Pueblo Independence Day at Jemez Springs, NM and in the Artwork Virgil Ortiz

The first American revolution took place in the Southwest, not along the East Coast. Its leader was Po’Pay, not George Washington. United were more than 45 pueblos, not 13 colonies. The enemy was the Spanish, not the British.

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 vanquished a colonial overlord from present day New Mexico nearly 100 years before the events of 1776 on the other side of the continent. It remains the only successful Native uprising against a colonizing power in North America.

The triumph is little known across the country. Textbooks don’t highlight the bravery. These are not the heroes this nation wants.

These heroes were Indigenous. They weren’t Christian. They weren’t capitalist. Three strikes and you’re out of populist American history.

Erased, yes.

Forgotten, no.

Sunday, August 13, 2023, the Jemez Historic Site in Jemez Springs, NM, 50 miles northwest of Albuquerque, will hold its annual Pueblo Independence Day celebration. The public is invited from 10:00 AM to 4:30 PM to enjoy traditional Pueblo-style dances, shop for arts and crafts, eat, and tour Gisewa Pueblo, an ancestral site of the present-day Jemez Pueblo, as well as the San Jose de los Jemez Mission. The day’s free events begin at 7:00 AM with a 13-mile pilgrimage from the Jemez Pueblo Plaza to Jemez Historic Site. Visitors are welcome to participate and water will be available.

Like white kids in America brought up hearing about Washington, Paul Revere and the patriots, Virgil Ortiz (b. 1969; Cochiti Pueblo) doesn’t recall when he first learned of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The stories were always there. In the air.

Ortiz is one of America’s leading contemporary artists. His career successes have spanned fashion, graphics, photography, and glass, but most prominently, clay pottery, both traditional and novel.

Since about 2000, Ortiz has devoted part of his art practice to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. In recent years, it’s become his exclusive focus.

“The reason why I do it is education, to have people acknowledge who we are, that we’re still here, thriving, creating, and without the Revolt, we wouldn’t be who we are today,” Ortiz told Forbes.com.

Hundreds of people, most already familiar with the details, will attend the Pueblo Independence Day celebration in remote Jemez to remember the event. Hundreds of thousands, most totally unfamiliar with the details, will be introduced to the Revolt through Ortiz’ work on view in museums, galleries, hotels and at exhibitions across the world.

The world.

That’s a funny thing.

“When I do shows in Amsterdam, Prague, Paris, all the Europeans know exactly what I’m talking about with the 1680 Pueblo Revolt, but when I do shows in cities here, they have no idea,” Ortiz said. “Even when I do shows in Santa Fe, (visitors) are like, ‘what’s the Pueblo Revolt’ and that’s where it mostly took place. It’s insane and quite embarrassing that Europeans know our history more than Americans do.”

The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and the events leading up to it–roughly 100 years of Spanish incursion onto ancestral homelands, exploitation, attempted cultural genocide, the Acoma Massacre–were scarcely mentioned in the public schools Ortiz attended. And that was in New Mexico where this all took place. His education came at home.

“It was always around in the stories,” Ortiz remembers. “Our language is not written so we hear everything through stories and family gatherings; (the Revolt) was always present. I would ask, ‘why is the church here?’ That’s not part of our (culture), Catholicism was never around.”

Indigenous Futurism

Family, family friends, and then his own exploration of the subject first educated then obsessed Ortiz. It wasn’t his only obsession. Ortiz is a child of the 70s and 80s. The release of “Star Wars” in 1977 was a turning point in his life. He watched it over and over and over again in the theatre.

“Star Wars,” of course, is a revolution story as well. A rebellion against empire. The Empire. Resistance in the face of overpowering subjugation. It doesn’t take much for a Native American watching “Star Wars” to cast themselves in the role of Luke, Leia or Han and put Darth Vader in stars and stripes.

Ortiz became a science fiction freak and his great artistic breakthrough came via combining the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 with sci-fi, originating the genre of Indigenous futurism so prevalent in Native American art today. Prevalent enough that a traveling museum exhibition just before the pandemic centered exclusively on engagements with “Star Wars” by contemporary Native American artists.

Ortiz started that wave, and in doing so, his artwork offers a hopeful future for Indigenous people, not simply a proud past.

“I try to reach the next generation and kind of trick them into learning a history lesson,” Ortiz explains, “but doing that with characters and storyline in two different time dimensions which allowed me to create cool sci-fi characters.”

Say what?

Artworks focused on the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 completed during the 2000s and 2010s led Ortiz into subsequent artworks based on the Pueblo Revolt of 2180, a speculative future he has imagined.

“The 2180 characters are us in the future. They’re coming back to the present time and historic time and they’re collecting artifacts–songs or language or designs–and taking it back to 2180–storing it, protecting it–so when we get to that time dimension, we still have everything intact,” the artist explains. “I love historical storytelling, but that’s not my gig. I’m not an academic. I love sci-fi, so I was like, ‘how am I going to be able to incorporate sci-fi characters?’”

The Revolt happening simultaneously in two different time dimensions was the answer. In this world, he has created 19 different groups of characters representing the 19 remaining sovereign Pueblos in New Mexico, including Jemez and Cochiti.

If you think this sounds like a movie, so does Ortiz. He’s been writing and revising a script based on the idea for nearly 20 years and will soon be making his most serious efforts to see it come to life, heading to Los Angeles to present the idea to production studios.

“I’m just a conduit; it’s way bigger than I am,” Ortiz said. “I’m just a bead in a necklace with the work that I do to spread the word and education about the Revolt.”

Continuing Education

Pueblo independence was short lived. The Spanish reconquest occurred 12 years later, but the new order featured a different power dynamic between the Indigenous and the invaders. Pueblo life ways persisted.

While Pueblo Independence Day lasts just one day, the history of the Pueblos is shared year-round at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque. It makes for an ideal starting point in learning about the Revolt or exploring the Pueblos.

As does the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe. Remarkably, it’s permanent exhibition, “Here, Now and Always,” features Spanish church bell fragments destroyed and scattered during the 1680 Revolt. The bells were a symbol of Spanish domination and a target of the revolutionaries.

Virgil Ortiz’ latest monumental characters from his Pueblo Revolt 1680/2180 series can be seen during a special pop-up exhibition at the El Dorado Hotel & Spa taking place August 17-20, 2023, to coincide with the annual Southwestern Association for Indian Arts Santa Fe Indian Market, the largest Indigenous art festival in the world.

More permanent displays of his work in Santa Fe can be seen at the entry to the Inn and Spa at Loretto as well as the original Meow Wolf location.

Also in Santa Fe and Scottsdale, AZ, Ortiz’ work is on view and for sale at King Galleries. Owner Charles King wrote a gorgeous monograph chronicling Ortiz’ career published in 2022. The book details Ortiz’ exploration of the Pueblo Revolt throughout his career and is a worthy addition to any collection of Native American art writing.

Gallery Hózhó in Albuquerque also represents Ortiz.

History Center Colorado in Denver presents “Revolt 1680/2180: Runners + Gliders” through May of 2024. Using projection mapping and augmented reality alongside centuries-old Cochiti sculptures and Ancestral Puebloan pottery dating back a millennium, the exhibition brings Ortiz’s stunning visions of the future to life.

Finally, for the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, ME, Ortiz served as exhibition designer and has artwork included in a reinstallation of the permanent collection on view through July 28, 2024. “Painted: Our Bodies, Hearts, and Village” recontextualizes artwork produced by the Taos Society of Artists from 1915-1927 through Indigenous perspectives.