President Nixon Meets with Taos Pueblo Leaders

In this photograph, taken by Oliver F. Atkins on July 8, 1970, President Richard M. Nixon meets with leaders of the Taos Pueblo American Indian Tribal Council in the Cabinet Room in the West Wing. Among those in attendance were Taos Pueblo Governor Quirino Romero, Cacique religious leader Juan de Jesus Romero, secretary and interpreter Paul Bernal, senior councilman James Mirabal, president of the National Congress of American Indians and member of the National Council on Indian Opportunity Earl Old Person, and John Rainer, vice president of the National Congress of American Indians and member of the National Council on Indian Opportunity. Later that year, on December 15, 1970, Nixon signed bill H.R. 471 in the State Dining Room, which returned Blue Lake and surrounding mountains to the Taos Pueblo people. The land had been seized by the United States government in 1906.