San Ildefonso Pueblo women could get right to vote

David Collins | The New Mexican

2/21/2008 - 2/22/08

A leadership controversy at San Ildefonso Pueblo is resulting in new ties between members of pueblo groups that have been at odds for the past century and could result in San Ildefonso women gaining the right to vote in pueblo elections, tribal council members said Thursday.

A statement faxed to area media outlets from a pueblo office Thursday said the pueblo will hold an election Saturday to choose a governor and a lieutenant governor. The statement said the pueblo's general council at a Tuesday meeting decided to notify Gov. Martin W. Aguilar Jr. that his term had ended Dec. 31.

The pueblo plans to announce new officers after Wednesday. Pueblo members said they renounced Aguilar as governor after he refused to relinquish the office when an election was due.

"The actions of the former Governor Aguilar stirred the male membership to act and to think not about north or south but to think of the pueblo as a whole," San Ildefonso tribal Councilman Terrance Garcia said in an interview Thursday.

Garcia is listed along with acting pueblo Gov. Erik Fender as a contact on the pueblo's statement.

Aguilar could not be reached directly by telephone. A member of his family declined to forward a media inquiry to the former governor.

Aguilar, who at the time was lieutenant governor, took the governor's post after Albuquerque police arrested former Gov. James Mountain on a rape charge in October. Mountain resigned as governor, but the charge was dropped in November.

According to a resolution the San Ildefonso general council adopted Tuesday, after he was appointed governor, Aguilar did not convene a general council meeting to set a process for seating a new tribal council and new officers as is traditionally done in December.

Garcia said San Ildefonso is governed by a general council, which includes all male tribal members over the age of 18. That council elects tribal officers and a 13-member tribal council. Long-standing differences between traditional groups on opposite sides of the pueblo have complicated the process in recent years, Garcia said.

A disagreement among South Kiva members in May 2006 led the general council to appoint three members of the South group to the tribal council, Garcia said. After that, Aguilar and other South Kiva members did not participate in council meetings, he said.

In minutes of the Tuesday meeting Garcia provided a reporter, Paul Rainbird is reported to have spoken there on behalf of South Kiva representatives who were excluded from their traditional kiva. Rainbird introduced the motion not to recognize Aguilar as the pueblo governor, the minutes state. He confirmed the contents of the minutes in a telephone interview.

After another pueblo member spoke at that same meeting in favor of giving pueblo women voting rights, the council approved a resolution calling for a new governing agreement to be drafted that will allow women to vote.

"Most men do consult with their ladies and their women to get a clear grasp of what the pueblo needs. Hopefully, in the next few years, this pueblo will go the route of letting women vote," Garcia said.

Currently, 208 San Ildefonso men comprise the general council, which governs a pueblo of more than 800 members, Garcia said.

Rainbird said the split between North and South kivas dates back 100 years, and most pueblo members have no clear understanding of the reasons for the divide. Kiva membership follows clan membership, which is a matter of the family one is born into.

A simmering disagreement between members of the South Kiva erupted in a physical confrontation last spring, Rainbird said.

At that time, Rainbird said, a majority of South Kiva members tried to physically remove and then bar him and other members from religious activities inside that kiva. The confrontation inside the sacred site led the shunned members to develop a relationship with the North Kiva unseen since at least the 1950s, Rainbird said.

"That along with the politics has brought our kivas together," Rainbird said.

The split among South Kiva members might be irreparable and could lead to a new organization of religious activities that for a century centered around the two kivas, Rainbird said. He noted the views he expressed were his alone and did not represent those of his family or other pueblo groups.

Garcia and Rainbird on Thursday each acknowledged that the release of tribal resolutions, correspondence and meeting minutes is an unusually public airing of the sort of internal matters his pueblo usually prefers to keep private. "It's monumental," Rainbird said.

"We feel the more people that know the better," Garcia said. "It's sad the pueblo has had to air its dirty laundry with the public, but we are working toward a resolution, and we feel adamantly the more people that know, the better."

Garcia said some pueblo programs were neglected under Aguilar's administration, resulting in sanctions against the pueblo by federal agencies. The agencies he mentioned did not immediately respond to inquiries about the status of those programs.

Attorney Peter Chestnut, who often advises the pueblo and who attended the Tuesday meeting, said he knew the pueblo was behind in some audits, but he did not know what has been the result of the tardy financial reviews.

According to minutes of the Tuesday meeting, general-council members present voted unanimously to renounce Aguilar as governor. They voted 42-0, with 10 abstaining, to reaffirm the authority of remaining tribal-council members, with the exception of Aguilar and three others.

Members voted 51-0, with one abstaining, to bar Aguilar and three other men who had served on the tribal council from entering the pueblo's tribal office.

Contact David Collins at 986-3064 or dcollins@sfnewmexican.com.