Black Eagle

Nestled roughly fifty miles north of Albuquerque, New Mexico, the pueblo of Jemez comprises scattered adobe dwellings arranged according to longstanding Native American custom. Local lore recounts that Father Sun once cautioned the people that total abandonment of their customs would invite outsiders to seize their territory. In Jemez, where children master the ancestral Towa tongue prior to English, the Black Eagle Singers sustain ancestral musical practices. Five members belong to the Yepa clan, joined by four additional vocalists who blend singing with rhythmic patterns struck on the large ceremonial powwow drum. Terrence and Kendrick Casiquito trace their lineage to a musical household, while Glendon Toya serves as lead vocalist. The ensemble traces its entry into the powwow circuit to Little Jimmy Coyote and now appears regularly across the southeastern United States, aided early on by the influential Black Lodge Singers. Six separate releases have appeared on independent labels devoted to Native American music. Indian Sounds issued Native American Jemez Pueblo, New Mexico, followed by a second volume that marked the group’s debut on compact disc. American Indian Sources distributed the pair of volumes titled Navajo Songs from Canyon de Chelly, and the Pow Wow label released Soaring High. Jemez residents and the singers remain central to regional debates over ownership of property ranging from ancestral remains to land itself. David Yepa, an attorney within the pueblo, was selected by former President Bill Clinton for the board of trustees overseeing the Valles Caldera National Preserve, a 95,000-acre tract acquired by the federal government for $101 million and protected from future development—an outcome welcomed locally. In 1999 the community hosted the largest repatriation of Native human remains and associated funerary objects to date. During a May ceremony that year, the Black Eagle Singers performed while Yepa, acting as War Captain, offered a prayer. Under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, holdings from Harvard’s Peabody Museum and its sister institution in Andover were returned to Jemez for reburial. Additional distinction arrived when Benny Shendo, Jr., was appointed Secretary of Indian Affairs in the New Mexico state government. Recording continued with Star Child in 2000, Life Goes On in 2002, Flying Free in 2003—which earned a Grammy for Best Native American Music Album—Straight Up Northern in 2005, and Voice of the Drums in 2006.