Blue Lake, Taos Pueblo

Blue Lake is the centre of Taos Pueblo religious life and the source of the Pueblo's water. Beyond that, there is very little that can properly be written, and the shortness of this entry is its most accurate feature.

Taos Pueblo does not publish its ceremonial life. No outsiders go to the lake. The Pueblo has held that line for over a century, and held it through the years when breaking it would obviously have helped, when the case for returning the land was being argued in Congress and a fuller public account of what the lake was for would have been the most persuasive evidence available. It was not offered. This entry follows the Pueblo's position rather than working around it.

Sixty years, and a refusal to take money

The United States folded roughly 48,000 acres of the Pueblo's watershed into the Carson National Forest early in the twentieth century. Taos spent more than sixty years trying to get it back.

What makes the case unusual is that the Pueblo refused compensation. The Indian Claims Commission existed to convert Indian land claims into cash settlements and to close them permanently; Taos declined the cash, which meant its claim could not be disposed of that way and could only be resolved by an act of Congress.

It was, on 15 December 1970. Public Law 91-550 amended the Act of 31 May 1933 to declare the lands held by the United States in trust for the Pueblo de Taos. The statute's own wording is why the case still matters. It describes ground on which the Pueblo has depended

since time immemorial for water supply, forage for their domestic livestock, wood and timber for their personal use, and as the scene of certain religious ceremonials.

A federal statute stated, without hedging or euphemism, that part of the reason for returning land was that ceremonies were held on it.

Blue Lake was the first case in which the United States returned sacred land rather than paying for it, and every later sacred-land campaign cites it. A further 764 acres followed in 1996. It is also, more than fifty years on, still close to the only one.

Taos Pueblo does not publish photographs of Blue Lake, and that closure is treated as part of what the 1970 return actually restored.

Taken without consultation

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt placed Blue Lake and the surrounding watershed, land Taos Pueblo considered central to its origin and religious life, inside the newly created Carson National Forest, without the Pueblo's consent and without compensation, opening it to public recreational use for the following six decades.

A restoration, not a purchase

After decades of lobbying, Congress passed legislation in 1970 returning some 48,000 acres, including Blue Lake itself, directly to Taos Pueblo as land held in trust, one of the earliest and most complete land restitutions to a Native nation in United States history, notable for returning the land itself rather than offering financial compensation as most comparable claims had been settled.

Access stays closed

Since the return, Taos Pueblo has kept the lake and surrounding area closed to non-tribal members, permitting entry only for tribal religious purposes on a schedule the Pueblo itself controls. The Pueblo does not publish details of the ceremonies conducted there, treating the closure itself, not just the land title, as integral to what makes the site sacred, and outside accounts of the site accordingly describe its history and status rather than its ritual content.