As chairman of the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, which is located partially in the state, I have made numerous requests that our tribe be added to the list of tribes and invited to the summit.

In 2012, we were invited, then disinvited. In 2013, I met with the secretary of Indian Affairs, who agreed to present our request to the governor. For months, we received no response. The response finally came via telephone two days before the summit, when I was told that we were not welcome.

Our history in New Mexico is well known, back when we were called Chiricahua & Warm Springs Apaches.

We officially returned to the state in 2002, when the federal government placed into trust a parcel of land within our aboriginal homeland that we owned near Deming at a place called Akela.

In 2011, it took the additional step of declaring this parcel to be our reservation, our first reservation in New Mexico since our reservation at Warm Springs was closed in 1877. It published notice of this action in the Federal Register on Nov. 28, 2011.

Since then, we’ve been welcomed back by the Legislature, and numerous city and county governments. Long before that, both the Taxation and Revenue Department and the Alcohol and Gaming Division of the Regulation and Licensing Department accepted both our legal presence here and the revenues that we generate for them.