When I was a novice teacher on the Navajo Nation way back in the day, I was concerned about a particular student who rarely showed up in my fifth grade classroom. Our school principal offered this encouragement without a hint of irony: “Don’t worry about him,” he said. “That kid’s a good basketball player. He won’t miss a game.” The kid in question was ten years old.
Basketball is beloved on the Navajo rez. When played in a large high school arena the game is a community magnet. In an expansive desert homeland where one’s closest neighbor could be miles away on unpaved and rutted roads, community gatherings are a challenge, especially in the winter. In the old days during the months that now define basketball season, relatives would come together to play the Shoe Game and tell the ancient Navajo creation stories, stories of ancestral emergence through past worlds into this, the “Glittering World” of today. The Shoe Game, a sort of shell game where a small ball is hidden inside one of many moccasins, is seeing a revival, but basketball is the thing that really pulls in a crowd from far and wide.
NY Times sportswriter views life on the Navajo rez from the vantage point of high school basketball
Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation, a new book by NY Times sportswriter Michael Powell (Blue Rider Press) (https://www.amazon.com/Canyon-Dreams-Basketball-Season-Navajo/ ) and the Netflix Original docuseries Basketball or Nothing developed by pro golfer Rickie Fowler both poignantly portray the trials and triumphs of the Chinle High School Wildcats, a Navajo Nation basketball team coached by Raul Mendoza. The team’s brand of basketball is rez ball. When played at its best, rez ball spectacularly coalesces skill, speed and mind meld into a force as mystical and uplifting as the Navajo landscape. With all these elements in sync, players of slight build can put away more muscular, towering challengers, especially under Mendoza’s direction.
Both Powell’s book and the Netflix series juxtapose the young Chinle players and their coach against the too familiar tropes of reservation despair. Alcohol and substance abuse, joblessness, broken families, transgenerational trauma form the backdrop of many players’ lives. The game gives them a chance to control their destiny for 32 minutes of play while living in a land that, though magnificent and awesome, threatens to be devoid of promise for many if not most of them.
Part Navajo pro golfer Rickie Fowler developed the popular Netflix series
Between Powell’s book and the Netflix series, Basketball or Nothing may be the more cynical of the two titles, but it’s not far off. Because what doors will open for the kids of Chinle, AZ (area population about 5000; poverty rate 50%) when high school basketball days are over? For the academically talented, good colleges await if the kids are helped to navigate the scholarship application process and their families don’t dissuade them from leaving the rez and their roots. One player featured by both Powell and Netflix gets a free ride to ASU, but not to play basketball (he’s only five feet six). He’s a good, solid student aiming to study electrical engineering, and he’s also good at track and field.
Michael Powell writes about one Harvard-bound kid, Keanu, an avid learner with superhuman drive. Keanu lives in a trailer with his grandmother and writes his essays on his cellphone due to a lack of internet connection. He opens all of his college admission responses on his laptop when on break from his cashier job at Burger King. Besides Harvard, Keanu was accepted at Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, Swarthmore and Case Western Reserve. Here’s the thing: he never played basketball, but he’s a devoted fan. Per the Netflix series, two players who landed actual basketball scholarships are headed to a place called Southwest Indian Assembly of God University, where the majors offered on campus are countable on one hand (Ministry is one of them).
Back to that ten-year-old student of mine who rarely showed up in class but wouldn’t miss a game. The summer before school started, his grandparents and his father all perished in a single car accident that involved their two vehicles in a head on collision.
For many years of Raul Mendoza’s long career of coaching
high school basketball, he was also a guidance counselor. Coach Mendoza, a
septuagenarian master almost Buddha like in wisdom and patience, told this to
Michael Powell: “Do you know what I’m proudest of in this life? Not a single
one of those teenagers I counseled committed suicide. They lived, every single
one of them.”
The Navajo Times recently reported that Basketball or Nothing will be filming its second season. Let’s hope that the Chinle Wildcats and all young basketball players on the vast Navajo Nation will realize many dreams in their upcoming seasons on and off the court, on or off the rez, within or outside of the canyons where they dwell. Let’s hope their futures will be blessed with lots of good somethings beyond basketball.
In the arid landscape of the US Four Corners region, water inspires profound reverence and artistic vision.
Back in the pre-COVID days of 2018, I reveled in an Easter Sunday feast in Cortez, CO at the home of artist and writer Sonja Horoshko and artist and activist Ed Singer.
We were a motley crew of seven that Sonja and Ed had tightly gathered around their small table set next to the kitchen stove. Sonja is Arctic Swedish/Ukrainian; Ed is Navajo, Diné; myself, my accompanying sister and niece a Jewish soup of Russian, Polish and Austro-Hungarian flavors. There was a Zuñi international activist and a WASP all-around uber mensch with American lineage dating back to the Mayflower. Wine flowed and chatter with bursts of activity rippled through the evening. We’d each entered the scene from our various corners of the universe and left in a wave composed of kindred spirits.
Cortez, CO . . . one small town situated near Mesa Verde in the American high desert, a town with so many stories, so much history, and so many unique and indelible characters. . . . Now, Cortez’s homegrown and appropriately named Sharehouse Press has released a new book that brings a commingling of voices from a panoply of cultures. These voices (in five first languages!) flow together linked by one unifying theme: Water.
The book’s cover by Chip Thomas (jetsonorama.net) depicts a dramatic work from the photographer’s Painted Desert project.
WET: An Anthology of Water Poems and Prose from the High Desert and Mountains of the Four Corners Region (Sharehouse Press, 2021, $21.95), wasedited by Sonja Horoshko, Renee Podunovich, Michael Thompson, Gail Binkly and Laurie Hall. The book—the first in a planned series centered around the elements water, earth, fire and air—brings together thirty writers who were asked to look deeply into the experience of water as a living entity.
Sonja states, “We asked the writers to put aside settlement papers, policies, water shares and the tally of straws in the Colorado River. And then we asked them to speak love to water instead.”
Artist and writer Sonja Horoshko of Cortez, CO, spearheaded the Sharehouse Press project with a team of editors representing poetry, prose, indigenous language and publishing expertise. She noted that the volume is unillustrated. The editors wanted the voices to speak for themselves.
Represented are writers and poets who together create in Diné; Mvskoke,Creek; Haak’u, Acoma, Spanish and English languages. In some cases, English translations are offered within the body of a poem or story. In other entries, a translation follows as standalone writing. Indigenous contributors weave their first languages naturally into the fabric of English writings.
Says Native American Literary Liaison Michael Thompson, a Mvskoke writer and educator: “ . . . Commitment to our environment, to diversity of representation . . . made this publication a reality. This is what advocacy should be. This is art. This is community voice.”
WET celebrates water’s primordial gifts, and acknowledging those gifts becomes ever more unifying when we ponder that it is water from which we spring, and water which sustains us all.
The examples below represent only a small pool of the water-inspired works of writers who, as Sonja Horoshko states, were brought “to the edge of the well.” At that edge, they delved deep into the pools beneath to serve the reader a cascade of shimmering images inspired by an element sacred to all, in every language.
Rafael Jesús González, Poet Laureate of Berkeley, CA and a literary notable at Telluride, writes in Spanish and English of water’s holiness in his poem “Del Agua, Of Water.”
Del Agua, Of Water by Rafael Jesús Gonzalez
El nuestro es un hogar de agua y agua somos — de su vientre de agua venimos y su agua salada de mar corre por nosotros hasta la muerte. Sus aguas nos alimentan por río y arroyuelos, el mar y las nubes suspendidas o corrientes, cautivas en los picos de los montes y en las ramas de árboles, las hojas de la hierba. Bautismo y bendición de agua es nuestro nacer y sagrada es la humedad de nuestras vidas. Cuidado que no la blasfemosOurs is a water home & water are we — from her water womb we come & her salt sea water courses through us until death. Her waters feed us through river & stream, the sea & the clouds hovering or racing, caught on the mountain peaks & the branches of trees,the blades of grasses. Baptism & water blessing is our birth & sacred the wetness of our lives.Take care we not blaspheme it.
Bringing the Morning Water by Tina Deschenie
Tina Deschenie, Ed.D, Diné winner of a Governor’s Award for Outstanding New Mexico Women related to her years of distinguished dedication to Indian Education, writes of bringing the Morning Water as a ritual act in a Peyote Ceremony:
When they said, “You bring in the Morning Water,” I always tried hard to be thankful and to think positive. It required dressing nice, wearing a favorite skirt or dress and turquoise jewelry, fixing my hair into a bun, dressing up. It meant being in the hoghan early, before nightfall, sitting there calmly even if the ceremony didn’t begin until near midnight. If a lot of people came, we had to squeeze ourselves into a small space, sitting on the ground all night, keeping tight control of ourselves, trying not to fall asleep, listening and watching. It meant accepting the peyote juice and the peyote buttons as medicine, eating the bitter food slowly and accepting the consequences freely. Your thoughts might go flying high to the ceiling and in circles around the room after that, but you had to sit still and keep praying. . . .
Meditations along the Rio Grande by Maurus Chino
Maurus Chino, Haak’u Acoma visual artist and writer, ponders COVID in his meditations along the Rio Grande, which, per Michael Thompson, “include very personal conversations with a particular pair of ducks and a keen observance of the river’s other inhabitants and its visitors too. . . .”
Friday, May 1
Cirrus clouds. Streamers of ice crystals fall, precipitate, usually
evaporate before reaching the ground—from The Book of Clouds.
Clem and Al swim in the clouds.
High cirrus clouds portend a windy, hot day.
It was warm already this morning. I’ll have to change my routine. Work in
the early morning and rest in the afternoon.
I tried to focus as I left the house. I mean, I tried to bring my
attention back to why I started doing my walk.
Sometimes I read a list before I leave the house. Sometimes I think of names, of situations and hardships loved ones may be going through. Those thoughts are in me as I walk down the sidewalks and pavement to the river.
I heard from a beloved relative this morning. Her town will be
on total lockdown soon, if it isn’t already. People are still worried.
It feels heavy sometimes, this burden, this terrible and awesome
burden we all carry.
Each household is different. Each family is different, but we all
feel the weight just the same.
Life goes on even as we endure.
Still, we have each other, right? It’s gonna be okay.
At Acoma people say, Hadruzaim’e eh Q’uum’e!, Like men and women!
This is to say, be strong like men and women! It’s going to be okay.
The river was quiet. Clem and Al were swimming around acting kind of silly.
Al swam in circles. I don’t know what that means. . . .
The Excitement of Water, T’o, T’o by Gloria Emerson
Gloria Emerson, Diné poet and artist, writes of water as a marker of exultant discovery in so many Diné clan names:
Diné journeyed upwards onto Nahaasdzaan, Mother Earth. I imagined that as they walked into new lands, they met “happenings” and named them after land formations. Clans were created, perhaps in chants, prayers where groupings of people were named after Earth formations, gushing waters, rivulets, ponds, streams, rivers, confluences.The excitement of water, T’o, T’oThe Navajo water clans:Tábaąhá, the water’s edge people.Táchii’nii, the red running into the water people.Ta’neeszahnii, the tangle people.Tó ’áhání, the near to water people.Tó ’aheedlíinii, the water-flows-together people.Tó ’ázólí, the light water people.Tó baazhní’ázhí, the two-came-to-water people.Tó dich'ii'nii, the bitter water people.Tótsohnii, the big water people.Tł’ááshchí’í, the red bottom people.Tsé táá’áanii, the rock-extends-into-water people
To order your copy of WET (270 pp; $21.95 + shipping):
If you’d like to purchase a book by credit card, please go to http://bit.ly/onwardfoundation and scroll to Sharehouse Press under Special Events
For other payment options:
Create an email with the Subject line “Laurie Hall: Sharehouse Press Anthology”. Email address: info@montezumafoodcoalition.org.
Include your name and mailing address in the body of the email and specify how many copies of WET you are requesting.
Laurie at Sharehouse will reply to you with payment options.
Renowned ballet dancer Jock Soto, born in Gallup, New Mexico, retired from the New York City Ballet stage in 2005 and is now a master ballet instructor worldwide. Photo courtesy of Luis Fuentes.
COVID-19 is a Category 5 hurricane. We wear masks to shield against the virus much like protecting windows with plywood. Masks might protect our health but don’t do much for our fragile psyches. We strive to feel physically safe in our shelters, but we know there is mayhem out there. Millions and millions of jobs are lost, and no one knows how long it will take to recover. And while uncertain futures are pondered behind precariously protective masks, videos of threatening and deadly acts go viral. COVID’s seething undercurrents take a different shape. . . . a human torrent fills the streets, saying enough is enough. . .
There are and will be countless narratives about the recent happenings in America’s cities. But I am not one to add to the collection. Instead I’m moved to write about resiliency, about perseverance, about strength, indeed, about the gift of beauty in the midst of mayhem.
I’m moved to write about Jock Soto, world-renowned dancer, born in Gallup, New Mexico to Navajo mother Josephine Towne and Puerto Rican father Jose Soto.
Young Jock Soto with his parents, Jose Soto and Josephine Towne on the rodeo circuit in pre-New York days. Photo courtesy of Jock Soto.
Jock Soto is now 55, retired from the stage but in demand as a teacher of aspiring and professional dancers in New York and around the world. Now, during COVID, he teaches via Zoom from his and his husband Luis Fuentes’s New Mexico sanctuary in Eagle’s Nest, not far from Taos.
I first saw Jock Soto dance in the late 1980s at the former New York State Theater (now the David H Koch Theater) at Lincoln Center. I saw him not long after he was appointed the youngest principal dancer of the New York City Ballet at the time (and the last male dancer to have been handpicked by the late George Balanchine, the company’s founder and its spiritual leader in perpetuity).
I had been invited to the performance of Balanchine’s Symphony in C featuring Soto by a dear friend visiting from out of town. My friend knew that I loved ballet, and that I had yearned to see Soto. All three of us (Soto, my friend and I) had Southwest legacies, and Soto, so early in his career, was already legendary. The performance showed us why.
During a crisis, our minds tend to journey back to earlier fears and earlier joys. I have been thinking of that gorgeous 1980s performance because New York at that time was experiencing another hurricane . . . AIDS, displacement, a struggle to recover after headwinds of mismanagement and neglect brought the city to its knees.
Jock as a young ballet student in Phoenix, AZ, where he was spotted by a New York scout.
Jock Soto had arrived in New York in the late seventies, when the city was probably at its most down and out (until now). He was 13 years old. He’d been scouted by the School of American Ballet after being spotted in a class in Phoenix. His family had moved there specifically to give him a chance to fulfill his dream of becoming a ballet dancer, a dream he developed at the age of 5 after seeing the great Edward Villella on television.
His family’s journeys were centered on artistic dreams . . . Jock’s as a dancer, his brother’s as an actor. His parents’ self-appointed role was to keep the doors to dream fulfillment open. Jock tells his story eloquently in his memoir Every Step You Take (told with Leslie Marshall, Harper Collins, 2011).
Soto helping young dancers fulfill their potential, a legacy modeled by his own parents and mentors. (Photo from alchetron.com, the Free Social Encyclopedia)
Though he started out in New York with his family in 1978, life in New York became too much for them, and he was left there at 14 to manage on his own. He became a principal dancer of the company six years later, which tells you how he managed. Many, many ballets were choreographed based on his capacity to do just about anything that a choreographer could conceive of. And unlike some of the other superstars of his era, such as Baryshnikov, Jock had the reputation as one of the best ballet partners in the world. The greatest of ballerinas relied on him to catch them, support them, make possible the otherwise impossible, to let them shine. As a dancer, Jock is a rare combination of greatness without ego. What came through in his performances was not only his unparalleled skill, but generosity beyond measure.
Jock’s Navajo clan is To’aheedliinii, which means Water Flowing Together (there’s a documentary about Jock with this title. It’s nearly impossible to obtain, but a clip is available on YouTube).
The photo to the right (from danceviewtimes.com) shows Soto and ballerina Wendy Whelan flowing together in choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s “After the Rain.” The year was 2005, Jock’s last year on the New York City Ballet stage.
I read somewhere that members of the Water Flowing Together clan are joyous, sexy, outgoing and dominant . . . all things that Jock conveyed when I saw him dance all those years ago.
Now Jock teaches dancers at all levels. Perhaps most notably, he teaches master classes in partnering . . . a skill that demands perfection lest everything fall apart, a skill that demands that ego be tucked away to showcase another’s ability to spin and fly.
For ten years, Jock taught a 4-week course in ballet to indigenous students in Banff and Toronto, students who never knew a ballet position before his class and at the end knew enough to perform admirably for an audience. Jock told me that it was his mother’s dream that he teach ballet to indigenous peoples. Who better than Jock, who started dancing the hoop dance at the age of 3 and became a principal dancer of NYCB at age 20, to point the way to the beauty and empowerment of movement?
Jock Soto has much to teach.
Jock’s mother Josephine , a pow wow dancer, was his first dance teacher. She taught him the hoop dance when he was 3 years old, before ballet stole his heart at the age of 5. (Photo courtesy of Jock Soto)
Last year, the LGBT group Dine Pride gave Jock Soto their Dine Pride Champion Award, and he had a message for the audience in Window Rock, the Navajo capital: “What my mother always said was, ‘Pursue your dreams and walk in beauty’.”
I envision a poster with his picture and his words, with the added directive “Move!”, displayed in every chapter house on the Navajo Nation, where diabetes and heart disease are rampant.
As the streets of American cities are filled with citizens pleading for change, as the Navajo Nation copes with the worst COVID statistics in the United States, messages like Jock Soto’s can become drowned out by cries of despair and anger. But his are words that all of us need to remember. And Jock can teach all of us something else: flowing together, partnering, is a skill that we all will we need if, at the end of COVID, we are going to fight our way back from disaster and do our damnedest to walk in beauty out of the storm.
A clip from from a 1990s episode of Sesame Street, where Jock and ballerina Lourdes Lopez partner in dance to teach the word “Cooperate.”
Postcard of Gallup, New Mexico, sometimes known as the Indian Capital of the World.
Almost precisely at the moment when businessman Louie Bonaguidi took up the reins as the newly elected mayor of Gallup, New Mexico, the state’s Governor Grisham granted his request to use the Riot Control Act to lock down the town due to the “uninhibited” spread of COVID-19. For now, traffic along heavily traveled Interstate 40 can’t enter the town of 22,000 people famously featured in the song Get Your Kicks on Route 66 (originating with Nat King Cole and covered by artists as varied as Nancy Sinatra and Glenn Frey). Residents of the town can’t leave. Vehicles within the town can have no more than 2 passengers.
Gallup is the seat of McKinley County, which as of this writing has about 1030 coronavirus cases and 19 deaths. The outbreak started in a detox center and spread to the streets, from the streets to nursing homes and the population at large. Gallup already has many nicknames: The Indian Capital of the World, Drunk Town, and The Most Patriotic Small Town in America. Now a new nickname can be added: The COVID-19 Capital of New Mexico.
Pedestrians on Highway 66, Gallup, NM in 1976, 44 years before anyone heard of social distancing.
I lived outside of Gallup in the mid-1970s, arriving two years after a notorious incident where an angry young activist named Larry Casuse kidnapped the mayor of the town. In 1973, Gallup’s mayor Emmett Garcia had been named to the New Mexico Board of Regents and announced an intention to open an alcohol rehab program. Casuse was enraged not only at the Board of Regents post, but also at Garcia’s hypocrisy in planning a rehab program while being part owner of an infamous bar/liquor store named the Navajo Inn that was situated one mile east of the Navajo Nation border.
Late activist Larry Casuse, who was killed in a police shootout after kidnapping Gallup mayor Emmett Garcia in 1973. Photo from EBwiki.
The kidnapping of the mayor ended with Garcia escaping and being superficially wounded by gunfire from a startled policeman’s pistol. Police then opened fire on the building where Casuse and his accomplice were holed up. Casuse’s accomplice surrendered, but Casuse was dead at the scene. After the incident, Garcia took his place on the Board of Regents and bought out his Navajo Inn partners. Then Garcia lost his reelection bid, and ultimately the Navajo Inn lost its lease and the building was obliterated.
I’ve been reading about Gallup’s new mayor, tipping my hat to him in taking on town leadership at this horrific moment in time. Bonaguidi is the owner of the City Electric Shoe Store. The name of the store stems from the time when the Bonaguidi family settled in Gallup in 1924 and opened a shoe repair enterprise that promised fast quality repair, especially cowboy boot repair, by using state-of-the-art electric equipment (see article on Bonaguidi’s shoe store).
Photo of City Electric Shoe store display. Copied from store’s Facebook page.
Now Mayor Bonaguidi’s shoe store is on the map of must-visit shoe stores in the American West and ranking Number 4 on one publication’s list of best shoe stores in New Mexico (beating out the Santa Fe shop where Jane Fonda buys her boots).
The store makes belts and moccasins on site and is stocked with so much cowboy-meets-pow-wow-dancer merchandise that you couldn’t dream it up in your wildest western fantasy.
To give you an idea of the “not-too-shabby” nature of Bonaguidi’s store, here’s a quote from a review on Yelp: “Hippest men’s boot store in existence with inventory from nothing but the best American-made footwear . . . Raw hides! The entire hide!! Whips!!! Chaps to go, animal pelts, custom leather work and more exotic Italian and Spanish shoe leather to reline those Louboutins than you can shake a pinon walking stick at. . . .” The store also has a website selling its in-house made moccasins and belts (https://nativeleather.com/)
Louie Bonaguidi won the office of mayor in an April runoff election against Sammy Chioda (affectionately known in Gallup as Sammy C) by a mere 41 votes. Bonaguidi’s opponent is a former sports broadcaster who owns a namesake establishment called Sammy C’s Rockin’ Sports Bar, Pub and Grille, which, per Sammy C’s website, is ranked as one of the top 101 best sports bars in the United States by CNN.
Sammy C, who lost his bid to be mayor of Gallup, greets customers at his Sammy C’s Rock N’ Sports Bar, Pub and Grille. Photo copied from Yelp.
Even by 41 votes, the town chose the guy with the business that is helping to put Gallup on the map in a good way. The native and other citizens of Gallup chose boots and moccasins over sports memorabilia and craft beer.
All this to say that Gallup’s taste in mayors has improved a lot in the last 47 years, which, even in the midst of the COVID-19 horror show taking place within its borders right now, indicates there is hope . . .
Gallup is a town whose economy relies on Navajos and Zunis converging on weekends to buy needed supplies, everything from groceries to hay to livestock. It also relies on truckers, tourists, hikers and other assorted travelers stopping for a meal or a warm bed. It depends on Native art lovers cruising its Indian jewelry stores or stores like the mayor’s or attending the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial held every year to feature the best in Native arts and dance. There are also bloodsucking businesses: payday lenders who suck the working poor into an eddy of crippling debt, the alcohol establishments that have no problem plying the already inebriated with liquor or sending them off drunk to terrorize the highways, the homeless and itinerants who panhandle or turn tricks or sell their plasma for change to feed their habits.
The Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial is an annual event that draws an international audience who marvel at Native dances and arts and crafts. COVID-19 will likely threaten the ability to hold the event this year. Photo from www.newmexico.org
I wish Mayor Bonaguidi all the luck and hope in the world. I hope that he and Governor Grisham and Navajo President Jonathan Nez can put their heads together to come up with a COVID-19 battle strategy, like emergency medical teams and testing for the population and for visitors that will allow the city to open (with 100 Abbott portable devices processing 5-minute tests, half the population could be tested in a day). And after the battle is over, Mayor Bonaguidi, you can move on to the next more lasting one: fulfilling Gallup’s potential as a city that thrives not on exploitation of its native citizens and patrons, but instead thrives as an example of a city that honors and sustains the natives on which its economy and soul depend.
The old trading post at Church Rock, New Mexico, the town where I had my first post-college job.
When you have an interest that you pursue on Google, the Google gods remember, and sometimes they surprise you with related news items that pop up on your Google home page.
The Google gods know that I have an interest in a small town named Church Rock (population per 2010 census: 1,128). Church Rock lies in Navajo territory on the outskirts of Gallup, New Mexico.
Google probably doesn’t know (but maybe does) that my interest in Church Rock stems from my having taught in the town my first year out of college, but no matter. Google knew I would be intrigued by an article that came out in the Navajo Times this week. The article’s subject is a nitrile glove factory in Church Rock that is now manufacturing medical gloves and shipping them to health care facilities in the Navajo Nation and other US locales struggling to cope with COVID-19. The locales include my home state of New York. (See Navajo Times article on Navajo glove facility.)
Navajo workers make sterile gloves for the medical front lines in the fight against COVID-19 in Navajoland, New York State and other impacted regions. Photo by Donovan Quintero saved from Navajo Times.
Phase One of a joint venture between the Navajo Nation and a company called Rhino Health, LLC, is primed to make 60 million pairs of blue nitrile gloves a year. Per the Navajo Times piece by reporter Donovan Quintero, the Church Rock factory is now churning out 8,000 pairs of gloves an hour and running around the clock. They are striving to keep up with demand while dealing with a shortage of raw material. (Materials have to be shipped from South Korea, home of Rhino Health’s parent company.)
If gloves could talk: In the Beatles’ 1968 film Yellow Submarine, a blue glove (once a weapon on the side of evil) learns how to join hands in the fight against destruction.
When Phase Two is completed, adding significantly more manufacturing space, Church Rock will be generating 1.3 billion pairs of blue sterile gloves a year for medical use.
Because of the Navajo Times article, I Googled keywords “nitrile” and “Church Rock” and found that in 2018, about two years before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19, the Navajo Nation invested $19 million for Rhino Health LLC to build its Church Rock facility that will eventually employ 350 Navajo workers (the state of New Mexico kicked in another $3 million).
News about the Navajo-Rhino Health joint venture was reported in the Albuquerque Journal, and later in the Navajo-Hopi Observer, but never leaked beyond regional boundaries. In the event other media don’t report how Navajo workers in Church Rock are helping first responders face the battle against the virus by providing protective gloves, I feel compelled to leak it here.
The “Church Rock” that gives the town its name. When I first saw the rock formation when I arrived as a teacher, I thought it looked more like a hand than a church. And while America paid no attention when the town encountered devastation from a uranium mine accident forty years ago, Church Rock is now really lending a hand in the COVID-19 crisis. Photo from TripAdvisor credited to 44dave56.
You may not know this about the Navajo town of Church Rock, but in July 1979, a few months after the famous Three Mile Island nuclear incident, Church Rock suffered a devastating radioactive contamination event courtesy of the United Nuclear Mine Corporation.
In 1979, the dam holding back tailings at United Nuclear’s Church Rock mine ruptured, sending 1100 tons of solid radioactive waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive solution into the local water sources and beyond (as far away as 50 miles downstream).
In the world at large, the Church Rock United Nuclear incident is second only to Chernobyl in terms of long-lasting devastation.
Today, if you ask the Google gods “What’s the worst nuclear disaster?” your search result will likely bring up a Business Insider article that describes the incidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima, the latter caused by the 2011 Tohuku earthquake and tsunami. The article says that Three Mile Island was not nearly as devastating as those two calamities (see: https://www.businessinsider.com/chernobyl-fukushima-three-mile-island-nuclear-disasters-2019-6).
Warning signs mark contaminated Church Rock areas. Photo saved from www.vice.com article “Church Rock, America’s Forgotten Nuclear Disaster, Is Still Poisoning Navajo Lands 40 Years Later.” Will Ford also wrote a followup story for The Washington Post in January of this year.
The Business Insider article doesn’t once mention what happened in Church Rock, New Mexico forty years ago. In Church Rock, the effects of the accident (effects that include kidney disease, cancer, fear of having children . . . ) are being felt to this day (see August 2019 VICE article on lasting impact of Church Rock mine disaster).
A central tenet of Navajo belief is the uniting principle of K’e, or kinship. It begins with caring for the immediate family, extends to the clan, and from there extends to the community as a whole. K’e, in essence, is the concept of how we are all related and thus responsible for each other.
In 1979, when it came to nuclear disasters creating a sense of community, a sense of K’e, the whole country fretted about the dangers facing Americans who lived near Three Mile Island. But what happened in Church Rock four months later didn’t penetrate the country’s consciousness at all. The national media barely mentioned the accident back in the day. It seemed that the people of Church Rock, who faced overwhelming devastation–dead livestock, contaminated water, early mortality–were outside the realm of Americans’ concern. Today, forty years later, the media is paying more attention. But while HBO’s Chernobyl won a slew of Emmy Awards, I haven’t read that there’s any series planned on what happened at Church Rock within our own nation’s borders.
A group of my 5th graders at Church Rock Elementary School, 1976, three years before the United Nuclear accident turned Church Rock into America’s Chernobyl.
In 2020, we are united in our knowledge that COVID-19 is affecting all of us, that the virus is shaping our immediate if not distant future. New York State may be the US epicenter of the virus, but we know that no region of the country is immune, especially not the Navajo Nation.
On the Navajo reservation, a territory of 27,425 square miles where about 40% of the population have to drive a great distance to get a supply of water, COVID-19 cases are spiking (see LA Times on Navajo COVID-19 crisis and NPR article on COVID-19 and Navajo Nation). Nonetheless, the people of Church Rock are working hard to ensure that the folks on the front lines as far away as New York State are safe.
Italy in better days, when Italians were allowed to be Italian.
At 66, I find myself branded with a category I never expected at my age. In the days of COVID-19, I feel like I have a sign pinned on my back that says, “over 60 and vulnerable.” I am healthy. I live in a suburban home in a New York State county that as of today has only 63 confirmed cases of the virus (that’s an old news number; 3/27 update: 160), while New York City, where a lot of my family live, has over 9,000 (that’s an old news number; 3/27 update: about 23,000). And let’s not even mention Italy, where a thousand vulnerable citizens died in a day, in part because Italians couldn’t grasp the meaning of social distancing.
My health club is closed on orders from Albany, but I walk 2-4 miles daily. I practice yoga. I confess that I did have a cold this winter, but I can’t remember the last time I had one before that. In short, I certainly don’t feel vulnerable, despite what Dr. Fauci says. (But don’t get me wrong; I thank God for Dr. Fauci.)
Then there’s my husband. His profile checks all the boxes of COVID-19 vulnerability. He’s over 80, diabetic, with a couple of arteries held open by stents. One of his Sunday jobs is organizing his medications for the week. But there he is, taking his daily walks along the nearby canal, cherishing the site of herons diving for fish, the scampering of small dogs on these bright mornings of early spring. He’s not feeling very vulnerable either. Yesterday he got a call from our supermarket pharmacy, which is about a half mile from our house. They called to ask how he was feeling, did he need any medications delivered to our door? “I’m okay,” he said. “I’m really okay.” My husband is from the former Soviet Union. When the call from the pharmacy ended, he said, “Wow. America.”
New York City was different a few weeks ago . . .
The State of New York is essentially under lockdown now. I
talk to family and friends often . . . those who live here, in New York, LA,
London, North Carolina . . . They’re all okay.
But I’ve been worried about a Navajo friend of mine who also has all the vulnerability boxes checked. Even before COVID-19 took over the news cycle, where I suppose it will remain for the foreseeable future, my friend was in poor health. She’s over eighty, has diabetes, high blood pressure. She lives alone on the rez, and recently, when she’s called for an ambulance for various non-COVID-19 health crises, she was told an ambulance couldn’t reach her due to road conditions. She lives off US Rte. 64 on a road that I’d experienced a couple of years ago on a good weather day. For fans of bumper cars and pogo sticks, the ride to her house is a rollicking good time. Navajo roads are notoriously awful, preventing kids from getting to school, and, in my friend’s case, the sick from getting to a clinic that could help them get well. You can bet that, regardless of her age and underlying health conditions, my friend is not getting any calls from a pharmacy offering to deliver necessary meds to her door.
A solitary steer in Canyon de Chelly. Social distancing is part of the very fabric of being in the Navajo desert.
I check on my friend by email, text or phone from time to time to see how she’s doing, if she has help, if she might be considering accepting care of relatives off the rez. I checked last week as the COVID-19 collective consciousness swelled, and I didn’t hear from her, and so I fretted. When I read that I am “vulnerable,” I want to shout, “Don’t tell me I’m vulnerable! I know who’s vulnerable!”
Social distancing at Costco, standing 6 ft. behind the person in front of me at the checkout line.
I know Britain toyed with ordering “vulnerable seniors” to stay home until July. Then Governor Gavin Newsom mandated that most Californians stay home. My millennial son is coping with this. Our own Governor Cuomo followed Newsom’s lead. And I’m happy to fall in line and stay home (save trips to buy groceries), maintain social distancing, take my walks and do yoga to free videos on YouTube.
But I think about my Navajo friend. Who’s buying her groceries? I wonder. Who’s making sure she’s safe?
Today, my questions were answered, because my friend replied to my text. She is feeling better and is being careful. She has a mask. She wears gloves when she shops. I had asked her if she was alone. She replied that she had too much company, which she defined as “crows that scold . . . hawks that smirk . . . dogs that beg . . . cats that remind her she forgot milk.” With all the frenzy around social distancing in these days, it’s easy to overlook that living a solitary life is not anathema to many who live in the desert, or in the mountains, or maybe around the corner.
My house is situated near an expressway, where there is usually a rush of traffic that, if I can wax romantic, sounds like ocean waves. But there’s very little traffic now. Now, when I step outside, I can hear the chirping of birds . . . every single chirp. So let’s take stock, breathe the fresh air, pitch our ears to sounds we couldn’t hear before, stay connected while living apart. When we eat through our supply of pasta, we can take heart that we’re not in Italy. We’ll adjust. We’ll give virtual hugs and blow virtual kisses. We’ll get through this.
My former boss Forrest Fenn with some of his favorite things. Photo saved from pinterest.com
I’ve lived and worked in many cities in my time, and I’ve sat at desks in even more offices. Of all the offices in which I’ve worked, there is only one I wish I could have taken with me. The office that got away was the one I had in a sprawling adobe building filled to the gills with paintings, sculpture, pots, jewelry, artifacts and other treasures. The building sat on Paseo de Peralta in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In my twenties, I was hired by an art dealer named Forrest
Fenn to set up a publishing imprint for his gallery, which was at its legendary
height at the time I worked there.
You may have heard of Forrest Fenn, who sold his gallery years ago and is now approaching ninety. At the age of eighty, Forrest morphed from a Santa Fe character into a national topic of conversation when he announced that he’d hidden a chest filled with 22 pounds of gold, jewels and relics in the Rockies somewhere between Santa Fe and the Canadian border. He published a pretty clunky, cryptic poem that he says contains the only clues needed to find the treasure, which he claims is worth upwards of $2 million. (The poem is published on many sites. Here’s one: http://fennclues.com/the-poem.html)
The Fenn treasure hunt phenomenon set the news media on fire and thousands of treasure seekers into the wilderness. Fenn uber-fan Dal Neitzel
Photo sourced from forrestfenntreasurechest.wordpress.com
is one of the biggest cheerleaders behind what has become such an intense obsession that four folks have died (make that five, as of 3/26/20) trying to find Fenn’s treasure chest (https://dalneitzel.com/).
There are a gazillion articles on the Fenn treasure phenomenon in publications as varied as Wired, Amtrak’s The National and even an Orthodox Jewish family-friendly publication called Mishpacha. (A comprehensive piece is on the Vox website https://www.vox.com/a/fenn-treasure-hunt-map.)
Over the years, Forrest published a series of memoirs that he says provides some hints. Word to the literary wise: The kind of writing contained in these memoirs is reflected in what Forrest says he wants as his epitaph. I quote him here: “I wish I could have lived to do the things I was attributed to.”
The younger Forrest Fenn who signed my paychecks back in the day assigned me the task of obtaining archives of some late members of the Taos Society of Artists. The archives, said Forrest, would serve to inform future limited edition publications on those legendary painters who had been inspired by the unique light and landscape of northern New Mexico in the early twentieth century.
The Burro, 1929, by Ernest L. Blumenschein, a member of the Taos Society of Artists. Photo saved from amerianart.si.edu.
My twenty-something-year-old gut told me that such documents belonged under university protection, but Forrest Fenn, who liked to brag that he never went to college, insisted that the valuable papers would be better off housed with him rather than be buried in some library vault.
My Fenn Gallery office was small and intimate. One entered my office through beautifully hewn wrought iron gates. Above were ceiling tiles covered with fragments of old Navajo saddle blankets. The built-in bookshelves were populated with art books floor to ceiling. My office had a window. It had a private bathroom.
Forrest was excited to meet Fred Rogers
A stream of celebrities would come by to “meet Forrest” in those days, and some of them stayed in his magnificent guest house, which was a hop, skip and jump from that office of my dreams. Forrest, the perfect host to the rich and famous, would collect their autographs and boast about their visits through the years as though they were part of his list of stellar possessions. (Once I walked into his office, where he was seated holding his constant companion, his dachshund Bip, on his lap. “Mr. Rogers just signed my book,” he said, beaming.)
How, one may ask, could anyone turn her back on an office and
an atmosphere like that? And yet I did, I think because I was in the midst of a
crazy relationship, and the only thing I thought I could control at that time
was my own sense of integrity, a sense that finally led me to telling Forrest Fenn
that I didn’t want to work for him anymore.
What was the last straw that pushed me over the edge?
It wasn’t the time Forrest asked me to take a detour from the
publishing/archive project and call the Albuquerque Zoo to see how he could
acquire penguins to live by the massive pond that he was having built behind the
gallery. Inane requests like that were part of the fun times, and there were
many, many fun times.
“I don’t think penguins could survive in this climate, Forrest,” I said.
Forrest smiled, but pressed on. “I gotta believe there’s such a thing as warm weather penguins,” he declared. (Forrest never did acquire any penguins, but he eventually did procure an alligator.)
After the pond was completed, I took a lunch out to enjoy on its banks one day. But my lunch was interrupted by Forrest’s scarlet macaw named Sinbad who had his heart set on my chicken sandwich. (I’d once seen Sinbad gnawing on a chicken leg in his cage that was situated in the gallery for the bird to welcome, and sometimes screech at, gallery visitors as they entered the museum-like gallery rooms.)
Scarlet macaws are beautiful, but watch out.
Being chased by Forrest’s cannibalistic parrot didn’t push me out the office door either.
As I remember, the last straw involved my actually driving
to Taos to talk face to face with an artist’s surviving relative in attempt to
get papers bequeathed to Forrest’s enterprise. Though Forrest had assured me
that the public would always have access to any papers he acquired, when I obtained
a verbal commitment from the relative, I felt dirty.
I don’t know if Fenn ever got those particular papers, and I
don’t think he ever published any books on the artist they concerned, because
he was a minor one in the Taos panoply. But I knew that Fenn wanted the papers
because, well, he just wanted them. Like he wanted his Indian headdresses and
beaded dresses and dolls and pots and leggings and pre-Colombian artifacts and
arrowheads and drums that were in the gallery’s walk-in vault. These items were
on view, but not for sale.
It was clear that my boss Forrest Fenn wanted to own a history that didn’t belong to him. And through the years, it seems, he hasn’t changed. During a TV interview in 2011, a question was posed to Forrest regarding who owns the past. “Who owns the past?” Forrest said excitedly. “The guy who has the title!” (Title is an important word for Forrest. The last line of his poem reads “I give you title to the gold.”)
A view of San Lazaro Pueblo ruins. Photo saved from oldsantafetradingco.com
Some years after I left Santa Fe, Fenn actually bought property that included a large pueblo ruin so he could do his own digging without getting into trouble with the Feds. “What’ll archeologists do? They’ll just stick things in a drawer!” he said during the same 2011 interview.
To hear Forrest tell it in many interviews, the idea of the
treasure chest came about after he had a visit from designer Ralph Lauren. Lauren
wanted to buy a headdress out of Forrest’s collection, and Forrest told him it
wasn’t for sale. “Why not?” the designer asked. “You’ve got so many, and,
anyway, you can’t take it with you.”
Forrest says he thought about this comment and then asked himself why not? Why couldn’t he take it with him? He’d been diagnosed with what he’d been told was likely terminal cancer, and he made a decision that, yes, when he went, he would go holding onto a box filled with a piece of his bounty. But a problem arose with the plan, which was that he lived. But then he decided to take the treasure chest to the spot where he had planned to end things and send the world off on a chase to find it. That was in 2010. As of late 2019, folks were still posting videos on youtube (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAloXCAdzdQ posted August, 2019 by “Mr. Luxury”) and articles online. High Country News posted a 2019 April Fool’s Day article stating that the treasure had been found (https://www.hcn.org/articles/april-fools-the-forrest-fenn-treasure-has-been-found).
UPDATE: On June 7, 2020, Forrest announced on his website (https://www.oldsantafetradingco.com/) that his treasure has been found for real ” . . . under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago.”
Around the corner from my dream office was a dream library. It was cavernous, with something like a 20 foot ceiling. There was a ladder on wheels that allowed folks to access books on the top shelf. The library was decorated with stunning pots and drums and other Indian relics.
One day, Forrest’s father came to visit. The old man, who’d
been a poor school principal in a small Texas town, traveled in a small
Airstream trailer that he parked in Forrest’s driveway. He was, like Forrest,
an outdoorsman. He was so much an outdoorsman that when Forrest encouraged him
to sleep in the celebrity guest house, he refused. He preferred the comforts of
his little trailer.
I was working in the library when the old man walked in. He
stood in the middle of the room and surveyed the shelves and the entire space,
which was dwarfing.
“Let me ask you something, young lady,” he said to me in his
Texas drawl. “Can you tell me, what’s all this for?”
I smiled at him. “I’ll be honest,” I said. “I really don’t know.”
The pond behind the gallery, now Nedra Matteucci Galleries, as seen in 2018.
In the autumn of 2018, I entered the doors of my old
workplace, which is now the Nedra Matteucci Gallery, and I made a beeline for
my old office. The wrought iron and the ceiling were there, as were the
bookshelves, but they were mostly empty (it’s computer days, after all). And
the feeling of the gallery itself, where many of the same artists are represented
on the walls like in the old days, had a formality to it that made it hard to
believe that a macaw and a dachshund and even an alligator once held court. Forrest
Fenn’s uniform was always a short sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans, and jeans
were de rigueur among the staff when he ruled. At Matteucci, the sales staff
dressed like money. The pond is pristine, its banks populated only with nice
sculptures. If you had a chicken sandwich out there, you wouldn’t be afraid of
being chased by a parrot, but you’d be afraid to drop any crumbs on the
manicured lawn.
In short, the place was not the same. When he sold the gallery, rapscallion Forrest Fenn, now lord of the treasure hunt, had taken something with him.
My old office at Fenn Galleries, revisited in 2018.
Walking Women (from Homage to Navajo Women Suite) by R.C. Gorman
A while ago I’d learned that one of my former employers, Northland Press in Flagstaff, AZ, closed its doors after shifting focus from books on the art and culture of the American West to children’s books.
I’d worked at Northland in the 1970s, first as assistant editor under Rick Stetter, who went on to a great future in regional publishing. When Rick left, I took his place as editor under the direction of Northland’s founder, Paul Weaver.
Cover of Scholder/Indians, Northland Press, 1971.
The artists covered in Northland’s books included a long roster of Native American painters, sculptors, potters and jewelry designers: Fritz Scholder, R.C. Gorman, Charles Loloma, Allan Houser, Helen Cordero, Grace Medicine Flower . . . Weaver and company presented the depth and scope of these artists vibrantly, on pages of fine-coated paper stitched together between clothbound, embossed covers.
Cover of R.C. Gorman: The Lithographs, Northland Press, 1978
The last book I worked on at Northland before heading out the door was R.C. Gorman: The Lithographs by Doris Monthan, published in 1978.
I have mixed feelings about R.C. Gorman, a prolific Navajo artist who seemed to churn out images of women in his sleep. He died in 2005 at age 74.
When I lived in New Mexico, Gorman ran his art enterprise from his Taos spread and threw lavish parties there. (I’d missed the boat on another Northland-Gorman outing: Nudes and Foods: Gorman Goes Gourmet, published in 1981. ) Gorman’s legacy is tainted by an ultimately dropped FBI investigation into his possible involvement in a pedophile ring, but that’s for someone else to discuss.
My own reservations about Gorman aside, my late mother adored his work, which is why I gave her my copy of the Gorman lithograph book, a parting gift from Northland that’s now back on my shelf.
My parents had purchased and framed a poster of one of Gorman’s ubiquitous Navajo women to decorate a wall of their old condo outside of Fort Lauderdale, FL. And when I saw it hanging there so many years ago, I wondered how many other Florida condos featured a blissful Gorman female, soft-hued, serene, drawn in simple lines (but barely any on the face), hands and feet large but neither calloused nor veiny.
Gorman’s Young Navajo Woman: No shoes — a feature of his Homage to Navajo Women suite.
My problem with Gorman’s work is that there’s no grit, no irony, not a lot that’s honest when it comes to his portrayals of Navajo women, of the toughness it takes to run a sheep and horse ranch off the power grid, in a land of harsh sun and wind, with no running water. Like, none of Gorman’s women cover their feet. What’s with bare feet in the desert?
A younger Navajo contemporary of Gorman, artist Ed Singer nails the character of the Navajo matriarch, and Navajo life generally, in many of his works. (You can query about Ed’s work at artjuicestudio@gmail.com. Disclosure: Singer is a friend of mine).
Woman in Chair by Ed Singer. Note the woman has her feet covered and clearly dominates her space though seated in a folding chair.
I don’t know if anyone asked Gorman back in his heyday, but after being raised on the rez, did Gorman believe his depictions of Navajo women truly paid them homage or was it that they proved so ideal for his bank account that he couldn’t stop them coming?
Even today, many Florida, Scottsdale, and suburban homes have a poster of the “native woman ideal by Gorman” on the wall, or on coasters under a served round of drinks. I wonder, if he were alive today, would Gorman be like Peter Max, compulsively striving to keep the coffers filled by churning out his pretty women to be auctioned off on cruise ships?
Last week, I pulled R.C. Gorman: The Lithographs off my bookshelf and browsed its pages. I’d forgotten that it included not only the lithographs with women as subject matter, but also a few rug designs, a few male nudes and other assorted “native life” images. But the eyeopener for me was this quote from R.C. Gorman in the biography section:
Said Gorman: “I have been using the design motifs of Indian rugs and pottery for my paintings because one day these things are going to be no more. They are going to be lost, and it is going to happen soon. It’ll be a white America by A.D. 2000. The Indian art that people are enjoying—the rugs and pottery—are no longer going to be there. . . I am amused that I sell my rug paintings for more than the rug sells for; perhaps the paintings are worth more in the long run. Moths hate polymers.”
Hubris R.C. Gorman had aplenty, prescience not so much.
The above-mentioned quote prompted me to do a web search. There’s a gorgeous 36” by 23” rug by contemporary Navajo weaver Ruby Watchman for sale on navajorug.com for $3765.
Navajo weaver Ruby Watchman displays her “Mini-Serape” on sale for $3765 at navajorug.com
There’s a 27.5” x 30.25” Gorman lithograph of naked woman sprawled out on a Navajo rug for $1200 on herndonfineart.com.
Navajo Rug by R.C. Gorman, hand-signed and numbered lithograph for sale on herndonfineart.com
A.D. 2000: a “white America “. . . “Indian art that people are enjoying . . . no longer going to be there. ” . . . Well, R.C., too bad you weren’t able to stick around for
Ruby Watchman, Cleo Johnson, Donald Yazzie, Sadie Charlie . . . and so many
more contemporary Navajo weavers in full and glorious view on Pinterest.
Apsáalooke Feminist #3, Apsáalooke Feminist Series, 2016, by Wendy Red Star. Photo Courtesy of Vogue.com
And too bad you didn’t live to see the heights where native women like Wendy Red Star (see wendyredstar.com) and Teri Greeves (see terigreevesbeadwork.com) are taking things in terms of craft and native female presence.
It’s 2020 now. R.C. Gorman, wherever you are, you may want to start covering women’s feet with these:
Beaded basketball shoes by Kiowa artist Teri Greeves. Image Courtesy of terigreevesbeadwork.com
Winter Dawn Ceremony Inside the Tepee by Virgil Nez. (Photo of the work on itmonline.org)
I am looking out at my snow covered yard in suburban upstate New York, remembering an event from over forty years ago that winks from the shadows, coaxing me out of the winter blues. Here it is:
Car Trouble En Route to a Night Chant
I was driving alone in pitch darkness of winter on the Navajo rez when suddenly the undercarriage of my Toyota sedan got hung up on the sand.
I’d been trying to make my way to a Navajo Night Chant ceremony taking place somewhere I now cannot name. I’d been following the sporadically placed signs that pointed the way to the ceremony with growing confidence, until that moment when my car succumbed to the relentless grip of soft earth. (For an eye-opening report on Navajo roadways, see Amy Linn’s piece The Navajo Nation’s horrendous roads keep killing people and holding students hostage, but nothing changes on centerforhealthjounalism.org).
A young woman alone in the desert that night, with a car that wouldn’t budge . . . What could I do? I sat on the cold desert ground certainly feeling vulnerable (though the reservation crime stats then were not as dire as they are now). But at the same time I was hopeful that someone would come along, and that the someone would reinforce my faith in humanity as so many Navajo people had done during my time on the rez.
I awaited rescue on a Navajo desert road in winter. Photo by Conner Baker on unsplash.com
It wasn’t long before I saw headlights in the distance . . . an approaching pickup likely headed to the same ceremony I still yearned to witness. I stood up and waved my arms. The headlights blinked, signaling me to step out of the way. Then the truck slowed to a crawl and pulled right up to touch the rear of my car. The driver motioned with his hands for me to get back behind the wheel. When I turned on the engine and shifted into neutral, the pickup gently pushed me out of the sand trap, freeing me up to continue on my way. I waved a thank you as the pickup passed me, and I followed my rescuer all the way to where the Night Chant was taking place.
I’d hoped to more strongly express my gratitude when we reached what I thought was our mutual destination, but the pickup sped forward and away into the night when we hit the parking area, its passengers having folks to meet, I supposed.
My rescuer and I never exchanged a word.
Grace, Fires and Chanting Warm the Night
With this rescuer who’d emerged from darkness only to suddenly disappear from view, I was beholden to spiritual forces even before I entered the Night Chant circle with a hogan at its zenith, the doings inside of it shrouded in mystery. I stepped into the realm of pinon scented air, warm fires, strong coffee, bubbling stew, and a gracious vibe that emanated from the folks who’d gathered to participate in the winter ceremony.
When the Yei Bi Cheii (Grandfather Gods) dancers emerged into the firelight and began to chant, I was sitting beside a family that had made room for me, again through wordless gesture. Like my gracious hosts, I was bundled up in blankets and, though struggling to stay warm, I was feeling perhaps as peaceful as I’d ever felt in my twenty odd years. At one point, I was lulled to sleep by the smoke and the cold. My hosts awakened me in time to join them in wishing the Grandfather Gods farewell at dawn.
Yei Bi Cheii chants recorded by ethnomusicologist Laura Boulton (b.1899, d. 1980)
A New Kind of Chanting
Flash forward to my senior self in winter, now yearning for bygone days while living in the land of my snowbelt roots. Like my late mother, I’m an opera fan. When I was a girl, my mom and I used to listen to opera broadcasts when we found ourselves at home together on a winter weekend afternoon. These days, I hit the Met from time to time if a New York City visit coincides with something I want to see, or I’ll sometimes go to a movie theatre to watch a Met broadcast “live in HD”.
So, as a semi opera buff with fondest memories of Navajoland, I was intrigued when I learned that, about ten years ago, a work called Enemy Slayer, billed as a Navajo oratorio, premiered in Phoenix as part of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra’s 60th anniversary celebration.
The oratorio features a libretto by poet Laura Tohe, who was recently named poet laureate of the Navajo Nation (for more information about Ms. Tohe, see https://www.lauratohe.com/).
NAXOS CD Recording of Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio
The story of Enemy Slayer concerns a soldier haunted by events
of war who is guided into healing by the chanting of ancient Navajo prayer. (Note:
The actual Navajo ceremony for returning warriors, the Enemy Way, is a warmer
weather event that involves feasting and dancing and other community activity
to bring a spiritually wounded warrior back into balance.)
I ordered the oratorio Enemy Slayer once I learned it was obtainable on CD, and I anticipated that in listening, I might be drawn back into that memory of getting unstuck by grace and chanting on a desert night in the middle of winter so long ago.
I was in for a bit of disappointment. I had expected to hear an oratorio in the Navajo language, but Laura Tohe composed the libretto in English, with only a smattering of Navajo sprinkled here and there. The text, filled with Navajo prayer refrains (e.g., “Child of dawn/Child of daylight/Child of evening twilight/Child of darkness”), portrays the trauma and confusion of the universal soldier: “I’m in a world of pain/I’m hard core/I seek and destroy the enemy/This is my war horse/I charge the enemy/I am the hometown hero!/I am a child of war/I am lost . . . “
Navajo warriors from another time: Photo courtesy of the Navajo Times
Will the oratorio one day be performed in Navajo? I wish it could be so, but who knows? When Enemy Slayer was performed in Phoenix, photographs of Navajoland by Deborah O’Grady were projected for the audience to provide the sense of place as the chorus sang in the concert hall.
Tohe told me that a Navajo woman in the audience remarked that “the performance was like a ceremony, with the conductor as the medicine man, the baritone singer as the patient and the chorus as the extended family singing for the patient.” Tohe had also asked that the women chorus members be seated on one side and the men on the other side of the stage “per seating in the hogan during a ceremony.”
Laura Tohe, named Navajo Nation Poet Laureate in 2015. Photo courtesy Arizona Highways (arizonahighways.com)
Laura Tohe’s latest project is Nahasdzaan (Mother Earth) in the Glittering World, a cutting edge dance oratorio with music composed by Thierry Pécou, choreography by Luc Petton. The premiere performance (sung in English with French subtitles) last year at Normandy’s Opera de Rouen received overwhelming praise from the international press. The work will be performed in Grenoble, France on April 17 this year (4/17/20 UPDATE: due to COVID-19, the premiere is delayed until 2021. Here’s a glimpse on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI8pkLWO7o4).
In an interview on Pécou’s website (Ensemble Variances) Tohe summed up her hope for the work, which presents the Navajo creation story via music and dance, and with live animals performing onstage: “Like any artist,” said Tohe, “my hope is that the audience will appreciate the work as a hybrid that takes a Navajo story and classical music as a way to create a statement about healing.”
Ceremonial fare: Mutton Stew and Fry Bread to be accompanied by cups of strong coffee
I began this piece by conveying a memory of being physically and spiritually transported on the rez when no words were spoken at all. And I’ve landed here, with this wish regarding the performance of a new Laura Tohe opera: that coffee and stew be served during intermission.
Coke comes to Monument Valley. Photo by Worldmark Films via Twitter
In 1971, Coca Cola aired its famous ad that featured a gathering of young folks from all corners of the earth, each with a Coke in hand, all singing blissfully on a hilltop outside of Rome. “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony,” sang the bright-eyed young citizens of the world. “I’d like to give the world a Coke to keep it company.” The award-winning spot was a moment of nirvana in the advertising age and became the iconic ending of the TV series Mad Men. (4/1/20 Author’s Note: The ad was actually the brainchild of Harvey Gabor, then art director at McCann-Erickson. Mr. Gabor is nothing at all like the Matthew Weiner’s bad boys of Sterling Cooper. Big thank you to Miriam Danar and the illustrious and genteel Mr. Gabor their comments on this piece!)
In 2018, at the age of 64, I had a moment of nirvana while meandering on horseback in Monument Valley at sunset. And I did what so many do these days when overcome with awe. I whipped my iPhone out of my jacket pocket and, steadying the phone with one hand while gripping the reins with the other, I tried to capture the moment to store in the cloud for posterity.
Now, in 2020, I am retired from my day job and back at work on the blog that I started after that 2018 trip to the Southwest. Part reminiscence, part current observations, the blog is really my reconnection to the act of writing for pleasure instead of for a paycheck in the corporate world. Monument Valley is just about as far from cubicle life as anyone could imagine, which is why it serves so well as a muse.
A shot I took from atop a horse in Monument Valley, 2018
Because writing for myself just doesn’t get my juices going, in resurrecting the blog after retirement, I took the step of launching it into the social media reality show universe. I tossed a few bucks over to Facebook’s ad managers to spread the news via a Facebook page. That was a week ago.
The response (i.e., the accumulating likes and shares and comments) has been uplifting, eye opening and mystifying.
A tenuous handshake reached on topic of cultural appropriation. Photo courtesy of JenKVieira.com
Facebook keeps congratulating me about how many “likes” I have, and my blog itself, which sat dormant for so long, is making the rounds from Queens to Hong Kong and other places I couldn’t have fathomed. The blog has pleased some, amused some, confused some, and enraged some. Comments on one post hurled the cultural appropriation debate forcefully into my lap, initiating an offline exchange that ended with a handshake. It was a tenuous handshake between a boomer and a millennial, but a handshake nonetheless.
There have been a couple of ugly comments (one guy labeled me an “entitled little rich girl”), but, hey, if a grey-haired retiree can’t stand the social media heat, then there’s a button called “delete.” I draw the line at racism, but otherwise, I was raised by a father who’d say “everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.” Negative comments are part of the territory like rattlesnakes in the desert. And Facebook is taking its own heat these days for spreading fake news.
But it’s the gathering of likes on my page that floors me.
Motorcycle at Monument Valley. Photo by Steve Ohlsen
The likes represent all races, many religions, and all sides of the political divide. They represent environmentalists, resistors, 2nd Amendment crusaders, anti-Trumpers, pro-Trumpers, Navajos, African Americans, Mexicans, New Mexicans, Texans, Bostonians, New Yorkers, Alabamans, Californians, Georgians, Muslims, Hindus, Baptists, Catholics, Jews, artists, bikers, preachers, professors, knitters, rodeo riders, doormen . . . .
Though featuring reminiscences of the Southwest, and especially Navajoland, my page and my blog have been “liked” by a couple folks whose Facebook pages are all in Arabic. I have a like from someone whose page is in Armenian.
What is it? What are the Facebook algorithms that spread the word to such a diverse community? What is the impulse to hit “like” of the unknown and untried? I hope some of my “likers” will tell me, because the answer may be an ingredient in a secret sauce yet to be conjured to smooth our divisions.
Pictures on the rocks: Ancient social media in Canyon de Chelly
The likes may just be summoned by my original blog site cover image of Monument Valley, harkening back to the days when rocks told stories, when petroglyphs were the social media of the ancient ones.
Or maybe it’s because one of my blogs is about basketball, published after Kobe Bryant went down in the helicopter. Maybe the theme of cultural appropriation struck a chord amidst the cacophony surrounding the bestselling novel American Dirt. Or maybe it’s a shot of Bandelier National Monument I published that speaks of ancient days when life was all about survival and not much else.
Or maybe it’s simply what I thought when I looked out at Monument Valley from the saddle . . . that this is all a dream.
A white New Mexico State Trooper teaching Indian Painting inspired the New Yorker in me
In 1975, when I taught on the Navajo rez outside of Gallup, the state of New Mexico didn’t fund kindergarten, let alone art education. If I wanted my kids to paint, weave, sculpt, then it was up to me to add art to the list of subjects I was hired to teach in my classroom. It is worth noting without too much emphasis that I landed my teaching job on the rez after graduating from Vassar, where I never took a fine art class and would have been an idiot to think I belonged in the college’s creative arts talent pool.
Though I wasn’t an anthropology major (and Native Studies didn’t exist back then) I knew that art and craft loomed large in Navajo culture. So not wanting to be a total fraud, I signed up for a night class called “Indian Painting” at the University of New Mexico Gallup Branch.
It turned out I was one of the few female students in the class as well as one of the youngest. I was not the only white person, however. There was one other, that being our instructor, whose name I remember to this day. I will refer to him by his initials, LS, so as not to disturb his ghost.
1975 UNM Gallup Art Instructor Seal of Approval
LS was a New Mexico state trooper. He looked like he could be an extra in a Hollywood film about Texas Rangers. But LS was an ARTIST. You could tell because he dressed all in black—black jeans, black shirt, black cowboy boots. And he had a shiny Navajo silver buckle on his black belt, which I guess advertised his cred for teaching art to a class of mostly Navajos and Zunis. His stride and swagger, though, spoke of his true profession.
LS had a formula he wanted all of his students to copy. His formula was simple: Paint four images of Pueblo pots, one in each corner of your canvas. And in the middle of the space, paint an “Indian” sun symbol (e.g., the emblem of the State of New Mexico). Toss in some corn and lightning symbols in the rest of the space, and voila: surefire Indian painting success! LS showed us his many Indian paintings and boasted that he made up to $75 a piece. If he could do it, we could too!!
LS Indian Painting Element #1: Pueblo Pot
LS Indian Painting Element #2: Sun Symbol
LS Indian Painting Element #3: Corn or other symbols
I was seated at a worktable (no easels needed apply) with three males, one of whom was my age. The other two seemed to be in their late thirties or early forties.
As I said, I was a young graduate of Vassar College, and though I was the lone female and lone white at the table, I said to my tablemates: “Are you going to put up with this??” Everyone laughed, and we made a communal decision: No, we weren’t. We decided to start a new art movement, a Navajo take on Dada (my age mate at the table, who would eventually become a renowned non-traditional silversmith, knew all about Dada). We called it DOODA (pronounced doh’dah’), which is Navajo for NO. An older tablemate had a buddy at the table in front of us and roped him into our DOODA movement.
DOODA used in modern Navajo resistance: This graphic says “No Uranium”
We churned out paintings that made LS speechless, shaking his head in disappointment. When he strutted around giving tours of the assembly line he called “Indian painting,” LS brusquely guided his guests past our tables without a pause.
My tablemates and I painted masterpieces of anything we wanted. Images of Navajo Yei figures as electrical towers, of horses that flew into the heavens, of sheep lying shot and dead in the desert said DOODA to our State Trooper art instructor. While we painted, we discussed topics of the day, circa 1975: Lynette Squeaky Fromme, Sarah Jane Moore (female would-be assassins of Gerald Ford). We told jokes, named favorite comedians (one tablemate said he prayed that George Burns would live to at least his 100th birthday).
My final art project as a 22 year old Jewish transplant from the East Coast? Well, this was 1975, and New York City was on the brink of default, which is one reason why I came to the rez in the first place. New York City laid off 2000 teachers when I graduated from college, and I had decided that if I couldn’t teach in New York, I didn’t want to teach in any city at all.
New York City Mayor Abe Beame
So as an adios to LS, I painted “Grandfather Gods Take Manhattan,” a New York cityscape lit by a Navajo moon and shrouded in clouds of doom, with Navajo Grandfather Gods (Yeibicheii) flying overhead with their healing bundles to the rescue (see above). I’d also cut out and attached a photo of New York Mayor Abe Beame, but the mayor somehow disappeared from the work during my many moves years hence.
LS gave my rudimentary work a B+, with no comments.
