With Independence Day here, I thought I’d share with you a significant moment in the life of our reservation that occurred on July 4, 1969. That was the official date when running water was turned on for homes on our reservation in the valley.

I was just a young boy at the time. Tribal members for generations used to have to haul buckets of water from the stream. There was no running water, no indoor plumbing.

In the late 1960s, our Tribal Chairman was Edward Olivas. He had a vision for the future of our tribe, telling a local newspaper, “Our immediate goal is the installation of a water system in every home on the reservation; and our hope (is) that everyone will want to live on the reservation because it is a fine place to live.”

Our tribe over the past several decades has set out to see that our reservation is, indeed, a fine and welcoming place for our families to live. We have used the proceeds from our economic enterprises to further our self-determination programs. Such investments honor our ancestors and their struggles by making sure our tribe will live on for generations and generations to come.