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10. Conclusion: Popay’s Long Shadow
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207 10 Conclusion Po’pay’s Long Shadow On August 10, 2005, I stood looking across the central plaza of the ancestral Jemez pueblo of Giusewa in northern New Mexico. An army of piñon, juniper, and ponderosa pines stood sentinel over the stone walls and kivas of the long-vacant village, while nearby the Jemez River slipped between the cliffs of the adjacent mesas. Overhead the sun pushed us fair-skinned tourists into the last strip of shade cast by the façade of the seventeenth-century Spanish mission church. Backs pressed to the wall, we watched as two Buffalo Dancers from Jemez Pueblo performed in the center of the plaza. The fur and horns of their bison headdresses undulated with each dusty step, bells tied to their waists softly jingling with every movement. All of us had gathered together on this August day to commemorate the anniversary of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, or as the organizers had dubbed it, “Pueblo Independence Day.” As the first round of singing and dancing ended, the governor of Jemez Pueblo stepped to a microphone to deliver a short speech about the importance of the Pueblo Revolt in his tribe’s history: “It is because our ancestors were brave enough to declare their independence 325 years ago, in 1680, that we are here today,” he affirmed. “And we honor them now by once again proclaiming that we are Hemish. We are a sovereign nation. And our descendants will be here in another 325 years to proclaim the same thing.” Six weeks later, on September 23, a marble figure of Po’pay was installed in the National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. After a decade-long effort of garnering political support, fundraising, and planning for the statue, spearheaded by Herman Agoyo of Ohkay Owingeh, the Po’pay sculpture filled the final spot in the 100-member gallery. The assembled audience of dignitaries and invited guests applauded as the statue was unveiled, and rightly so, as this was a momentous occasion. Po’pay’s monument is the only work in the national collection carved by a Native American artist, Cliff Fragua of Jemez. One of the more interesting aspects of the Chapter 10 208 ceremony was the positioning of Po’pay within the hall. Over the Tewa prophet’s right shoulder hung John Vanderlyn’s giant, eighteen-foot-wide oil painting, Landing of Columbus (1846). On the canvas, Christopher Columbus holds a sword in his right hand and the banner of his Spanish sovereigns in his left. The placement of Po’pay in front of this work of art was thus both ironic and appropriate; with Columbus looming in the background, the Pueblo holy man had his back turned to the explorer, focused on a distant horizon. Fingering a knotted cord in his left hand, Po’pay pondered a future with Spaniards behind him, both literally and figuratively. The Penumbra of the Pueblo Revolt In a provocative 1979 essay, French philosopher Michel Foucault (1981 [1979]) asked, “Is it useless to revolt?” His question hints at the seemingly overwhelming forces of history that serve to stifle resistance time and time again. Indeed, Foucault’s own work documents the ubiquitous, insidious, and paralyzing nature of power and domination in social life. Given the seemingly unstoppable march of global capitalism in the modern world, the revolts of the past can appear to be little more than quaint and idealistic interludes. It is perhaps surprising, then, that Foucault answers his own question in the negative: “I am not in agreement with anyone who would say, ‘It is useless for you to revolt; it is always going to be the same thing,’” he writes. “People do revolt, that is a fact. And that is how subjectivity (not that of great men, but that of anyone) is brought into history, breathing life into it.” In this Foucault is in rare accord with Karl Marx, who was of course profoundly attuned to the vital role of revolutions in larger historical perspective. The agreement of these two giants of social theory (often read as counterpoints to one another) illustrates why the study of rebellion and revolution has played a central role in the social sciences for more than 150 years. The forcible overthrow of the social order in favor of a new system raises classic questions regarding the relationship between agency and structure, event and process, and the individual versus society. As the annual observance...