Cochiti Cultural Insights

Lieutenant Governor Vernon Garcia provides us with some cultural insights before we view the buffalo dance.

Vernon Garcia, Lieutenant Governor, Cochiti Pueblo

Kuweasti hopa.  I’d just like to welcome everybody to the ancestral homelands of the Cochiti Pueblo Indians.  I’d like to take the opportunity to tell you a little bit about our people and where we came from.

We are connected with the Anasazi people that moved into the southwest several centuries ago, and it’s from that group that we somehow or another migrated to what is now Bandelier.  Bandelier in Cochiti is “?” – that’s what our elders call it.

Cochiti origin dates much earlier and from a farther place, but Bandelier is recognized as one of the most important and current locations that we’ve migrated from.

We learn everything orally.  We’re not told.  I mean, we’re not—we don’t find out in books.  We’ve learned it, we’ve been taught this tradition, and we’ve brought it forward.  It’s just been passed down, and I am living proof that it does work.