1 post tagged “taos”
I just returned from a museum conference in Taos, New Mexico. I know, I know -- museum folks for a whole week: how did I get so lucky? When I interviewed for this job back in February and heard about this conference, I thought it was a pretty nice perk. Until that point, I had heard nothing but awesome things about Taos -- how it was beautiful and full of artists and blahdy blahdy blah. After spending a week there, though, I can't say I didn't find the town worth all the praise I'd heard...it was like Orlando in the high desert.
I will give Taos that I had a crappy/unsettling first experience there, but, man, first impressions do carry a lot of weight. Since we were still technically "pre-conference" on Tuesday morning, we had some time to kill. My colleague invited me to join her and her friend on a trip to Taos Pueblo. We drove out of the city center a little ways, past a casino and various other hoity-toity shops and galleries where I can't afford shite, until we got to the Pueblo where we were greeted by some friendly men in orange vests. These men informed us that parking was free, but that tips were encouraged, as that was what "allowed [them] to operate." Now, living in Montana -- and even Florida -- I've been on a fair number of reservations and I've never encountered a toll system. I just chalked it up to the pueblo being in such a tourist-friendly area. The orange-vest dude asked us to check-in at the visitor center.
The three of us lined up to talk to the surly woman at the visitor center where we learned that:
(1) Admission is $10 per person, and
(2) If we wanted to bring in a camera, that would be an additional $5.
I've never heard of charging a camera fee anywhere. Maybe I'm not well-traveled, I don't know. Of course, in their literature (a glossy, poorly proofread scant brochure), the camera fee is justified as a way to help them keep their way of life. Funny, I thought that's what the casino was for out front. Whatever. People are allowed to be capitalists for a good cause.
Except I didn't find the whole pueblo experience to be a good cause. You know what lies within the fee area? Stores. Store upon store upon store selling pottery, handmade (and a lot of mass-produced) jewelry, flutes, and, my favorite -- written on the sign outside one store -- "real Indian stuff." So, here we have all of these adobe style homes in an historic area, and you know what I learned? I learned that these folks in New Mexico have access to all sorts of wholesale catalogs.
I especially liked the advisory in the brochure to ask nativesf or their permission before taking a picture of them-- yes, because I so need a picture of some dude, who happens to live near the Taos Pueblo, wearing an Adidas shirt and a gold chain. I mean, who are we kidding? I felt weird enough paying to go into a reservation to go look at how these people -- who still exist -- lived, like they're freaking animals in a zoo. Let's not fool ourselves to think that the people working inside the pueblo are totally isolated from the outside world -- they know they're not, and anyone with an iota of sense should know they're not either. They dress an talk like anyone else roaming around Taos.
What really bothered me is that the people who "run" the pueblo have a great opportunity for education -- a chance to teach people about the pueblo's history, how the people of the pueblo have changed over time, and about the beliefs of the people of the pueblo. But they don't do any of that. There's no signage anywhere that attempts to impart any greater understanding to the visitor -- just lots of signs that basically say "come buy our stuff."
More weirdness arose when we left the pueblo. The opening reception for our conference featured a performance by the Buffalo Dancers, an Indian children's dance troupe (and, yes, it IS "P.C." to say Indian). I've noticed this trend in the various professional conferences I've attended in the last few years -- all of them try to incorporate some Indian performance/ritual of some sort. I can appreciate that as they're an oft-ignored group, both where curriculum development and audience outreach is concerned. That's one thing I actually like about Montana -- they're pouring money into the Indian Education for All Act that requires ALL school students to learn about Montana's native people; the act has been on the books since the 1970s, but it's only been the last few years that the State department of education has offered schools any funding to make this act a reality.
But call me cynical -- part of me thinks we're including all of these Indian aspects to our programming because there's some "white man's guilt" -- as there should be. White men raped numerous indigenous cultures. Still, watching these kids dance (a long and intricate dance; having a short-term memory and no rhythm, I found the dancers most impressive), I felt some weird vibes from our crowd of 400 museum professionals -- I sensed some, "Ah, we must revere these child dancers BECAUSE they are Indian, not because they're damn talented kids, but because I am a white, educated, open-minded person of privilege and that is what my people do." At one point, I turned around and looked at my peers staring at the dancers -- that's when an uneasy feeling set in...wow, here we are, 400 of us, 98% white, having these Indian kids entertain us. They were bussed in to AMUSE us. Had anyone asked the adult leaders of the group afterward how they train, or what the dance means, or anything, maybe I would feel differently -- then, maybe, there would be some sharing of cultures, some, you know, "learning." No such luck.
Reading back over this, I think I sound racist when I really don't mean to be. It's just that I've always had a hard time with watching people as they (supposedly) act in their native environment -- that's why I never pursued graduate work in anthropology: it's weird to me go watch people like they're in a goddamn zoo; nonwhite, non-Americans don't exist so grad students can write masters theses about them.
