The Top 40

That sign should have thousands of 12ga slug holes all over it.

They don't wan any record of the before so there will be no comparisons with the after of urban renewal. You can't spell progress without Progressiveism.

Say, isn't that the sign that the National Forest Service is going to start putting up all over?

I think what they really don't want is a record of what a crappy shit hole the Pueblo is these days. Poor and shabby and dirty with a lot of garbage just dumped over the edge of the mesa and lying in rotting piles all around. Lots of sceevy folks sort of shambling around on the day I was there. Pretty depressing.

Actually, the Acoma Pueblo has not really been inhabited for years. Very few people if any actually live there full time. Most of the time, they live down on the plain, in houses that have plumbing and electricity. They go up and stay on the mountaintop for special occasions - during which it is likely that visitors will be even more enthusiastically discouraged.

All of the Pueblos have similar rules about photographing things. Some of them require a permit, and allow you to photograph the buildings, and with permission, the people, but never any of their traditional rites and ceremonies.

The list of oldest inhabited places could have included many of the other pueblos in New Mexico, most of which have been continuously inhabited for more than 500 years.

The restrictions on photography may be in conflict with the Constitution, since these are Federal reservations, but I don't think that has been tested in the Federal courts. It is likely however that the restrictions would be upheld, as being within the semi-sovereign rights of the pueblo tribes.

More likely the Gummint doesn't want anyone capturing the anima of the land on film and removing it for ransom.

Everybody thinks the "good old days" were good. Not so. Back a hundred fifty years or so there was disease, open sewers, malnutrition, the same deadly sins that we see today. No electricity, sanitation, running water, so forth and so on. The Indians living in those pueblos were not children of Aquarius. They kidnapped, tortured, enslaved Whites and anybody else that came along. Fought wars constantly, practiced genocide, and had a life expectancy of around thirty-five, maybe forty. Those Native Americans that choose to live in pueblos today do so for spiritual ceremonies and not year-round; they live like they did a hundred years ago and even the most conscientious and spiritual of them do not care for open sewers, &c.