Indian Voices: Listening to Native Americans

10. The Former President: Claudia Vigil-Muniz (Jicarilla Apache)

Claudia Vigil-Muniz suddenly jumped to her feet. She was among a hundred or so Native women attending a conference at the Gila River Indian community’s Wild Horse Pass Resort and Casino outside Phoenix. For days, the women had gone to workshops such as “Understanding Tribal Budgets” and “Rising Impacts of Meth” in Indian Country.1 The stated theme changed each year, but the unstated one remained constant: Native women are wonderful. Accordingly, at today’s conference luncheon, a designated woman from each table extolled her tablemates in particular and Native women in general . At the table of Claudia Vigil-Muniz, though, something else happened. Radiating fervor, Claudia—a compact middle-aged woman in blouse and skirt, practical haircut, practical shoes—introduced herself as the former president of the Jicarilla Apache Nation. Then she challenged the unstated theme. “We women can be each other’s worst enemies.” If it were not for certain women, she told her startled audience, she might still be president. The Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation in northwestern New Mexico is mostly forested and mountainous. In early March, swaths of snow covered the land, but the roads were clear, the skies crisp, and—apart from smells of oil—the air clean. In a valley within the landscape lies the reservation’s sole 188  c h a p t e r 1 0 The Former President claudia vigil-muniz (jicarilla apache) CH010.qxd 12/14/10 8:13 AM Page 188 town, Dulce, which contains tribal headquarters and most of the reservation’s 4,000 residents. It also contains a modern supermarket, a success of former president Vigil-Muniz’s administration, new spiffy-looking schools, a small tidy library, and a public gym in which, one afternoon, plump older women chatted on stationary bikes while young men lifted weights. A few blocks away, empty used FEMA trailers were positioned near abandoned houses whose roofs were caving in. Throughout Dulce, the inhabited homes ranged from run down to kept up. Many barking dogs were chained or not. Toward one end of town stood the tribally owned Best Western motel, which includes a small casino. Steps from the motel was what? The Apache House of Liquor? Most reservations ban the sale of alcohol, for reasons underscored in Dulce. One young man in leather biker clothes, his handsome face pock-marked, his body swaying, held out a hand to me and said he’d found Jesus. What would Jesus do? I shook the hand. Apache House of Liquor, indeed. Dulce seemed a place of uneven and uneasy circumstances. Sitting alert in the Best Western lobby, nearly three years after her memorable flair of dissent, Claudia Vigil-Muniz looked as I remembered her, although slacks and sweatshirt replaced skirt and blouse. Her lovely brown eyes were as intense as before, her honey-colored skin as unlined and un-made-up, and at fifty-three her dark hair showed no gray. Over the next few days, we met when her work schedule permitted, including in her Dulce living room, which featured, next to a large flat screen television, a larger— indeed enormous—buffalo head, its eyes the size of bowling balls. Unable to stifle romanticized images of yore, I asked if pursuit of the buffalo had been difficult. “No,” said Claudia, “we just drove up and shot it.” The Jicarilla Nation owns a game park. Claudia also talked to, from, and during dinner in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, fifty miles to the north, her husband Bill at the wheel of his Toyota. The distance was nothing, they shrugged. Perspective counts; Claudia’s great grandmother carried her grandson on her back four hundred miles in 1888 when fleeing Mescalero Apache territory in southern New Mexico. “That’s our longest walk,” Claudia said.2 claudia vigil-muniz 189 CH010.qxd 12/14/10 8:13 AM Page 189 Mostly, over my visit of several days to Jicarilla, Claudia talked in her small van, which afforded privacy and an exit from town. Her discomfort in Dulce was palpable; it was where her political enemies still lived. One, a large man with a long ponytail, had rushed past us in the motel lobby. “I could sense it was bothersome to him.” Another adversary and Dulce resident was a woman who was “very adamant about getting me out. I don’t know what I’ve ever done to this woman.” Claudia boldly did try...