A full-time, self-taught potter since the 1980s, Lonnie Vigil is a native of Nambe Pueblo where he grew up "close to the earth" in a family whose roots went back for generations with some of the members making a living by raising cattle.

After high school, Lonnie Vigil went to Denver where he earned a junior accounting degree, having followed a path to fulfill his mother's advice to become a business person. On a scholarship, he entered the business administration program at Eastern New Mexico University, took a job as a loan officer at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Santa Fe, and then was promoted to a similar job at a national level in Washington DC.

However, a defining moment was attending a Native American gathering at t...