, as a Native American.

And this is what we all stand for.

>>Sovereignty is (speaks in native language).

That's who I am.

That's sovereignty.

When are we going to do the next ceremony?

How are we going to survive the next 10 years?

What are we going to do on this land base that we have?

That's sovereignty for us.

Now this perpetuates government to government relationships.

>>The fight between the State and the pueblos for sovereignty manifests itself again and again, but constantly in our modern day it has come up as to what is an assault on sovereignty.

>>With all the modern issues that are going on with the gambling, water rights, land issues, social problems, every second our sovereignty, our rights are being diluted and taken away.

As governors we are constantly fighting every day trying to hold on to what we have.

>>As a symbol of our sovereignty we can go ahead and rule our lands the way that we've ruled them for a thousand years.

These people from Europe, they come in; the Spanish, the Mexicans, the Americans, they're a passing wind across our lands, but we finally have a president who understands that these lands are our lands."

Were the canes sufficient to establish that in the law?

Absolutely not.

>>Only 13 years after the Lincoln canes were presented, a challenge to pueblo sovereignty was arguedin the Supreme Court, the first of many such challenges.

>>We have the case in 1876 of U.S. vs Joseph, where the territorial government said, "These pueblo people are not Indians.

And you need to leave these pueblo people alone."

>>Sovereignty and water rights, those are the main number one issues.

I know there are two issues but I consider them as one issue, because one cannot live without the other.

>>The first Indian water rights case took place sometime in the early 1900s.

The case is referred to as the "Winters Doctrine Case".

It occurred in the state of what is now Montana.

There was a non-Indian community upstream and the Indian reservation was downstream.

And when the Indians noticed that the non-Indians were using all the water, they complained.

So that case eventually went to the United States Supreme Court.

And rendered a decision that said "Indians were here first, therefore the first users of water."

>>The last chance for tribal sovereignty were the arguments in the United States Supreme Court in the case of U.S. vs Sandoval.

The pueblo attorney was told he could not participate in the oral arguments.

Immediately the pueblos' supporters said throw all of the people who have encroached upon ourland since 1848 off of the pueblos.

It created enormous problems.

What was the pueblos' sovereignty within their pueblos now that the United States Supreme Court had said, "The federal government has neglected to protect these pueblos"?

This was the time that the canes came alive.

>>Now the canes and American law were the same.

>>We determine how sovereign we're going to be.

We have a tremendous opportunity to affect the future, to effect change in a positive way.

>>Acoma has many directions that have shrines on reservation and off reservation.

We have to every direction my pueblo ancestors that existed before us.

It's written across the landscape everywhere you look.

Some of the impacts now-a-days hurt us.

We have outside entities, even other countries coming in wanting some of our resources, whether it's uranium, coal or other minerals.

We're not allabout that.

It's something that we live on, that mother earth has.

>>Since the American era in 1848, there has been a constant struggle for the pueblos to maintain their sovereignty.

The territory tried to tax them.

The state tried to tax them.

We now have gaming.And it is an open question as to whether or not revenue "sharing" is another assault on sovereignty.

I believe that this will be the next battleground for sovereignty.

>>In a pure sense of sovereignty, if you said "Pueblo nations are able to completely rule their own affairs", then they would be able do whatever they wanted on gaming.

That is obviously not the casetoday.

I mean, what has happened: we've had a Supreme Court Ruling that says that the tribes can game.

Then congress followed that with a law that said the two sovereigns, the state sovereign and the tribal sovereign have to negotiate in good faith and come up with an agreement and then that agreement has supervision by the federal government and approval.

And so there's been some limiting of the tribal sovereignty, no doubt about it.

And it was done by the federal government.

>>I like sovereignty.

I believe in sovereignty.

But it's really, really tough to be sovereign when you're like that "Help us here.

Help us there.

We deserve this.

We deserve that."

I take a position that I don't ...

I need you to get out of my way.

Get out of our way and we'll take care of ourselves.

>>It's the acts of sovereignty and it's the implementation of sovereignty that I see as the most important.

So when the pueblo people are in need, whether it's going into court and trying to protect the tribes' land or whether it's developing businesses, well then the tribal government, in order to create revenues to benefit the people, it needs to stay alive and functional.

>>I think the biggest threat that we have to tribal sovereignty is our own complacency, but we have to make adjustments and do it within the context of modern day life.

Yes, we need an education.

We need jobs.

We need all those wonderful things of the modern world, but it shouldn't be at the expense of the long-time sovereignty and traditions and languages that we have as heritages among the pueblo people.

>>In my vision for Ohkay Owingeh, this is one man's vision, is that before I die that we are completely self-sufficient, that we're not dependent on any dollars from the federal government, that we have our economic development established, that we have businesses, that we have the tribal governmentthat is quality, and that we provide for our people the way a government is supposed to provide forits people.

Sovereignty should drive that.

>>As the governor, it's my job to protect the community, protect our sovereignty and keep the power and the strength that the canes symbolize here in the community.

And so whenever there's a threat to sovereignty, whether it's through legislative branches within the United States or through the courts, we need to do what's best for the people here at the pueblo and try to protect sovereignty.

>>The yardstick of whether a pueblo is successful or not in the past has always been tradition, culture, song, dance, language.

And if you're in tune with all of that, you're successful and you're held in high regards.

As economic development starts to play into the lives of pueblo people - casinos, hotels - then the yardstick measuring the success of a pueblo has changed over the years.

And now more and more people are using the yardstick of how much money that the tribe made this year.

We still have to maintain tradition and culture.

I don't think too many people understand that those have to be in balance.

You can't emphasize one over the other and if you do then you start losing your identity.

>>We're at a time now where the pueblos have to always be at both the State Legislature and at the Congress in some shape or form.

A lot of the pueblos do understand how to build relations with the other sovereigns.

And I think if there's good relations, then I think that makes a big difference; the battle isn't as hard.

>>My father's been in some sort of leadership position all my life, whether Lt.

Governor or Governor.

I guess I've kind of grown accustomed to him having to deal with these major problems or major concerns, whether it be dealing with protecting our sovereignty or trying to provide opportunity and infrastructure into the pueblo.

And I think after going to college I've kind of been able to think about it more, realizing that maybe this is something that I want to be a part of.

>>What's important is who's going to continue this effort?

Our young ones have to continue.

And they've got to be supported, encouraged, trained, experienced and the education has to provide that, because you don't see this in public education.

The challenges remain.

>>We've been under three governments that somehow here we are still today, holding on to our traditions in spite of it all.

And I think telling that story is so important to our young people.

>>One hundred years after the presentation of the Lincoln canes, President John F. Kennedy wrote these words: For a subject worked and re-worked so often in novels, motion pictures and television, American Indians remain probably the least understood and most misunderstood Americans of us all.

>>Has sovereignty withstood the test of time for the pueblos?

You have to say, "Yes, it has."

>>I just came back from Washington, D.C. and I took two of my grandkids.

I wanted them to see that there's a world beyond the boundaries of the pueblo.

And I wanted them to see the Lincoln Memorial.In that sculpture of him in the Lincoln Memorial that he's tensed on one side and relaxed on the other.

And that struggle that he was having at the time, I think he had to be firm when it was necessary, but I think he was also a caring and loving and respectful individual.

He always wanted to do the right thing.

>>Abraham Lincoln is revered as shining beacon of humanity in the annals of American history.

Yet the legacy of his Indian policies is inconsistent with his treatment of the pueblos; whether his motivation for recognizing the pueblos was to secure their loyalty to the Union or to avoid future hostilities caused by the westward expansion of America is uncertain.

He may have been influenced by the Tesuque Pueblo visit to Washington or he may have believed the pueblos worthy of admiration as non-nomadic farming Indians.

Whatever his reasons, what is certain is that the Lincoln canes symbolize Lincoln's intent that there be a perpetual commitment of the United States government to honor pueblos' sovereignty.

>>(native language) It was given a life and the ability to lead people; given that life which will be eternity.

>>There are footprints out there.

And those footprints