Dulce Days

One of my main tasks on this road trip was to visit the Jicarilla Apache reservation in Dulce, NM to find out some personal information as to a possible link for me to this area through my grandfather, as well as to assess possibilities for work related to my Master's thesis. On the personal level, I had some limited success; one of the tribal elders, Wilma Phone, referred me to a man in the area who might be a relative. This man, whom I contacted, said he would ask his older relatives if they knew my grandfather, Abundo Martinez, whom my uncle Jimmy has indicated to our family was Apache. Waiting to hear more on this. As to the academic portion of my visit, I felt that went extremely well. Wilma gave me a lot of info as to the current state of affairs of the Jicarilla Apache nation, and she also introduced me to the director of their culture center, Lorene Willis, who provided a lot of good ideas and possibilities for future networking on specific ongoing projects. I relayed the results of these meetings to my advisor at school, who seemed impressed by what I had come up with, but also advised that I should inquire further as to land issues involving the Jicarilla, and to see if they have a land committee of sorts that I could contact, so this will be an upcoming project for me to work on.

Because of the start of school now, I will probably be reducing postings to about one or so a week. I know, I know, this will cause considerable distress for the throngs of my current readership. To this I can only say that I will try to replace the quantity of my writings with an increased quality during this reduction in output. What? How can it get any better, you say? To this I say that "Quality Is Job One" here at the Fiat Lux headquarters, overlooking beautiful Sloan's Lake in North Denver.