Grand Canyon Speaks

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Welcome to Grand Canyon Speaks! We are airing live interviews that park rangers had with artists from the 11 associated tribes of Grand Canyon National Park. This series explores the lives and perspectives of people who call Grand Canyon home.

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Season 2

Episode 9

Marian Manyturquoise Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Marian Speaks Transcript

Marian Manyturquoise: So, I'm going to teach you one word. Are you ready? I'm going to say it in three parts, okay? So, here we go. Ni-zho-ni. Ready? Ni-zho-ni. Beautiful. You beautiful people. That means beautiful.

Meranden: Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's Grand Canyon Speaks episode. My name is Meranden.

Lakin: And this is Lakin.

Meranden: We hope everyone out there has been enjoying season two. It's been a lot of fun being able to hear these stories and put them out there for all of you to listen to.

Lakin: We're happy to share this next episode with Ranger Dawn and Grand Canyon Conservancy employee, Marian Manyturquoise, who grew up at Grand Canyon with her grandparents.

Meranden: Yeah, she shared some knowledge about her Diné culture, her experiences with boarding school, and the importance of respecting the land around you.

Lakin: Once again, we appreciate listeners like you for tuning in, and we are excited for more episodes to come.

Meranden: And here is Marian Manyturquoise.

Marian: Yá’át’ééh means Hello. I didnt get to shake your hands. That means hello, Yá’át’ééh (speaks Navajo) When you meet your relatives or meet new people, mostly from your own tribe or your own relatives, you come to that with (speaks Navajo), I'm sorry, we're over here. So, I would say hello to all my relatives, all the people that have come from far. So, thank you for coming to the Grand Canyon.

This is a beautiful place. This is my favorite spot. This is where my family has lived for generations, hunted.

We gathered all these different, the different trees here, produced different things, and the plants also that we would come and gather at certain times of the year. So, thank you for coming to my area of this country. So, my name is Marian Manyturquoise.

This is the only turquoise I own. And then the other thing we would do is, we're in the clan system. So, what I would say is, who my mother is, is what I am.

And who my father is, who my mother's father is, and who my father's father is. On top of that, then you have at least four other clans that are really closely related to you. So, I'm going to say that whole thing for you.

I will try to explain it afterwards, so you have an understanding of what I said. So, (Introduces self in Navajo) So, I am my name, and then my mother's clan is Yucca Fruit People.

My father's clan is Apache Towering House people. My grandfather, who is usually my Cheii, is the Shadow in the Woods, is the Bear clan. And then my father's father is my nali.

He is the Deerwater clan. So the reason why we have these clan system is so we don't intermarry. So the four extra clans are also the other clans we don't marry.

If that happens anywhere, it is usually called the moths. You know how the moths, they go and they keep going towards the fire when they know, I guess they don't know, I don't know, but that's why they're called the moths. So I just like to bring that up.

That's the clan system. So there's over 200 clan system in the Navajo tribe. So I grew up here in this area with my family.

I was born here in this area. So back in the 60s, most of the kids were born in the Tuba City district, Tuba City PHS, which is about 50 miles east. So that was the main hospital for all the kids that were born in this area.

And as I grew, we grew up in these canyons here. We'd follow our parents here and there. We migrated a lot.

We'd live in Cameron for the summer. And in the fall, we'd come closer to the mountain. In the wintertime, we'd spend here close to the mountain.

So when you come up 64 east of here, as you go up, you can tell the different elevations, right? But on 64, you have the community of Cameron. And then as you come up, you're in the Navajo Nation. You're in the Navajo Nation down there.

In the summertime, like about this time, the weather gets a little bit dry. There's no kind of moisture. So we would go down to Cameron.

There's a natural spring that comes out of the lava beds. So we'd go there, and that's where we'd take our sheep. And then in the fall, we'd come closer this way.

But the only thing is, we have to haul water. But in the fall, we have all the green that has turned to the right color for our livestock. And then in the winter, we'd come straight up.

And we do have winter homes down here just below, maybe I'd say a good five miles in this direction, inside the pinyon trees and cedar trees. In the fall, we'd spend our winters there. And then by that time, we would still haul water, but also collect snow for water.

And then we'd use all the wood that was dead, had matured. That would be our firewood. So that's how me and my family, we migrated back and forth.

My parents, it was hard for them to get employment here on the Navajo Nation. So a lot of the things that my father did and my mother did was they would go from one area down to Phoenix or to Salt Lake to do migrant work. And through that time, they had 12 kids.

So they would migrate and go leave us, and we would be left with our grandparents at times. But growing up here was a special thing because we got to know our canyons and get to hike into our canyons at night. If we lost a sheep, we'd have to go into those canyons and look for our sheep.

The only way we did that was with the bells on the sheep. So a lot of things we did as little kids, like gather snow, help gather pinyons, help gather corn, watermelon at our little garden in Tuba. So there's a lot of things as growing up made us, my brothers and sisters, really strong.

So this is a very special area for me because of my grandparents and generations before. So the Grand Canyon, when I think about it, is because it really brings a lot of thankfulness, I guess you wanna say, because generations before, back in 1886, most of our family members that lived here to get away from the soldiers to be captured, they would go into the canyon and they would hide down there for till 18... Okay, 1886 is when the treaty was signed. So they would, when that, about maybe five or six years before that, then they came back out after the treaty was signed and they came back and they started living here again.

And then the park was made and then we were pushed back that way again. So that's, the specialty is that they found refuge down here so they didn't have to walk so many hundreds of miles to New Mexico. And the beauty of this area is so breathtaking.

Every time I think of my home, I always think, oh, ow, you know, I live in a real special place. So I'm gonna teach you one word. Are you ready? I'm gonna say it in three parts, okay? So here we go.

Ni-zho-ni Ready? Ni-zho-ni. Beautiful.

You beautiful people. That means beautiful. So anytime you see something or I see something, or when I say a prayer, it's always beautiful.

Nizhoni. Then at the end of our prayers, that's another thing. We always say it four times (speaks in Navajo).

Because, and there's four directions and there's four different sacred mountains. So that when we end our prayer, that's how we say it. I think that's why, and my language is really beautiful.

So just a few stories about how we grew up here. We were left alone a lot. So we'd go and we'd hike into these canyons here.

The little Colorado River Gorge. We didn't really, it was part of us, I think. So there's air pockets in those canyon, sheer cliffs, there's air pockets in them.

So our crazy brothers would say, okay, let's go. So we'd go in those air pockets and we'd go on our hands and knees and we'd follow each other all the way to where it ended. And then we'd slowly turn around and we'd go all the way back out again.

I don't know why, but we did. But we didn't feel any, we weren't scared. We were part of that land.

And just like with the moonlight and our grandparents would say, go get the sheep. We knew where to go, even though we weren't there like every single day. We'd go down and listen for the bells and anything that was wild, mountain lion, coyote, anything, didn't really bother us.

Snakes, because you were part of that land. So, and the other thing is, we were never to play in the water, respect the water. So when there was a monsoon, it was coming close to our home, we would stop everything.

We would just sit down, cross-legged or whatever, irreverently, and we'd sit there and wait for the rain to come through. And then we would meditate. We were told to do that.

So we'd just sit there and we'd watch, we'd just listen to the rain until it went through. Then we were told, yeah, now you can go out. So that's how we respect the thunderstorm.

We also respect the eclipse. So all Navajos don't do anything during the eclipse because it's the changing of our mother earth and our skies, our moon, and our sun. So before an eclipse, we would just get ready, get our food ready, drink our water, and just close off all the light in our home.

And we'd just sit still through the whole eclipse and we would pray. And then after the eclipse, we would, you know, bless ourself and then we'd say thank you or our thank you prayer. And then we would sit down and have our meal on the floor.

So a lot of our meals were on the floor. But I would like to express that, how we respect the eclipse, how we respect the moisture, the thunderstorm, and snow. Anything that brought us life is what we respected.

And that's just a few things. And then later on, as I grew up, we were told to go to the boarding school. That was a thing that we had to do because there was no other school.

So the government would come around and pick up all of us, all our little ones. And even though our parents didn't want us to go, we were forced to go. So we'd go to the Tuba City Boarding School.

Tuba City Boarding School, I think is like 200 years old. So our grandparents, our mothers have gone there. It was a sad moment in my life.

It was a scary moment in my life. There's just a couple stories that I remember. When a little kid, you know, you all have homes, you have beautiful homes, probably nice bedrooms.

And here you would go into this long hall. And each of those halls had beds. Like four people would sit and have a bunk bed in this long building.

So what they would do is they would check you out, make sure you're okay. And then the Navajos believe if you have real long hair, you bring moisture. So what they would do to the little girls is they would chop off all their hair because they didn't want to tend to our hair.

So they would chop it all off. It's easy for them to just comb it out. That was one.

The other thing that I mostly hated was we couldn't speak our language, no matter how old we were. We had to speak English. If we didn't speak English, we'd get punished.

And being punished was harsh. Other thing was they would have a fire alarm. Didn't matter what time of the night.

And us little kids didn't know any better. But they always try to tell you, keep your shoes here. Keep your fire blanket right here.

The army blanket. And somewhere along the night, the fire alarm would be the loudest thing, like a big, huge alarm you would hear in your neighborhood. And we'd jump out of bed and some of these little ones, we would forget our shoes.

And sometimes in the wintertime, it didn't matter. You had to get out to the basketball court with no shoes. Or you would step on bullheads, we call it.

Those goat heads, people call it. So we'd get out. Some of us forgot our blankets.

And sometimes during the wintertime, there's ice, there's snow. So we had to get out to that basketball court and stand in line until the doormate came and counted each of us. And then we would go back in.

But it was a harsh lesson to learn because we were just little kids. We were just like six-year-olds, five-year-olds. So I just wanted, that's some of the bad things about the boarding school.

You were there, your parents couldn't come pick you up. You were there like months at a time. And the best thing that ever happened to me was my grandfather.

He would come every two weeks. And he would come and he would be sitting at the dorm waiting for us and flirting with all the doormates. So he was a kind man.

So he was the one that kind of brightened our day or our week when he did bring us back. And then we'd end up down here, down below here. In the wintertime, we'd stay with him down below during vacations.

And I was telling my friend here that during that time, it was a real good time because our grandparents would kind of cherish us. And they would take the extra time, which is just part of their daily life. And that's how a lot of the kids grew up here is we lived in a hogan, a round structure called a hogan, ho-one.

It had that door to the east. We lived in this one room with our grandparents and we slept on the floor, sheepskins. So we'd fix our sheepskins and we'd lay them out every night and we'd sleep on it.

The only person that slept on the bed was my grandma. But other than that, they would say, you have to sleep on your sheepskin right or else if you have it during, you know, your head going this way, it's gonna run off with you at night. So we always had to be really careful and we'd lay it so its butt was towards the door.

So during the wintertime, we'd spend that time with her. She would go out like at least every two hours because it was during the lambing season and the kids were, the kids, the goats, the little ones were being born. She'd go out to the corral and she'd check them every once in a while.

And when one was of the lambs or the sheep were having their babies, she'd bring the sheep in. It's like a manger inside this hogan. So we'd have a couple of sheep here, maybe a goat here with all their little babies right at the door.

And you'd just hear them, but that, you know, we never, it didn't really bother us that much. In the wintertime, she would go out there and she'd milk the goats and she'd bring it in and she'd put it in a coffee can and she'd have it come to boil. And then she'd add a little bit of flour and whatever else you put in there.

And that was our milk pudding. And we'd have it with wild tea. You have a lot of wild tea here.

It has a reddish, rusty color. It's really yummy to drink. So that was my life when I was like maybe six or seven.

So to tend to the sheep, she would take a gunny sack and wrap it around our moccasins or whatever shoes we had. And it'd go all the way to the top here. And we were just little kids, six or seven years old.

And she'd go, go tend the sheep. So when we'd come back after a while, she'd go and dig inside her, all her stuff. And she'd bring out an orange or an apple that has been sitting there for at least since Christmas.

And she'd sit there and she'd peel it. And there's maybe four of us. And we each get so many slices.

Even with soda, she'd get maybe one can. And she'd take her little cups and she'd pour us a soda. So we didn't have very much.

But it was a blessing to be with them. It didn't mean very much to us at the time as long as we ate. So, yeah.

Visitor: Who ran the boarding school?

Marian: The Bureau of Indian Affairs. Government. That is still, the boarding school is still going now.

But now they have the kids where the abuse is gone and all that is gone. And now they have kids that they can go home when they want. They have to go home. They don't stay there anymore.

Ranger Dawn: So kind of going back to your family, I think it's really special that you get to work with your sister. And I was just wondering if you would touch on the impact she made on you and what you've learned from her.

Marian: Yeah. I do work with my sister. She keeps me in line. This is actually the first time I ever worked with one of my family members. And I love it. Actually, my sister is actually the second mom to the family.

Back then when we were small, there was no pampers. There was nothing like that out here. So I remember my mom, she goes, I had to take your diapers down to the rocks when it rained. Like that. When it rained, there was water in the catches of the rocks. The big air pockets in there.

And that's where she'd take, she'd put all her clothes on a donkey and she'd go down into the canyon and find those water catches. And that's where she'd wash her clothes. And my sister would be home taking care of us.

And she would be the main one to cook us all our meals. And she kind of kept us in line. So through that, with my sister and my brothers, when our parents are out gathering, we would pick a place like this and we'd make like a little corral, my parents would.

And they would put a fire in the middle. So at times, my sisters and my older brothers would be the ones to take care of us. Nothing ever took us.

We're still here. There was no Bigfoot, there was no bear, there's no mountain lion, nothing. We were just there, little kids playing in that little corral.

Until this day, my sister, she would be like, how do we survive that? But she was a big help to my family. She would make sure that we're in our cradleboards at certain times of the day. We all grew up in our cradleboards, so we have a cradleboard head.

But I knew my lesson, so when I made cradleboards for my grandkids, I made sure I put a foam in there with the holes in it so my grandkids don't have cradleboard heads. But my sister does play a big, important part. Her name is Caroline.

She's the oldest of six of us girls. And I have four brothers. And we have other brothers and sisters that have passed on.

But they all, my parents, my grandparents, my grandpa, my grandma, they play the role of who I am. Plus, my foster family, people that I've met. I still have a lot of kids.

I have adopted a lot of kids. So they would call me Mama, or I'd be walking down the aisle, and they'd say, Mom! Oh, yes, who was that one? So that all goes back to being brought up by my mom and my sister. Yeah.

Visitor: Sorry to ask, but what kind of time frame are we looking at? I mean, I hear stories from my parents, grandparents. I get stories to tell my kids in the 70s, 80s. Marian: So the time frame, I was born in 1962. Visitor: Oh, so you're a youngster.

Marian: Yeah, I'm young. Thank you.

1962, my mom hitchhiked to the hospital, had me, brought me back. So all her kids, she'd hitchhike from here all the way to Tuba and have her kids. And then she would catch the Simway back to her kids over here.

So those are the kind of things. So in 1962, I was born. And about 65, somewhere, 68, we went to 67 or so, I went to placement program.

But in that teen kindergarten preschool, I was in the boarding school. And then I came back in 1970-something for one year at the boarding school. And the rest of the time, I spent in Southern California, Fallbrook, San Diego area.

And then in the summer, I would come back and spend it with my grandparents, do the things we're supposed to do, herd sheep, just be there to help them out and just be at home. And we had to relearn. We had to relearn our language, because through the whole year, we weren't speaking Navajo.

So that sometimes, my tongue gets twisted. That's what you want to say. When I'm saying a word, I don't finish it.

Or sometimes, my thoughts go off to being something else. So at times, yes. So and then in 1980, I graduated here.

I came back and I graduated at the Tuba City High School. That's a Bureau of Indian Affairs high school. In California, you go outside of your classes and go to the next class.

Here, it is so beautiful. The rugs are all out. And then you just stay inside the building and go to your classes.

I was at awe at that. Any more questions?

Ranger Dawn: I have one last question. I just wanted to know, thank you for sharing all your story with us. But what is one thing you want the audience to take away from our talk today?

Marian: I think even in the 60s and the 70s out here, you would think, wow, I lived this life in the city, in a big city. But back here, on the Navajo Nation, and mostly other nations, everywhere, other native reservations, it's hardship. But I think that, let's put it this way.

When you look at us, what do you see? What do you see when you come to our Navajo Nation? OK, peace, beauty. What do you see when you drive through our Navajo Nation? Wilderness. So my sister there, really quick, it took, what, 20 years? 10 years, 15 years to get your electricity? Because of the red tape of the government, working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

So I just want you to go from here, thinking that it is beautiful. We love it. It's a struggle.

Nowadays, for the young adults to actually go from their home to even here at times. I had a struggle. Because I left Page, and I got here, and my boss is sitting right there.

So she goes, OK, I'll hire you. But the only thing that was wrong is, where I actually have a home, I have no electricity. I have no running water.

So they were more than fortunate enough to give me a little apartment to stay in. So when you think about all those young adults wanting to get out, that would be their main problem, is to get out to find something that could make them live and get out of the poverty, out of welfare. So I think I want you to leave from here the reality of the Navajo Nation.

It is beautiful. My tradition's beautiful. I get up every morning, and I say my prayers to the sun, the moon, the air that I breathe.

Thankful every day, Mother Earth that I live on. My changing woman, my white shell woman, and also my corn pollen, my white corn grain. So those are the things that I pray to all of here.

Every morning, it's a thankful prayer. So I guess I think that it is, we are struggling, but we're proud people. Thank you again for listening to me.

Ranger Jonah: Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music.

This recording reflects the personal lived experiences of tribal members and do not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the National Park. To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices, visit www.nps.gov/GRCA. Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon.

These being the Havasupai tribe, the Hualapai tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute tribe.

In this episode, Ranger Dawn got to talk with Marian Manyturquoise who is a Diné employee of Grand Canyon Conservancy at the Desert View Watchtower. She tells stories of her life growing up at the canyon, her childhood at boarding school, and the importance of respecting everything around you.

Tags: grand canyon speaks, grand canyon first voices, indigenous peoples, navajo nation, diné

Episode 10

Don Decker Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Don Decker Speaks Transcript

[Don Decker] That's how we conquered our language deficiency that we had. A lot of people were losing our language. And we're teaching our kids how to speak their own language today.

We continue that. And that's my job as an elder, as an 80-year-old elder, you know. And so there were many of us that got together and worked on this dictionary. And the dictionary was completed with a cooperative venture with a university in Indiana.

[Meranden] Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Grand Canyon Speaks. My name is Miranda.

[Lakin] And this is Lakin.

[Meranden] In this episode, Ranger Dan got to speak with Don Decker, who is a member of the Yavapai Apache Nation and is an artist from our cultural demonstration program.

[Lakin] Yes, he also spoke about the origin story for the Apache people, why Yavapai and Apache share a reservation, and explained the importance of keeping indigenous languages alive.

[Meranden] We are very excited for you to hear Don's story. And as always, thank you for tuning in to Grand Canyon Speaks.

[Lakin] Here is Don Decker.

[Ranger Dan] So without further ado, I would like to pass the mic here that's already in his hand to Don. And take it away.

[Don Decker] Oh, that's some Indian bingo. Thank you very much. Under the B, B9. You know, first of all, thank you for the introduction, Dan. I want to thank all the National Park Service people that are hosting me today. I had a wonderful day being inside of that building.

I got here this morning, and when I was coming in from Flagstaff, I came in from the east side of the park, and I was looking for this turnoff, but somehow I missed it. So I ended up over downtown Grand Canyon over there this morning, about 25 miles over there. So I made a turnaround and got here, and I was late about 20 minutes.

That's pretty good, huh? I didn't even speed getting back over here. But anyway, I was inside.

There demonstrating Apache crafts, making tiny little bags that hang around your neck. And so I was beading those things, and special stones on them, too, also, as well. And so I got a chance to meet people from all over the world, and that's one good thing about working in Grand Canyon.

It seemed like I met people from all over the world. It's incredible.

Who's farthest away from Grand Canyon?

Raise your hand if you think you're the farthest away. Norway, yes. French. Netherlands. And you're down there by Germany, yeah. Well, nice having everyone here together.

And we are one people, aren't we? We got the same kind of blood, right? The same eyes, the same everything.

One thing that we do have that's really, really, for sure, it's all the same is the heart, huh? It's incredible, huh? How we are able to have the same heart and then be able to function in this world, that's an incredible piece of machinery inside of our chest that allows us to be here, to be thankful, to look at this wonder of the world, Grand Canyon.

The word grand is something, isn't it? Like Grand Central Station, you know, the grand drawing, the grandma, you know, the grandpa, tops, right? Grand Canyon rates right up there, and this is a special place for the people here.

For the people of this area here, there's tribes that are involved with the upkeep of the Grand Canyon in terms of the signage, the new signage that has come in down toward the bottom of the canyon where there used to be a place called Indian Gardens, and they changed it, the Havasupai people changed it, and they changed it to Havasupai Gardens, and that was just done under the group that I was working with this past year, so I'm really proud to be able to work with the management of the Grand Canyon intertribal group that I've been involved with for about a year. I kind of joined late because the group's been in existence for how many years?

[Ranger Dan] It's been around for now 11 years.

[Don Decker] 11 years, and when I go to these meetings, they're very highly organized meetings, and they have an agenda, and they stick to it, and they know exactly what they're doing, what they're doing with the park, and Michael Lyndon, who was the director for about 3 or 4 years, right?

[Ranger Dan] Yeah, he ran our tribal affairs department at the park for a number of years.

[Don Decker] Yes, and they moved to Washington, D.C. He just got a new position there with the National Park Service, and he's there now, but I want to also thank him for allowing me to participate. I'm going to talk a little bit about Apache, okay? And when we think about Apache, you know, we always think about movies, Hollywood movies, right? And so we see a lot of movies that we've seen as we were growing up, you know. Apache's raiding little wagon trains, you know. Apache's doing this and starting fires and basically causing a lot of havoc, you know, in movies, you know.

But Hollywood got us really, they got us all wrong, you know. And we're peaceful, loving people. And so I'm saying, so I'm trying to correct some of the stereotypes of movies that are made in Hollywood.

They've changed all of that now. I saw the movie Little Big Man back in 1972. I saw it in Fort Wayne, Indiana one night in an old theater when it premiered.

But that was the best movie that I'd ever seen that was made about Native American indigenous people, you know. And so a lot of the corrections being going on right now with the recent movie and TV series that have been coming forth now in production. So I'm glad about that as well too.

The Apache group that I belong to, they're located about two and a half hours south of here on the way to Phoenix. There's a small little town called Camp Verde. And that is the traditional lands of the Apache people and the Yavapai.

The Yavapai people and the Apache people live on the same reservation. But the Yavapai people speak a different language. They have a different culture.

But we share the same reservations. Matter of fact, we have a lot of intermarriage with one another. There's 2,200 of us that live on the reservation.

And we've been there since time immemorial, all the way back to the 14th century, 13th century in the area, as early as the documentation that was made by Spanish explorers that came to the area around 1604. They saw Apaches in the area, and it was noted by a Catholic priest who wrote a book and was recorded. And so that is the basis of history that we look at when we look at the paperwork that's been done to show that the Apaches were in the area around the 16th century.

But the traditional Apache people say that, we've always been here, they say that. The old people, when you talk to them, you know, they say, what are you talking about? What are you talking about, 1600? What are you telling those people up there in Grand Canyon? You know, I could just hear that. But the traditional people will say, we've always been here.

And so the studies have been made. You know, our language goes all the way up to northern Canada, and then some of the people in northern California speak a, not Apache, but Athabascan, it's called Athabascan people, and we are part of the Athabascan people. And so a lot of the history is told about migration, but the migration is really from the point of view of archaeologists and anthropologists. So when the traditional Apaches talk about their own traditions and their migration, they always talk about it coming from here, from this area here. So when the Apaches talk about how did we come into this world, well, we talk about a place near Sedona where there's a place called Boynton Canyon where the Apaches celebrate, each year in February, the forthcoming, the entering of the Apache into the world as we know it today. And that leads me into the next portion of my talk about spirituality of the Apache people.

And the Apache medicine men talk about the time when time began. This was when the universe was completely dark, and they could see a small light, smaller than the head of a match, and it was lit, and that was the supreme being. The Apaches prayed to a supreme being called Usen, U-S-E-N, and he is a creator that made all the world.

And he talks about the light that began when it lit up the whole universe, and the sun is what they're talking about over here. That sun that we have here that we depend on so much, and it's so important to have the sun. And when the universe lit up, the Apache world came into the world.

I'm not going to tell you the whole story because it would take about 4 hours. We'll still be sitting here about 11 o'clock tonight, but I'm skipping ahead real fast forward here. It talks about the beginning of the world, and at the very beginning there were holy spirits. There were mountain spirit dancers that were dancing, and they are special deities that come from the creator source coming into the world and showing the people how to live. And there was a great flood, kind of like a Bible story, you know, but it's similar to it, and it talks about a great flood, the second coming, because there was a lot of corruption going on. And when the Apaches came back into the new world, it was led by the female, and they carried a shell from the ocean filled with water somewhere in San Diego somewhere back, but this was a long time ago.

And it talks about the beginning of the Apache world, and that is how the spiritual teachings are taught among Apache. That's what keeps the communities going based on that information of traditional upbringing and teachings of coming into the world. It's a very sacred story.

I can't tell you all of the story because, first of all, I'm not a medicine man, number one, okay, so I don't pretend to be a medicine man up here. I'm one of the spiritual leaders for our community, and so I wanted to share that with you. So around 1875, down in Canberra, there was an altercation between the Apaches and the U.S. Calvary. There was a lot of warfare going on, and it's hard to believe. Well, there was a civil war here. There was a war in America, too, a long time ago.

So there was a war going on between the Apaches and the Calvary. It was about land, and the Apaches were rounded up in 1875 in February and were marched off to a place in eastern Arizona where they were interned for about 25 years because the expansion of the western United States, the Apaches were in the way. And so the Yavapais were part of that roundup, and they were marched over there in what was basically a prison, but it was really just a camp, a military camp.

And at the turn of the century, 1900, we were released, and we came back to our lands over to Camp Verde. And when we got there, there were ranches everywhere. Somebody had squatted on our lands, and the land was taken.

And this is important to know because it's part of history. That's all it is. I'm not trying to make a point here or a bad point, make you feel bad or anything like that, but it's just history is what I want to share with you.

And to this day, our people survived, you know, and we have 2,200 people living on our reservation. Some people live in Schenectady. Some people live in California, different states, and so forth.

But there's about 1,100 people that live on the reservation in Camp Verde today. We have a casino. The casino is the largest employer of the area.

We employ over 500 people from the community there that have jobs that are employed by the Yavapai Apache Nation. So we contribute economically to the community that way. So I wanted to tell you a little bit about the language, the Apache language.

The Apache language is one of the hardest languages to learn. It's so hard because a lot of people try to pronounce it. It's like learning French.

Oh, French would be a hard language to learn because it's hard to pronounce French words. You know that, right, everybody? Have you tried to pronounce a French word?

It's very hard. You know what I mean? Si vous plaît, vous le savez. You know, whatever, whatever, whatever you say. So Apache is the same way. So I'm going to call one of the audience members here. Do I have a volunteer? Let's have 2 volunteers, okay? Come on up here real quick.

I want to teach you a little bit of Apache. Okay, come on up here. Say, (Speaks Apache)

[Ranger Dan] (Speaks Apache).

[Don Decker] That means, how are you?

I'll say, (speaks Apache). Yeah, it means, okay.

That sounds like French, doesn't it? (Speaks Apache) Yeah, so it's natural for you, right?

So I walk up to you and say, hey, (Speaks Apache)

[Ranger Dan] (Repeats)

[Don Decker] (Speaks Apache) I say, (Speaks Apache) I say, (Speaks Apache)

[Ranger Dan] (Speaks Apache)

[Don Decker] (Speaks Apache)

[Ranger Dan] (Speaks Apache)

[Don Decker] Yeah. Say, (Speaks Apache)

[Ranger Dan] (Speaks Apache)

[Don Decker] Where are you going? He said. (Speaks Apache) Say, (Speaks Apache)

[Ranger Dan] (Speaks Apache)

[Don Decker] (Speaks Apache) I'm going over there. That's what I told him. I said, I'll say, (Speaks Apache)

[Ranger Dan] You got to say that one again, Don.

[Don Decker] (Speaks Apache) Don.

[Ranger Dan] Don.

[Don Decker] That's my name.

[Ranger Dan] Yeah.

[Don Decker] Yeah, okay. So the language can be, the language is a very complicated language.

Apache is a very complicated language. And so we have a language program on our reservation. And I want you to write this down if you can.

It's, if you look on the internet, if you type in D-I-L-Z-H-E apostrophe E Apache Dictionary App, you'll find our dictionary on there. You can type in any word that you want, and the words will come up, and it'll teach you Apache. And that's how we conquered our language deficiency that we had.

A lot of people were losing our language. And we're teaching our kids how to speak their own language today. We continue that. And that's my job as an elder, as an 80-year-old elder, you know. And so there were many of us that got together and worked on this dictionary. And the dictionary was completed with a cooperative venture with a university in Indiana.

So it's called the Dilzhe'e Apache Dictionary App. That's the name of it. D-I-L-Z-H-E apostrophe E Dilzhe'e Apache Dictionary.

You can find it. If you type it in, it'll show up. And it's like an orange-covered book in there.

And you can learn Apache that way too. So everyone should speak their own different second language, you know. Like the foreign people that come here, they speak pretty good English, you know. And that's pretty good to hear a French person come talk English to us. So why don't you learn Apache so that you can talk to me in my own language? Geography is very important, okay.

In our group, a lot of the names that were, all these booths out here have names. They were named after Hualapai people. The Hualapai that live west of us.

And the Havasupai people. The Havasupai people live inside the canyon. Did you know that there's indigenous people living inside the canyon?

Did you know that? There's indigenous people living inside the canyon down the river. About 60 miles, huh? I've been down there. It's really beautiful. They got blue water coming down the cliffs.

Got some nice swimming holes over there. It's really beautiful. And this is part of their land.

And I honor them because I've never lived here, but they lived here inside the canyon. The Hualapai people live up on top of the cliff, like right in this area. If you go straight down here, you'll see them on top, the Hualapai people.

There's a lot of indigenous people that are tied to this area. I talked about this already earlier. So when we talk about geography, geography has a meaning for all of us, right?

When we think about Yosemite Park, when we think about Zion National Park, and we talk about different locations like Niagara Falls, what do we think about Niagara Falls when we think about it? What is that? What is Niagara Falls?

It's water running down, right, cascading down. Well, that's how the Apaches are. When they name mountains, like there's a mountain not too far from where I live.

There's a mountain there called Porcupine Mountain. That's the name of it. That's where our clan lives underneath that mountain. There's a family that used to live there a long time ago. Way, way, way, I'm talking about back in the 1860s, 1870s, the family that lived underneath Porcupine Mountain. That's the name of that mountain because of them.

They named that mountain because of that clan. There's Tsechi, the people from the Red Rock. There's people from Sedona. You ever heard of Sedona? There's a clan that lives there called Tsechi. They used to live there a long time ago, the clan from there. There's another group, the one that I belong to, called Tserutlish, Blue Water. That's Fossil Creek where there's a special water that comes on. It's very, very blue.

It's very pure. You can even drink it as it's coming out of the spring because it's that pure. So all these geographical areas where Apache used to live, they're named after the clans.

So some cities are named after people, aren't they, or families. Another thing that's really important from my perspective because I've always, I grew up with my grandparents. They were very poor people.

I grew up, I'm 80 years old, so I was born in 1944. That was during the war, World War II. So I came to live with my Apache grandparents on the reservation.

One of my mother brought me to the reservation and said, you're going to live with your grandparents. Now I was 2 years old. I don't remember the day that happened, but I lived with them for 14 years. I learned how to speak Apache. I learned to listen to their stories. We lived in a one-room house shack with a kerosene lantern.

We had a wood stove. I was very poor. There was no food to eat sometimes, and it was a struggle.

And that's how life and how tough it was growing up on the reservation. And there wasn't much for me to do except to go to school, which is something that I'm really proud of because I have two college degrees now. I was very lucky to get that. And so I use this education to better my people, to talk to them, and

I'm involved with the culture department with our Yavapai Apache Nation. They called me up and they said, Don, we need a blessing for a new bridge that's coming in, Sedona. Can you go up there? And the head of the Apache culture department, the late Vincent Randall, God bless his soul, he left us about last year, and he is one of the lead speakers at the beginning of a new film.

[Ranger Dan] We Are the Canyon, yeah. So it's a new tribal film inside the park. So every national park, every place you go to has its own film. We have two, one for the overview of the park and now a second for all the tribes that call the canyon home. And Vincent is the first voice that you hear and see in that movie. So I hope you get a chance to go see it because his words are extremely powerful in the opening portion of that film.

[Don Decker] You can see it on YouTube also, right?

[Ranger Dan] Oh yeah, yeah, you can see it on YouTube and you can also see it on the park website.

[Don Decker] What's the name of it?

[Ranger Dan] We Are Grand Canyon.

[Don Decker] We Are Grand Canyon. Would you take a look at that video? It's a beautiful video and it's being shown at the theater over here too. You can schedule yourself and see that. The main thing is to be advocating for the disenfranchised people, you know, and there's a lot of tension going on around the canyon right now. There's a uranium mine that's opening up south of the canyon over here and they're really afraid that some of the uranium water is going to get loose and it's called brachia.

It's a rock formation. They're afraid that some of that refining and digging of uranium using water is going to get in the rock formation and go down to where the Havasupai live down the canyon because that's where the water source is coming from. They're really afraid of that.

So there's a lot of controversy. It's controversial. I promise not to talk anything about controversy, but I wanted to mention that, okay, Daniel?

Because these are the things that are affecting us. We need to advocate for indigenous people, you know, for protection. And it's for all of us too, you know.

We're going through climate change too. So a lot of people say, well, we don't have climate change, you know, but I think it's happening. So we need to be advocating for ourselves really to take care of our own families, our own lives too, and need to bring about a public awareness and look at the issues and find out what the issues are and inform yourself.

You know, a well-informed public, they can advocate and vote the way you should vote, which is to be an advocate for good life, clean life, safe life. These are the things that are important to us, not only for Apaches, but for everyone in the world. It's educating ourselves and looking at the issues and being well-informed.

Those are the things that are important to us. If you ever come to the Yavapai Apache Nation, it's on I-17 between Flagstaff and Phoenix, and you can't miss it because there's a turnoff and there's a sign that says Yavapai Apache Nation. You can take a tour of that area if you're local.

You can also look it up on the Internet, and you can read a little bit about the Yavapai people and the Apache people. We're all one and the same over there. Okay, now, are there any questions that you might have?

[Visitor #1] Yes, go ahead. Sedona, yeah, so we happen to, that was where we stayed for two days before we drove down here, and we did a tour, and we got to know why it was named Sedona. So are they Apache tribe also?

[Don Decker] They're non-Apaches that named the city after a family name, Sedona. But that's where the Apaches lay claim to a lot of the geography, geographical locations that I was talking about, families and different clans that live in the area. Saochi, that's the name of it. There's a place over there called Bell Rock. Have you ever heard of that, Bell Rock? Yeah, we're there.

Yeah, you were there. There's a butte right next to it, Bell Rock. It's called Courthouse Butte.

You saw that, didn't you? Well, Courthouse Butte is an Apache's call. (Speaks Apache)

(Speaks Apache) means eagle sits on top. That's what that means. And some Apaches used to live below that mountain, that little butte there.

That's why they call it (Speaks Apache). So people say, where are you from? Hey, (Speaks Apache), you know.

Hey, I come from Beagle Butte, you know what I mean? That's how the Apache would talk to one another. So remember when I talked about geography, geographical names, that's how Apaches name, that's how that works.

So any other questions? Daniel, you want to cover anything else?

[Ranger Dan] I think we got it here, Don. This has been wonderful. And with the words of Don tonight, I want to thank you, Don, for coming here.

[Don Decker] Thank you, Daniel.

[Ranger Dan] And if you want to meet him in person and see him, he'll be down in the watchtower.

[Ranger Jonah] Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal, lived experiences of Tribal members and do not encompass the views of their Tribal Nation or that of the National Park.

To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices, visit www.nps.gov/grca. Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated Tribes of the Grand Canyon. These being the Havasupai Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.

In this episode, Don Decker, an elder of the Yavapai-Apache Nation. shares stories about his Apache culture, and the Indigenous names of different landmarks in the region, and how his tribe is working to keep their language alive.

Tags: grand canyon speaks, grand canyon first voices, indigenous peoples, yavapai-apache, american indian language

Episode 11

Art Batala Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Art Batala Speaks

Art Batala: I think it's very important that everyone knows that we have a strong connection to the Grand Canyon and Grand Canyon is very important to our soul.

Lakin: Hello everyone, welcome back to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Lakin

Meranden: and this is Meranden.

Meranden: In this episode, we'd like to introduce you all to Art Batala, who is a Hopi jeweler with over 50 years of experience.

Meranden: He describes his journey as an apprentice serving 10 years in the Marine Corps and attending Western New Mexico University shortly after.

Lakin: Art also explains the cultural significance of designs in Hopi Jewelry as well as the importance of sustaining traditional knowledge.

Meranden: Thank you for checking out this episode and we hope you enjoy.

Art Batala: Thank you very much for being here. As stated earlier, I am Art Batala. I'm from the Hopi tribe, which is just about 100 miles west of here. I was born and raised there and as I told the gentleman here a little earlier, that I'm probably the last generation that speak my language fluently. That's unfortunate, but it is how it is today. I've learned how to create jewelry.

Art Batala: I actually don't like the term silversmith. I like to use a jeweler because it is jewelry that I do. What I said earlier about myself, I've learned how to create jewelry as soon as I graduated from high school, which was in 1973. In 1974, I learned about this apprenticeship program out on the Hopi that was put on by, most of them were World War II veterans. They've learned how to create their style of jewelry soon after the war. I learned that they needed a way of bringing in income to support their families.

Art Batala: This was a way that they found was quite meaningful to them. They started creating jewelry and later on, they came up with the idea of teaching the younger generation on how to make this jewelry. That's where this apprenticeship program came to be. I learned about it soon after I graduated from high school. I took advantage of it. I began creating the jewelry.

Art Batala: Of course, we had to learn the process first. In learning the process, our teachers made us cut different jewelry out of brass because brass is very hard to cut. It got us used to how to handle the jeweler's saw. That was pretty much the idea behind that. Once our cutting was satisfied, they were satisfied with our cutting, then we graduated to copper. Of course, copper is very soft.

Art Batala: We made the jewelry out of copper. This place where the apprenticeship program was, whatever jewelry we made out of brass and copper, they sold it to the public. That's how the program funded itself. Anyway, I've been doing jewelry ever since then. I went into the military soon after. I spent 10 years in the Marine Corps.

Art Batala: During that time, I still did my best to keep doing jewelry. After my time in the Marine Corps ended, I left and decided to go back to school. I entered college, Western New Mexico University in Silver City, New Mexico. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in business administration. I've been doing administrative management since then. During the meantime, I still did my jewelry just to stay on top of it.

Art Batala: They told me that it's like learning how to ride a bike, but sometimes it gets difficult. Don't believe that. Making jewelry is pretty difficult. It requires a lot of patience. In my view, it requires being in tune with who you are. When you see my jewelry, my jewelry, the designs come from nature itself.

Art Batala: We use the cloud symbols a lot and the water waves. Although there's no ocean, as you can see around here, this part of the world, and you ask, why the water wave? Because generally, water waves represent oceans. When it rains out on the reservation, we see trickles of water going down a little stream, and you could see the little water waves. That's where the water waves come from. We just enhance it a little bit more to make the complete circle.

Art Batala: That's where the water waves come from. As far as other design that I do, like I said, it comes from my upbringing, my cultural upbringing, and my traditional upbringing. As we boys, as we grow up, we are initiated into the various societies as we're growing up in Hopi. And so, having gone through that, I've learned all there is, not all there is, but I learned a lot of insight into my religion and what it encompasses. My designs come from that aspect too because of the water waves and the prayer feathers that I do. A lot of my designs have prayer feathers.

Art Batala: That's where my creation of jewelry comes from. A lot of it's traditional, religious, and just basically cultural upbringing. We make mesas on a bracelet. We make the mesas. A lot of it comes from our way of life. That's how we grew up.

Art Batala: Finding out about this Native [American] demonstrations here was back in 2017, I believe it was, when I first came here. I saw the young lady in the back at that time. I met her, a ranger. So, you know, it's been a good experience for me here. I appreciate the National Park Service in acknowledging all the Natives who have connections to the Grand Canyon. So, I really do appreciate that. So, that's me in general and where I came from and where I am today.

Ranger Lizzy: Thank you, Art. That's fantastic, honestly. And I know you're wearing a piece of your jewelry now. Can you describe it for our audience here?

Art Batala: This piece of jewelry represents the corn. I'll pass it around or you can pass it around. Thank you. Anyway, most often times when I do corn, corn is the primary staple of my tribe. We plant corn. You know, we've got the blue, the white corn, the yellow corn, as well as other Natives. You know, they also plant a lot of corn. So, that's where the corn comes from, the symbol. And in here, I've also put these feathers. They represent feathers from an eagle, the eagle's tail feathers. And up here also. And off to the side, you see the black triangular shapes. They represent what you see now, dark clouds. That's what it represents. And I love doing corn because my father was of the corn clan.

Art Batala: In my tribe, we belong to different clans. I'm Coyote. I'm a Coyote clan because my mother was a Coyote clan. But my father was a corn clan. So, I love to do a lot of corn and pay tribute to my father, my late father. So, and the tips here, usually we put tips on bolos as weights. So, it'll hold the cord down. And I completely make everything on here myself. This is all sterling silver.

Art Batala: If you want to take another look at it, it'll be here. So, and also, I want to show another piece of jewelry. Where is my assistant? Maybe perhaps you can show. That is a lot of people refer to it as a cuff. I always refer to it as a bracelet.

Art Batala: So, that bracelet itself, you know, came from my area. This site with the designs, there's a lot of petroglyphs around our area. So, I visit some of these petroglyphs, you know, at various times. And that particular petroglyph is on the walls. And it represents a blanket. It's called the blanket design. So, that's the first time I ever came up with that design. The sides, they represent, also represent the black clouds.

Art Batala: And the lines down, coming down, represents the horizons. So, and the sun in the middle here is raised up a portion from the main bracelet itself, which is pretty hard to do, you know, when you're making this. You know, most of the time, when you're doing something like that, you put too much heat on it and the inside of it starts to, you know, melt. So, yeah, it's a tedious work. But, you know, after years of experience, it's possible, as you can see.

Ranger Lizzy: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. And, you know, you talk a lot about how your culture and your family and your upbringing really has influenced your designs. Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with your father and how he has been an influence in your life?

Art Batala: My father was a very hard worker, in my opinion. He had a full-time job. He was a heavy equipment operator with the Arizona Department of Transportation. And he worked for 40 some odd years before retiring. And all of it was with ADOT. He said he took over my grandfather's job. At that time, I guess, you don't have to apply and wait for years to get into it. But his father, my grandfather, taught him how to operate. At the time, it was the old cable-operated heavy equipment. So that must have been very difficult. As opposed to now, everything is automatic. But anyway, my father did that year in and year out.

Art Batala: And during the wintertime, although we don't get very much snow, sometimes we do get a lot of snow. And my father was always on the road making sure the public was safe. You know, anybody that ran off into a ditch, you know, he would be helping them in the middle of the night or three o'clock in the morning. And during the times when our religion calls, you know, my father would, after a full night's work, he would come home and go straight to the kiva to do his responsibilities as a man that had gotten initiated into society. So, you know, doing that all those 40 years that he was employed is amazing.

Art Batala: You know, he also planted corn. Like I told you earlier, everyone plants corn. And during the day, he would go down there where he's not working, especially on weekends. That's where he would be all day in the hot sun. But he was a man that was dedicated to family. I had four other siblings, all of them older. I'm the youngest of the family. And we lost a brother some time ago, years ago. So now, unfortunately, I lost my oldest sister not too long ago.

Art Batala: But, you know, my father was a man who looked to ensure that we are eating, you know, we are going to school, we are learning what we can learn to eventually feed ourselves, you know, so to speak. And so, you know, my dad was a man's man in my terms. He worked hard for a living and he made sure we all had a roof over our heads. And also he was true to his religion. So that's my dad. That's why I admire him. And I looked up to him and, of course, missed him when he was gone.

Ranger Lizzy: Yeah, I think, you know, you hear so much when you talk about your father, you hear how he's really committed to his family and his community. And when we were talking, I could see that from you as well. I'd love to hear a little bit more about your commitment to your community and your relationship with your community and the next generation as well.

Art Batala: And I stated earlier that as a man or as a male, we grow up getting initiated into different societies. And these societies, you know, require a lot of personal commitments. And so I've done my part of that in my growing up years. I've gotten into some initiated into some societies that I that I enjoyed doing. But when you get to being my age, you know, you find out that your stamina isn't quite there. And in performing our responsibilities to these societies, you know, you have to be out there, out there in the open and, you know, taking your prayer feathers out to certain locations.

Art Batala: About five years ago, I found that I couldn't do it anymore because of the hot sun. And it drains you completely. And so what happens is when you get into that situation, we mentor our nephews. We mentor our nephews the same way that we were mentored in the kivas. And so when a time comes for when a time comes where you aren't able to perform your responsibilities, then that's when your nephews must step up. And so that's what I've done.

Art Batala: I've picked my eldest nephew to continue what I was doing as an initiated man. But during the course of time, I was like my father. I made sure my children were fed. I made sure my children got an education. I made sure that my mother is well. And, you know, I made sure that I have a crop.

Art Batala: I also planted when I was growing up. And so, you know, like I said earlier, it's a lot of responsibility when you're a man on the Hopi Reservation. And when you're dedicated to your religion, you know, it becomes difficult. And there's a lot of balancing act that we do with the modern world and in keeping our traditions alive. And so, you know, we as Hopi have never really exploited ourselves completely to the public. We have always maintained our isolation.

Art Batala: And I believe that is the reason why our traditions, our customs have survived this long. I can pretty much say that I believe the Hopi tribe is the only tribe in the United States that still maintains and practice our religion as it was taught to us by our forefathers. You know, we still maintain that closeness of the kiva.

Art Batala: And that's where this balancing act becomes difficult. You know, our children have been born into this modern society and it's very demanding. You know, how we cope with that is, you know, you have to make sure that everyone understands each other's responsibility.

Art Batala: And, you know, the women themselves also, you know, get initiated into a lot of societies. And so my sisters in growing up, they also got initiated into these societies, the ladies’ societies. But oftentimes, you know, they need men. They need men for certain things that they can't do. And so we as men have to step up and help them. So that's another responsibility in itself.

Art Batala: So, you know, I like to think that in growing up, being a father, and now being a grandfather, I have stepped into my father's shoes and lived my life the way he had lived. And I'm glad to say that I have, you know, lived the life of my dad and in making sure that my surroundings is well. My children and now my grandchildren, my sisters, my mother. So I felt that I have achieved that goal of mine to be like my father.

Ranger Lizzy: Wow, that's fantastic. You know, we talked a lot about the importance of education and passing down information from one generation to the next. As you're working with this next generation, you know, getting closer to your grandchildren, what gives you, what are your hopes and what are your concerns for the younger generation?

Art Batala: Life on Hopi, as we know it, has changed and things aren't as they were when I was growing up. You know, and so I have to take an honest look at everything and, you know, make sure that my grandchildren get the best of education that can possibly be had. You know, balancing these modern day things that is necessary for young children to become who they really want to be.

Art Batala: You know, I am now, like I said, a grandfather and I am an elected official for my tribe. And as an elected official, I feel it is my responsibility to look at our school system to see that we have the best education possible for our grandchildren as they're growing up. And so I continue to do that, you know, whenever we talk about children.

Art Batala: You know, children need a lot of direction in this complicated world we live in. And so I'd like to be there for them, whomever it may be. It doesn't have to be my grandchildren, because I look at it as from the standpoint that they're somebody's grandchildren. So all grandchildren are precious and important. So that's what I'd like to continue to be is some kind of not necessarily role model, but an important part of a learning process for them. Yeah.

Ranger Lizzy: You know, so you talked about being an elected official, and I know that you serve on the Hopi Tribal council. Can you tell us what does tribal council mean and what is your position?

Art Batala: Tribal councils were set up by the federal government because in giving the Native American tribes an opportunity to govern themselves and to, you know, take advantage of some of these funding availability, whether it's state, county, or the national level. And when you have grant monies coming in from those sources, every time, any time grant monies are to be used on various Native lands, the tribal councils must approve in those grant funds. And so that's primarily our responsibility.

Art Batala: However, we are also faced with a lot of other, I don't really want to say problems, but I guess it's kind of like a challenge, a lot of challenges that we're facing. And, you know, we continue to have our challenges with our neighbors, you know, the Navajo. It has always been like that, a challenge, to be honest.

Art Batala: But I have to say that right now, today, about a month ago, we had come upon a great achievement, a very historic event, where the three tribes who have always been in adverse situations against each other, we have come up with a solution that all the tribes have been faced with since, gosh, since the 50s, the Little Colorado River. We have always been fighting over quantification of our rights to the Little Colorado River. And so about a month ago, the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and the San Juan Southern Paiute all signed Little Colorado River Water Settlement Agreement. And so right now, that is the highest level that we can get into moving forward to becoming partners. And I thought that that was a good, great achievement. And I feel proud to be on the council that approved that water settlement.

Art Batala: It opens up the doors to a more cordial relationship from here on. And I like that. But there certainly is still a lot more challenges that we face as a tribe. But we are trying to look for ways to make sure that our tribe survives into the future going forward. It's difficult, but not impossible. You know, nothing is impossible. If there's something that is going to better your lives, it's going to be made possible. So those are the challenges and, you know, the great achievements that I have. And I feel honored to be serving on the Tribal Council today.

Ranger Lizzy: That's really incredible. And yeah, hearing about the recent water settlement is just amazing. As you're talking about, you know, looking towards the future and the ways that tribes can survive and Hopi tribe can survive and flourish. How do you see that like in the future? What ways are those?

Art Batala: You know, that's a difficult question to answer. But there are opportunities out there. And, you know, some of those opportunities will have to be addressed. For example, I sit on our Hopi Tribal Gaming Committee, and we have resisted the idea of gaming all these years. We have had two referendums on the Hopi Reservation. Both times, the idea of gaming had been voted down. And it is primarily because of our culture. Our elderly, most of them were elderly that voted against gaming. They feel that it is not our place to go into this kind of revenue generating opportunity.

Art Batala: They feel that it's akin to what they describe as getting blood money, you know, getting income, you know, from those people who have gotten addicted to gaming and will spend their last dollar on gaming. And so those were kind of the reasons why gaming was really frowned upon. But our revenues have really greatly been reduced because of the Peabody mine closure.

Art Batala: Over 75% of our annual income derived from Peabody mining on the Black Mesa. And so when the Peabody mine closed, it took a dramatic, it hit us in a dramatic way. And so we're now struggling. And so upon getting on the Tribal Council, my colleagues asked me if I would chair the gaming committee and perhaps look into the idea of gaming, because it is now what we refer to as our last hope to bring in revenue. You know, and so what we did was we went out into the villages. We have 12 villages on the Hopi Reservation, and they all have their administrations.

Art Batala: And so that's where we went and, you know, got to get feedback from the boards of directors that run their administration and the public to see what their views are on gaming. When we were finished doing those presentations, all 12 villages unanimously is approving gaming, the idea of gaming. So that's when we started going full throttle with gaming.

Art Batala: There's still a lot of work to be done, but we're making progress. And I've been sharing all this with my wife, so she knows all about it, about me as a chairperson of the gaming. But you know, it's a challenge, but I tell people regarding gaming, a lot of different people have asked us, you know, not necessarily Hopi, but non-Hopi, non-Natives, you know, why gaming?

Art Batala: And my answer to them is, you know, at this point in time, we have to survive going into the future. The tribal government has to survive. And although there are many views against gaming, it is truly our last resort. So right now, as we see it, most, if not all of our tribal members are in approval of going gaming. So that's where that lies.

Ranger Lizzy: Yeah, and that kind of brings us back to the beginning of our conversation earlier in this program, when we were talking about how do you balance traditional life with the modern world? You know, because there are all the challenges, the economy and all that. We are just coming kind of towards the end of the program, so I would love to ask just one last question, which is, what would you like our visitors today to take away from this program and our conversation?

Art Batala: To gain knowledge of who we are as Natives and how we are connected to the Grand Canyon. I think it's very important that everyone knows that we have a strong connection to the Grand Canyon. And Grand Canyon is very important to our soul. You know, it's really important. And, you know, I really appreciate the National Park Service for putting on these Native demonstrations, wherein we interact with tourists coming in here from all parts of the world and learning about who we are, learning about our arts and crafts, because our arts and crafts are, tells everybody who we are, where we're coming from as a people. And it's great that we interact with all the people that come here.

Art Batala: A lot of them ask a lot of questions, which is important that they understand us, who we are. So, you know, I do really appreciate, you know, the National Park Service for, you know, doing this for Native Americans. And, you know, it's an opportunity that is open to all the artisans, all the weavers, in every aspect of artwork. And perhaps not just necessarily, you know, being artwork or craftspeople, but coming here and sharing their views about who they are, just to be here as people.

Ranger Lizzy: And Art, can you tell me, can you tell us a little bit about your relationship to Grand Canyon and the Hopi relationship to Grand Canyon?

Art Batala: My relationship with the Grand Canyon is from a traditional aspect of my life. I spent my entire life, you know, practicing my religion. And the Grand Canyon here is foremost, the most important place of worship that we can do, because here, I don't know how far it is.The confluence is like, what, 12 miles up there?

Ranger Lizzy: Yeah, 15 miles.

Art Batala: 15 miles.

Ranger Lizzy: I think.

Art Batala: The confluence, you know, where the Little Colorado River meets up with the Colorado River, that's the confluence. And just about half a mile into the Little Colorado is where we call the place of emergence. And that's probably the only definitive way we can say that, because it is so important.

Art Batala: We will not go into depth about the exact locations. It's just that we emerged from this part of the world, and it's our birthplace. That's why I have this close ties to the Grand Canyon, having been growing up, doing my religion, practicing my religion.

Art Batala: And, you know, I think it's a great spiritual place. And I thank the National Park again for bringing this alive to everybody. So that's what I would like everybody to know, is my spiritual connection as a Hopi.

Ranger Lizzy: Well, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Ranger Jonah: Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal lived experiences of tribal members and do not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the National Park. To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices visit www.NPS.gov/grca. Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon. These being the Havasupai Tribe the Hualapai Tribe, the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.

In this episode, Ranger Lizzy sat down with Art Batala who is a Hopi jeweler with over 50 years of experience. Art describes his journey which started as an apprentice, learning under the guidance of World War II Veterans. He also speaks about his relationship with his father and how that influenced his upbringing and role as a leader in his community.

Tags: grand canyon speaks, grand canyon first voices, indigenous peoples, hopi , jewelry making, decorative arts

Episode 12

Leona Begishie Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Leona Begishie Speaks

Leona Begishie: We don't have any native teachers at our school, so they kind of connect with me. And so, they're a little more open, they're a little more at ease because I look like maybe grandma or their aunt or their mom. And so that part, although all of the academics, math, ELA, all that is important, but it makes them at ease when they see me.

Meranden: Hello everybody, welcome to Grand Canyon Speaks. My name is Meranden.

Dan: And I'm Dan.

Meranden: In today's episode, Ranger Lizzie spoke with Leona Begishie, who was the Native American aide at the Grand Canyon School.

Dan: Yeah, she is Diné and greatly supported the Native American students by bringing cultural awareness to the teachers and staff, planning events for Native American Heritage Month, and providing a safe space throughout their time at the school.

Meranden: We hope you enjoy this week's episode, and thank you for tuning in.

Dan: And here's Leona Begishie.

Leona: Yes, my name is Leona Begishie, and my clans are Salt people, and I'm related to the Rock Gap people. And my grandfathers are the Zuni Edgewater, and my paternal grandfathers are the Bitterwater people.

So, in Navajo, I would say, (Introduces self in Diné). That's what makes me a woman. That's the woman that I am, that lets other people know in our nation that, oh, then they might say, recognize kinship, you know, oh, you're my mother, you're my daughter, you're my, you know, grandma.

So that kind of sets up those relationships with other people. Thank you.

Ranger Lizzie: Thanks, Leona.

So tonight, Leona is coming and joining us just from the village. She works at Grand Canyon School, and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about the school and your position there.

Leona: So, the Grand Canyon School is a pre-K-12 school, and our school is the only school that is within national park boundaries.

There is a school in Utah, but they're in a national recreation area. So, this is actually a national park, and so it differentiates a little bit, but we're the only pre-K-12 school in any park, and people are always surprised. You know, I do crosswalk, and they'd say, are these kids school kids, you know, when I'm at the crosswalk? And I'm like, yeah, and they're really surprised by that, that we do have a school here.

My title is Native American Aid. What has happened is the school will get a grant for the Native students that attend the school, and within those regulations, rules of those grants, you have to have a group of a parent group, a Native American group, in order to receive the money. You have to have that group in place, and that group has decided to use the funding, and they can use, they decide how to use that funding, and one of the things that they decided to do was bring in a Native American aid to help the children.

And so that's how that position came to be. And I do assist teachers sometimes, but my job primarily at the school is to look, kind of watch how our Native American kids are doing, and if they need some assistance, extra assistance with anything, English, math, writing, I'll go to their classroom, I'll pull them out, and I'll work with them either one-on-one, or sometimes I pull a whole group and work with them, and I'll just be like, just reinforce some of the things that they're learning in the classroom already. One of the things that I do also is, at the beginning of the year, we hold trainings for all the teachers and the staff.

Usually it has to do with animals, like with our tribe, our nation, we don't, you don't mess with snakes, so a lot of parents say, don't let my child look at a snake, and some are okay with it, some are a little more relaxed, but there are others that say no, absolutely no snakes, or owls, you know, we don't want our kids to look at owls or be around owls. And those are the two animals that are, that parents really emphasize, please be careful with these animals, because the owl is a messenger, so they're more, they want to be more careful with an owl. So, an owl is a messenger of, you know, bad things that could happen, or it could be a messenger of death, so they really, you know, ask the school to really respect that.

And the good thing with our school is they really do. When we get materials, they kind of vet the materials with, like, what kind of pictures are on there, or what videos are on there, you know, they respect that. So that's, and eclipses, you know, we can't be out in an eclipse, so they just take that into consideration, maybe when they're doing the calendar for the school year, that type of thing. So, it's a really good school.

Ranger Lizzie: Awesome. Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the programming that you do around, like, Native American Heritage Month?

Leona: So Native American Heritage Month is in November, and starting in October, what I do is, I usually communicate with the art teacher, and we do different activities.

It could be learning how to bead bracelets, or weaving, or making pottery, dioramas. We do some research on other tribes within the area, or even throughout the United States. And so they learn about different groups of people.

And I have all of the students do it, not just our Native students, and they get really excited about it. This year, we actually had them make moccasins. Some of them actually wore them, which was really cool on Heritage Day.

So that's one component of our Heritage Month. And then in November, we have one week where, it's almost like a spirit week, it's the only way I can describe it, you know, where one day we might have Hairdo Day, where, because the different nations that are here, wear their hair in different styles. So, we'll have these different types of hairdos throughout the whole school for that day.

Moccasin Day, Jewelry Day, and then at the end of the week, we just have a whole, you know, dress-up and regalia day. And on that day, we usually have a program that we put on, you know, where the kids are singing, or they're doing a poem, or they're dancing. I do, we have a Cherokee girl that goes to our school, and she's very interested in her culture.

She's not exposed to it, so she'll ask me to do some research, and she'll say, can we do a dance from my tribe? And so, then I'll have to learn how to do a Cherokee dance, because I'm not, you know, I don't have that information. So, I'll have to look it up and do some research. So, we did like a bear dance, and we did a horse dance last year.

So, we have all these different tribes, and of course, all these people, groups of people speak different languages. And so, what I do is I grab all these kids, and I'll say, okay, what would you like to do this year? And you know, they'll say, oh, we want to dance. So, we learn a dance, and then I teach them, if they want to sing, I teach them a song.

And the songs that we learn are all Navajo songs. And the reason why we learn Navajo songs is because I'm Navajo, or Diné is what we call ourselves. And I'm really forced to say Navajo, because that's what people know, right? Like outside of our group of our people, everywhere, you see Navajo reservation signs, you know, and on maps, it says Navajo reservation.

So, I always say Navajo, just so it's familiar to everyone else. But we call ourselves Diné people. So, I teach these kids from different tribes a Navajo song.

So, what I'm really surprised with is that they pick it up really quickly. And these kids don't speak Navajo. And some of them don't even speak their own language, but they pick it up so fast.

And that was one of the things that was really interesting to me. And I really thought it was really cool. And they pick it up the first time we get together.

And then so then they've got like about a month to learn the songs. So, one of the songs that I thought was cute was, it's a song about a puppy. And I just like, I kind of want to sing that song because it's a children's song, right? So, and it's very short.

And every song that we sing, you sing it, we repeat it four times. Because four is a sacred number for the Diné people. So, but I'm not only going to do two.

And that was one of the things that had come up, which I thought was really neat. I had asked the kids, I said, you know, four is a sacred number for us. So, every song that you sing, you do it, you repeat it four times.

And I said, but due to time constraints, I said, I think we should sing it twice. Only two times. And they were like, no, no, no, don't do that.

No, let's sing it four times because that's how you're supposed to do it. So even though they don't know a lot, some of them don't know a lot about their culture or traditions, they were respecting mine, right? So, they were respecting mine and they were saying, let's do it four times. But I'm just going to sing it twice for you.

Just repeat it twice. So, it goes. (sings Diné song) So that's the song that they learned.

And that's, like I said, surprising to me. It was surprising in a really good way. So that was an interesting something that I learned.

Ranger Lizzie: Thank you for sharing your song. And it's about a puppy?

Leona: It's about a puppy. It talks about how he eats so much that he drags his stomach when he's walking because he's so fat and his ears flop. And then he steps on his tail, you know, because his tail is long. And that's what it and he follows me around all day long. That's the that's the song.

Ranger Lizzie: Oh, that's really cute. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. You know, I think this is like just such a cool position. And I we talked a little bit about this yesterday. Can you just tell us, like in your experience, why is this important?

Leona: The position to me over the years that I've been teach or been there and helping teach these kids and just kind of support them is they see me and a lot of their teachers are from different groups of people. And so, they see me, and we don't have any native teachers at our school. So, they kind of connect with me.

And so, they're a little more open. They're a little more at ease because I look like maybe grandma or their aunt or their mom. And so that part, although all of the academics, math, ELA, all that is important, but it makes them at ease when they see me.

So, when I come into their room and they're willing, they're like, OK, we're going to go, you know, even though we're repeating whatever it is that we had already been taught, they really want to come with me. And a lot of times, you know, a lot of kids might be having a bad day, and they won't tell anyone but me. They'll come because they're at ease with me.

And so that also kind of brings a little bit of support in maybe emotionally, you know, and I grew up just like these some of these kids, actually, and I'll let them know, you know, I know how it is. You know, I know how it is not to have a lot of food. I know how it is to want things and not have the resources to get them right.

And I've been there, and I know how you're feeling. So, I think that connection with them really helps. And I just really love being there.

And they're so loving. You know, they're always willing to give a hug. And another thing, too, is I bring a lot of their cultures, you know, a lot of traditions.

We talk about, you know, what grandma's house might be like, you know, because a lot of them, it's difficult for them to write. We don't say the horse is white. We say it, you know, it's flipped around.

So, we say horse white as opposed to white horse. So, when they're writing, sometimes even though they may not speak their language, which is really interesting to me, but they will do that. They'll flip their words around.

And so, we talk about that, you know, like when you write, you say white horse as opposed to horse white. And so, some of those things they don't understand. And so, I'll say, and that's OK.

But, you know, we need to really read the sentence to make sure that it makes sense when you're writing it, because that's what your teacher's looking for. The Dine language is very descriptive. You know, everything that we have the names for are descriptive.

And that's what the name is, right? That's, you know, a green tree. You know, we don't really say, although there are words now for it. We have a word now for computer or a phone.

And we had to make those up because, of course, we didn't have any of those. But they're just descriptive. And so, when they're writing, they're not they're not understanding.

OK, my house is big. You know, they want the teachers want more than that. So, I always tell them your teachers would like you to put more adjectives in there, more descriptive words.

And so, what I do is I'll pull them, and I'll say, OK, we're all going to close our eyes. And even though these kids live here on the weekends or on the long holidays, they'll go to grandma's house on the reservation. So, they'll say, close your eyes and they'll close their eyes, and they'll say, OK, so let's think about grandma's house.

What do you hear? What do you see? What does it feel like? You know, and they'll describe, oh, grandma's making, you know, breakfast or something. What does it sound like? What does it smell like? And they'll tell me all that. And I say, OK, go out the door.

Let's start walking. I always use the corral. And I always say, OK, go to the corral, start walking towards the corral.

And what do you smell? And that's the big thing. And they always get a laugh out of it because they say, what do you smell first? And they're like, we smell the sheep poop. Right.

That's what they say. And you and you do. And that really is you do as you're walking over there.

The first thing that hits you is the sheep poop, and they laugh about it. But then they go and they, you know, describe the corral and say, see all of that that you're telling me. That is what we want in your sentences.

So, then they go, oh, OK. So, then they'll add more to their sentence. So, I think that really helps them that I come in with that information and have them go, you know this.

Right. So now we just need to angle it where they understand what we want them to do. And I think in this position that I'm in, that's what helps them.

And so, this position is a unique one and that really helps them. And I'm really glad that I worked there actually to help them go, oh, OK, I know what you're talking about now. Right. So, I think that's really cool.

Ranger Lizzie: Yeah, I think that's so incredible. And you form these really close relationships to these students.

I know that you get to work for them from when they're, you know, in kindergarten up until they're in fifth grade, right?

Leona: Kindergarten to fifth grade. Yeah.

Ranger Lizzie: And then you still see them.

Leona: And I still see them in middle school and high school.

Ranger Lizzie: Can you tell me a little bit about how your relationships have grown or how you've seen kids grow as you work with them?

Leona: Well, the last year, the seniors from last year was the first group of kids that I worked with when I started. So, I was I grew up close to here.

And so, when I first started working at the school again, because we were here, then moved a couple of places and came back. So, this first group of kids that I worked with, they were in. Eighth grade, I believe, or seventh grade, and they graduated last year.

And so, I felt so like I kept saying, this is my first group of kids that were here when I started here again. And I was really emotional about it. So, I made stoles for a Native American stoles and I because I so I sewed them stoles and they really appreciated it.

It was really nice to, you know, and it was beautiful. And, of course, but these kids, I do form relationships with them and they're and I'm kind of sad, but they're sad because I'm moving. And so next year in August, when they come back, I'm not going to be there.

But these kids are like one kindergarten kid came up to me this year and said, and he's in summer school and he says, is today your last day? And he was about to cry. And I said, no crying. And he said, and I said, no, no, no.

I said, not till the end of summer school. And he goes, oh, OK, you know, and then ran off. But I formed those relationships that at the younger the younger level, and then they go through fifth grade.

And those relationships just grow. And even when they get to middle school, I have a student in middle school who really respects and he'll call his other teachers, you know, by their last name or just by their first name. But when he sees me, he always says, this is because she, you know, and he's always very respectful.

So those relationships are just so special to me. And even the kids that graduated this year is another group that I worked from here on out would be all the kids that I've worked with. I'm going to miss all of them, of course.

Ranger Lizzie: Yeah, I think that's so special. And it is sad even just to see you leaving at the end of this year, kind of when working with this next generation, you know, what concerns or worries do you have kind of looking up at the next generation?

Leona: Well, the —my concerns and my worries and hope as well. And I know we had talked about that.

And I had when I was in the boarding school, I went to boarding school on the reservation. And when I was in the boarding school, slowly, I went to kindergarten. And when I entered kindergarten, I only spoke Navajo.

And I know that I probably knew some English words like very simple. Yes, no. And satellite.

And that's interesting because my dad knew about satellites. I had no idea what they were. I just knew satellites.

And he would say we'd be outside, and he'd say, look at the stars. And we'd see this one just flying. And he goes, oh, that's a satellite.

So, I knew that I knew satellite. So, when I went into kindergarten, I could not form a sentence in English at all. So, I only know I knew Navajo.

And when I was there, we're learning this new language. And I'm like, oh, and it's so regimented. You know, it's like you've got to learn all this stuff.

And then you go back to your dormitory where you we sleep and, you know, then we eat and then we play and then all over, you know, just same thing next day. As I'm going through the school system, I start becoming really ashamed and really embarrassed that I'm Navajo. And I'm like, oh, I wish I was a born Navajo.

You know, I kept saying, oh, I don't like it because it's so difficult for me. And I would say that. And so, when I see that, I kind of am seeing slowly, slowly, slowly, our traditions and our language and our culture just kind of being peeled away a little bit because we're learning this new thing, this new way to live.

And so, my I see it now and I kind of saw it as I was getting older. So, I see it now with these kids, but they'll say we don't speak the language. We don't, you know, go to ceremonies or we don't do prayers in our language.

So slowly, these kids are like they have no clue. And that's one of my worries is that you see that as they're coming up. They have no clue on their traditions and their cultures and languages.

So that's one of my worries is that we're just going to lose all of it. And so, as I got older, until I became an adult, I was like, wait a minute. This is special.

Another, and I was a little more curious of our traditions and our cultures and our language because of the Navajo Code Talkers. So that was interesting to me, like, really? And it's interesting to read some of the words that they use. And I was like, wait a minute.

This is something to be proud of, right? This is something they had come back to us and said, develop something. And they did. Our Code Talkers did.

They developed; we already had the language. It was not written. So, they had to use the current alphabet to write some of those words down.

So that's how they created the written language because it was always just oral. So that kind of got me back to going, OK, now I know this. It's really special.

And so, I need to tell these kids because a lot of them don't know. So, I tell them, this is special. You know, you're special.

Your language is special.

Ranger Lizzie: Absolutely. I really like the way that you're just cultivating a culture of pride, kind of looking at that future generation.

We talked about some of the concerns, and then you also say they're giving you hope. In what ways do they give you hope?

Leona: I had talked about the hope and these kids, like I had said, they grow up here and they're not really learning their language or part of their cultures, but they are really good. And I'm not in this group, but they are very good artists.

I said, I really like that we have an art program at our school because these kids can draw really well. And what they do is, even though they might not participate in cultural events, they do wear their regalia, and they notice their regalia. You know, like, what am I wearing? What patterns do I have? You know, what are the different, the pottery? You know, what designs are in the pottery? And they notice that.

And so, when they're drawing, then they use some of those things, their outfits, their jewelry. They use some of those shapes and colors in the different art that they produce. And so, my hope is that they go, okay, this is what's specific to me and my people, and they use it in their art.

And I'm hoping, really, really hoping that they go, oh, I want to learn more about that. And I want to learn more about maybe my traditions. Why do we have these different designs on like the wedding baskets? And there's stories behind all that.

So, art has a big thing to do with it, because that's where they seem to connect a little bit.

Ranger Lizzie: Yeah, that's fantastic. And just kind of seeing them through that process. And, you know, we're here at Grand Canyon and you work at the school, and I wanted to talk to you a little bit also about your relationship with this park and this place, you know, bigger than the park as well. So, can you tell me a little bit about, yeah, your relationship with Grand Canyon growing up and now?

Leona: Um, so Grand Canyon is our reservation if you look that way to the east a little bit across the canyon, that's where the Navajo reservation is.

And so, I live about 30 minutes from here. It's where I grew up in Cameron. It's a very, if you blinked, you missed it.

It's very small. And that's where I grew up. So, we are close to the canyon.

And so, every time that we come to the canyon, there was always something that we needed. And it was never about, oh, let's go look at the canyon for its beauty, right? When we already, it's like, yeah, it is beautiful. However, it kind of comes back to Mother Earth, like Mother Earth is what gives us the things that we need.

So, my relationship with the Grand Canyon, when I think about it, when we come here, we came as a family. So that tie is really strong. So, when I think of Grand Canyon, I think home and family, because that's my connection. That's my, that's what we did when we came up here.

Ranger Lizzie: Thank you for sharing.

Leona: You're welcome.

Ranger Lizzie: So, we're kind of coming to the end of our program here. Just as a final question, is there anything that you want our audience tonight to take away from our conversation here?

Leona: Just the awareness of the different types of people. You know, just the, I guess it's, I'm not really sure about, you know, like you guys are from different countries. Like what, what is it that are, that you want to know? Is there anything that you would like to know about this area that you had not known before? And I'm glad that you have these programs so people can say, oh yeah, she was from, you know, the Diné Nation and she's helping her kids, you know, the little kids. And just knowing more about the past, I guess, is what it would be.

Ranger Lizzie: Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you everyone for coming out and listening. Enjoy the sunset.

Leona: Thank you. Thanks.

Ranger Jonah: Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy.

A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal lived experiences of tribal members and do not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the national park. To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices, visit www.nps.gov/grca.

Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon. These being the Havasupai Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.

Leona Begishie tells about her impactful experiences working at the Grand Canyon School as the Native American Aide, her relationship with her Diné culture, and how the Grand Canyon means “family” to her. Leona supported the Native American students by bringing cultural awareness to the teachers and staff.

Tags: grand canyon speaks, diné , navajo, school , education, students, arizona , audio podcast, podcast

Episode 13

Dan Pawlak Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Season 2 Episode 13 - Dan Pawlak Speaks Transcript

Daniel Pawlak: One of the biggest things that needs to happen is a desire from the public to say, "hey, is this happening at the National Park Service site? Are you working with tribal communities? What's your relationship like to the people who call this land home?

And what do you do about it?" So, taking this message and applying it to other parks or monuments, historic sites, battlefields even, that's something we need to see from the public in order to get that inspiration.

Ranger Mark: Welcome back to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Ranger Mark.

Ranger Eliana: And this is Ranger Eliana.

Ranger Mark: In this episode, Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps interns Lakin and Meranden sat down with Dan Pawlak, a ranger here at Grand Canyon National Park and the coordinator of the Cultural Demonstration Program.

Ranger Eliana: Dan talks about his experience at Grand Canyon and what's led him from teething to working with the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon.

Ranger Mark: He also shares his stories and relationships he has built with demonstrators over the years and where he hopes to see this program go in the future.

Ranger Eliana: Take a listen to Dan's journey and enjoy.

Dan Pawlak: Hello, everyone. My name is Dan Pawlak, and I am the Cultural Demonstration Program Manager for Grand Canyon National Park. It is my job to work with the 11 associated tribes to bring them out to the park and provide a place to share their stories, their culture, and their experiences in their own words through this program that is now 11 years old.

Dan Pawlak: I also would like to share that I'm from Minnesota, and I do not have a relation to any of the tribes here that call the canyon home. So, this podcast focuses on the tribes, but I know it's a special one this evening since I run the program, but I'm not a tribal member associated with Grand Canyon, so I want to make that also clear. My history with the National Park Service, I just celebrated 10 years with the agency overall in April, which is really fun, and I have worked from Alaska with the U.S. government over to Kentucky, primarily in caves, and then also here as a seasonal at Grand Canyon in 2016-17 and this job since 2021 that I'm now in.

Meranden: Nice. So, you said 10 years, but how long have you been the Cultural Demonstration Manager for? Dan Pawlak: I have been managing this program specifically since August of 2021, so we're looking almost at four years this August. So we've got three months to go on that, and then it'll be four solid years, basically August 1st when I got hired and moved here back to Grand Canyon.

Lakin: So how did you go from being underground and in the caves to now working with the tribes?

Dan Pawlak: Yeah, so it's interesting. I mean, my background is geology, and I studied paleoclimatology in college, so it's an emphasis looking at past climates. So I got a Bachelor's of Science in geology focusing on past climates, which allowed me to really work in caves with the government, and I started giving cave tours.

Dan Pawlak: At one point in my life, I totaled all my hours and all my time underground, and it was over a year of my life that I totaled up at one time. The amount of hours I'd spent in total darkness, probably a couple days worth, and that was like eight years ago when I did that. So it's even more now since I worked in more caves, but how do you go from underground, like caving, to back up to where vitamin D exists?

Dan Pawlak: So I worked at Oregon Caves for about three seasons, and I needed a change of pace, and so I applied for a job at Grand Canyon to work this cultural demonstration program, or not to work the demonstration program, but to work here in this office, and I worked it for two seasons, and I was introduced to the demonstration program. But then I became permanent at Carlsbad, so I went back underground for almost four years there, and in that time frame, I built a program that is still sponsored by the National Park Service and has been taken over by the National Cave and Karst Research Institute called Cave Week, which is actually coming up here first full week of August. Celebrate your caves all across the United States.

Dan Pawlak: Hashtag Cave Week. So that building a program really set me up for applying for this job here, and I was familiar with this program because I helped to work it as a seasonal employee. I didn't run it, but I helped to get to know all the demonstrators, set up their tables, get to know them, and build this partnership with them as well, and that stuck with me, so much so that I have an emblem that I carry around that I had a demonstrator create in 2017.

Dan Pawlak: And so, this has stuck with me since that time frame, and that program planning, the knowing of the demonstrators from a seasonal perspective helped me build my resume to a point where I was able to apply for this job in 2020 and then get it in 2021. So that was a big moment that I was able to come back to this location and now run a program that I was involved with and got to see my coworkers at the time run. All the right things happen at the right time, and I made the opportunity happen for myself, but I didn't know I was going to run this program.

Meranden: Nice. That's really cool. Starting as a seasonal, seeing it progress and get bigger, and now you're the manager of it. That's really cool. And I'm pretty sure this didn't start with just you, but how did the Cultural Demonstration Program start?

Dan Pawlak: So the Cultural Demonstration Program celebrated 11 years, and that was this weekend. That was Memorial Day weekend this year. We celebrated 11 years of this, and it came from a desire of the Intertribal Working Group.

Dan Pawlak: Now, this is a group of individuals who represent their tribal communities. They are of the 11 associated tribes of Grand Canyon. So that organization is now 12 years old, and it's a group of people that advise the park and tell us what they would like to see happen inside the park, and we are able to make it happen as of National Park.

Dan Pawlak: And that's because in order to make this in 1919 a National Park, we kicked everybody out. We kicked out famously the Havasupai people from Havasupai Gardens, and in 1919 they were forcibly removed from their home. Then later in the 1920s, the last person living there was forcibly removed, like really forcibly removed, and he cried all the way up to the canyon, and he died a year later of a broken heart being removed from his home.

Dan Pawlak: So, this park has had a tenuous history with the people who call it home, and it took about 95 years for us to get to a point where we are listening to the community and hearing what they want and welcoming them home. And that's also not just from the group, but that's also because there are coworkers in this park who have been here for decades and worked on just having conversations with people and building those relationships since the 90s and 80s to get to the point where we formed this intertribal working group that says, hey, we would like to see people come into the park and demonstrate our cultures, in our own words, to the public. And then in 2014, this cultural demonstration program was created, and it started up at the parking lot just behind us basically in front of our office over here. So that was four demonstrators in 2014, and it has grown ever since, and now we have over 200 individuals in just 11 years to get to where we are now.

Lakin: Thank you for sharing that. And throughout those 11 years, can you tell us a bit more about who kind of managed the program and how you got to learn from them and how they served members of the 11 Tribes of the Canyon?

Dan Pawlak: Yeah, so there have been a few iterations of this position at the park. Even in 11 years, I'm like number four in line because as park rangers, we like to move around a lot. In order to go up in our career, move up the ladder a little bit, we have to move across country and take different positions at different parks, and that adds to the mystique of park rangers working everywhere, and we just love to roam and all that type of stuff.

Dan Pawlak: In 2014, I do not remember the individual's name who started that year, and I think there was another person in 2015. The person I do remember is Christy Negley, and she is at Big Bend in Texas now. I got to watch Christy for two years build this program from scratch in a way, which was really cool.

Dan Pawlak: I had no idea what was going on here, the impact that this place was going to have on the Tribal members and myself, but watching Christy navigate waters that she'd never been in before and do it humbly was huge because she didn't have a real direction. She was told to build this program, make it sustainable, and it had been funded in 2015 by Grand Canyon Conservancy, so we're getting the money in order to increase the activity of this program every single year. So I watched her go to the communities on her weekends where she got paid to go down to Flagstaff, go to the Museum of Northern Arizona when she should be having her time off, and she just walked around the booths talking to everybody and building those friendships of people that are already in the program, like Jimmy [Yawakia] and Duran [Gasper], who had been in the program in 2016 from Zuni.

Dan Pawlak: They're at these booths at the Museum of Northern Arizona for the Zuni show, and so Christy goes up to them, builds a relationship, and then they start recommending people at that show for Christy to go to and go up to those booths and recruit new individuals. And so I used that in the playbook after 2020, when we started this whole thing back up after COVID, to go down to these shows and continue that relationship with not only seeing everybody who's been in the program, but continue to build new relationships and try to identify off the list of people, this is a person we want from Yavapai Apache to see if they'll join the program, from Hualapai, from Havasupai, from San Juan Southern Paiute, and making that extra effort to go out to their communities.

Dan Pawlak: Whereas the National Park Service, we are really good about asking people to come to us, but we're not the best about going out onto their lands and into their places and talking to them. So this is an aspect of us trying to go out and continue that outreach and make us visible for everyone to see, and that has been a critical way of building this program.

Dan Pawlak: And then Christy did such a good job that it's all word of mouth now. There's a huge portion that's word of mouth. The whole, I would say, 50% of the demonstration list is word of mouth of people in their communities telling others that this is going so well over here, you should give this a shot too.

Dan Pawlak: And it's just kind of spread like wildfire a little bit in some of these areas. So watching Christy build these relationships, take the time outside of her weekends, when she should be just relaxing, to see that, it was very impactful. But then she also took the time down at the Watchtower, where, I'm going to let you know, this is a collateral duty of mine, so it's not my direct job that I should be doing on paper.

Dan Pawlak: Theoretically, this should be about 10% of my job. It's 90% of my job to run this whole program. So, to watch Christy spend the amount of time she did down at the Watchtower and just talk to people when they're here and acknowledge people as individuals and as humans, that's the biggest part.

Dan Pawlak: And that's what we still try to emulate this very day when we have demonstrators from all backgrounds coming here. So those are lessons that I took from Christy at that time frame and then applied them here. And in the interim, when Christy left, my friend Grace, who's in the village, she ran the program as much as she could during very hard times during COVID.

Dan Pawlak: And she expanded the program to actually have online series and go live like over Facebook. And so there's a whole archive of Behind the Arts. If you want to check that out online, you can see interviews with tribal members and they're displaying what they do from inside their own house via, or they had to go to someone else's house who has a webcam that has actually good internet.

Dan Pawlak: So, the program has persisted through very difficult times and just seeing how adaptive my coworkers have been, that's what I like to do with my job now. And that's the lessons that I've taken into this position.

Meranden: Nice. Yeah, that's a long history I can see. And I can see that there's a lot of connection to this position you have. You did mention that you had caving, and we hear it a lot in the office that you like talking about caving. But I did want to ask, although you have that big love for caving, what made you choose this position?

Dan Pawlak: I chose this position because it was the right time. It was my time to leave Carlsbad. I had plateaued in my position there as a GS-5 and I just needed out.

Dan Pawlak: It was a park that I needed to leave from and start a new chapter somewhere else. And so when this job opened up on USAJOBS, by the way, if you're ever looking to apply for the National Park Service jobs, you're going to go on USAJOBS.gov. You're not going to apply off a billboard or anything like that. You're going to go through a difficult process and try to identify those positions on USAJOBS.gov. I had the searches going. I saw the job pop up. And I saw that Brian, our supervisor now, was still the same supervisor. I kept up over the years with him as well.

Dan Pawlak: And seeing that I was ready for something else was huge. And I thought to myself, you know, I'm familiar with this program. I saw how it was done. I got a lot of influence from it. And I think I can do this. I think I can do this overall.

Dan Pawlak: So, I applied. And one of the big things that kind of nagged me internally to apply is literally a symbol on my ring finger here that I've been carrying around. Duane Tawahongva is a silversmith from Hopi.

Dan Pawlak: And as a seasonal in 2017, I asked him to create a custom piece. And what this is, and I also now have it as a pin above my nameplate here. And what it is, it's an arrowhead based off the tie tack for the National Park Service.

Dan Pawlak: And so, I gave him that tie tack. I'm like, hey, build me this shape out of silver. And then the two pieces that are connecting, or not connecting, but are intertwined in the middle like this is the Hopi symbol for friendship.

Dan Pawlak: So, when I was a seasonal, I saw that the government and the tribes were able to work together even though they had such a tumultuous history. And that inspired me to then make this. And it affected how I then have done my entire career after that in 2017.

Dan Pawlak: So, everything kind of came together and it inspired me to then apply for this job and be the best candidate possible and put my resume together as best as I could and showcase that I was ready for this job. And then I thankfully got it. It was a bit scary, honestly, because during the process of hiring, the HR person in the regional office quit.

Dan Pawlak: So, you apply on USAJOBS, it goes through an algorithm that says like, oh, you're qualified. And then it goes to another person who looks at like, oh, you actually are qualified. That person quit.

Dan Pawlak: So, there was a gap in the whole process for over a month where there wasn't a person processing the resumes on this certification. And so, I was wigging out at Carlsbad, just going nuts of like, when are we going to hear? When are we going to hear?

Dan Pawlak: And I hopefully did not professionally nag my boss too much about trying to get updates about this job. But, yeah, that's what led up to getting this position.

Lakin: Yeah, now we're here with the sunset. And it's cool that like Meranden and I got to meet you and work with you and now you're our supervisor. And you did mention that you've built a friendship with a demonstrator. And we'd like to know more about like the relationships that you've built with other demonstrators throughout the years and just how that has impacted you.

Dan Pawlak: It's impacted me in great ways. I get to go in town now. And actually, Darrence Chimerica, who is here for representing his community Hopi as a kachina carver, he talked to me about my dad today because he met my dad last year.

Dan Pawlak: When my parents visited, I went to the bank with my dad down in Flagstaff, and Darence was behind us in line. And my dad and him talked a little bit, and we just kind of caught up and just had fun while waiting 10 people deep at Wells Fargo. But that shows you that like knowing Darrence and just talking to him and seeing him as a friend, as a human, it made an impact in such a way that he remembers my dad that lives in Minnesota near the Canadian border.

Dan Pawlak: And that was 20 minutes. And that sticks out to him to remember my family. So that's a big moment right there.

Dan Pawlak: Another big moment is that Richard Graymountain from San Juan Southern Paiute paid me a compliment last year, which I still think about quite often, but had to work to get to that point. And I'm going to give you the back story on this, where we had not had a person from San Juan Southern Paiute in the program for nine years. And it's the goal of this program to represent every community as equally as possible.

Dan Pawlak: And so, for that long, we did not have anybody from San Juan Southern Paiute. And so, I started communicating with Richard, who was on the tribal government at the time, like, hey. And he's also an intertribal working group member too.

Dan Pawlak: So, I go to meetings, and I see this guy a lot down in Flagstaff. And I'm like, Richard, would you like to put this out to folks in your community to say, hey, there's this opportunity to come up to Grand Canyon to demonstrate your culture up here? And the way I described it to him wasn't good at all.

Dan Pawlak: And I told him the process of how we get people selected for the calendar up here. And he goes, it seems like there's a bias in the program, and this is not for San Juan Southern Paiute. And I read that over an email, and my heart sunk.

Dan Pawlak: And it sat with me for months. And eventually, I was able to talk to Richard and get him to come out as a demonstrator, and he saw what the program was all about. So, this was his test to see what this program was and to see if it was right for his community.

Dan Pawlak: And after that three-day demonstration, he really enjoyed himself up here, and he saw the people that are in this office that are at the park and that want to make a difference, but we still have a lot to learn. So, it changed how I book people for the program to be as fair as possible, to be as equitable as possible. And that compliment was during an interview just like this of Grand Canyon Speaks a year ago in July.

Dan Pawlak: And it was to commemorate 10 years of the program with Richard Graymountain, Octavius Seowtewa from Zuni, and then also Mae Franklin from Navajo, Diné communities. And they're some of the original people in the Intertribal Working Group that helped to get this off the ground. So, during that, Richard openly acknowledged, and I was standing in the back right there, Richard goes, I had an argument with that man.

Dan Pawlak: And he just points at me, everyone looks, and it's like, yeah, this is all on me right now. And it's like, oh, here we go again, Richard. This is it.

Dan Pawlak: And so, he told me, I had an argument with that man about it being unfair to our community that we're not represented and it's not a good way for us to be represented in this community. But then he said, I now respect him as my brother. And that was huge.

Dan Pawlak: That was absolutely huge. So those are some of the impacts that have stayed with me for a long time with this program. And whenever I get to go to shows outside of the park, or even when people come here, it's always just great to see them and to laugh.

Dan Pawlak: And you get a big hug from everyone. And we're not seen as park rangers first. We're seen as people first. And that's one of the best parts, because we see them as people too, as humans, that need to have their voice shared more so in this world. And we're able to find space to facilitate that for them.

Meranden: Nice. Yeah, and we do see that a lot in the office of like, there's people that you can call, and you make jokes with them right away. Or sometimes we call them and they're like, stand there. So those relationships have gotten super strong, and we can see it just from the sidelines. And like you mentioned, this program has been going on for 11 years now. And we built it to where we have really strong connections with the tribes.

Meranden: And we try to stress and embrace the equity for everybody. I'm curious, is Grand Canyon one of the main ones that are doing this kind of program? And have you collabed with any other agencies over the years?

Dan Pawlak: Grand Canyon is not alone. It's not as common across the park service as we would like to see programs like this. But there are parks that are trying and there are parks that have been successful as well.

Dan Pawlak: There are many iterations across the park service of examples of programs like this, providing space for individuals. Tetons has had a program that's going on almost 40 years of a demonstration program. And they're kind of in the process of revamping that program and really bringing it back to its educational roots.

Dan Pawlak: Glacier National Park has their Native America Speaks program. That has been running for over 40 years. And they invite tribal members from the local community to come out.

Dan Pawlak: Oh my gosh. Probably the majority of the summer to give presentations in the place of a ranger. So, we kind of borrowed Grand Canyon Speaks from Native America Speaks up at Glacier. Ha ha. A little bit of inspiration there. Yosemite is working on building their program.

Dan Pawlak: The Flagstaff Monuments, we've been working with them very closely, sharing our databases, sharing our documents, and giving them ideas on how to build their programs. That's been going on. Yellowstone has been revamping their program.

Dan Pawlak: They have a dedicated building now inside their park that's run by their nonprofit, Yellowstone Forever, in order to operate a culture demonstration program. And it's actually interesting that the nonprofit there runs the program and Yellowstone is just a facilitator of it, basically. Whereas here, National Park Service runs the program, and the nonprofit funds the program.

Dan Pawlak: So, this is a group, an organization, that I've actually started by myself talking to Tetons and Glacier. And we decided that we have enough conversations that it seems other parks want to be in on this. So, we now have a national level meeting a few times a year to discuss how we interpret indigenous history from not only the interpretation side, the education side, of the National Park Service, but also get into tribal consultation as well.

Dan Pawlak: So, everybody from the regional level of the National Park Service, they work on this. The parks themselves work on this. We've had seasonals in these conversations that are directly working with these programs, like how I did when I was here.

Dan Pawlak: And so, this effect is going across the NPS. But we've also talked to Bureau of Land Management to help set up a demonstration program outside of Las Vegas. And so, it's not just limited to Grand Canyon.

Dan Pawlak: And it's because of what we do here that other parks are calling us. I mean, I got an email, I think in my inbox, I got to respond to from another park right now, and they're looking for agreements on how they can properly navigate the legal waters with cultural demonstrators to make sure that everything is fair and equitable and they can be treated appropriately. So, this office has consulted a lot in order to make it happen across the country.

Dan Pawlak: I've talked to people on the East Coast in order to start stuff up there. So, it's a successful program, and it's kind of an honor to be one of the people that is called in the National Park Service and be able to facilitate those conversations for everybody.

Lakin: So that's good to know that the impact of the demonstration program has been vast and also that influence has been borrowed from other programs, from other parks as well. And we'd like to move to the next question. And this question is, where else within the Grand Canyon National Park would you like to see the cultural demonstration occur?

Dan Pawlak: Where would I like to see it occur? We were just kind of talking about this in the office earlier. We've had demonstrations in the village during the wintertime where the population is at more so, and we can get more visibility there.

Dan Pawlak: So that's checked off. North Rim is very kind to host demonstrations up there four times a year this year, once a month in June, July, August, and September. So, we've got another district there that's actually been going.

Dan Pawlak: This is going into our almost third year, I think, up there, which is beautiful. The only other district that we have yet to check off is the bottom of the canyon. We want to go into the canyon, either like Havasupai Gardens or down at Phantom.

Dan Pawlak: And that would be amazing to do that because we have demonstrators who talk about the canyon who have been at the bottom of the canyon as well. Actually, I think there's a gentleman from Hopi, Cory. He's going down on the river right now in the canyon.

Dan Pawlak: He may have passed Desert View today and waved at us when he went by. And if we are able to go down there, I think that would be absolutely amazing because the demonstrations weren't demonstrations 100 years ago. It was life. Dan Pawlak: They weren't demonstrations 200 years ago. It was life of the people living inside the canyon since time immemorial. Hopi came from the canyon. Zuni came from the canyon. And so, to be able to then connect visitors with a tribal member that is demonstrating their culture inside the canyon, like, yeah, just right up here. This is where we came from.

Dan Pawlak: That's an impact that I think would be just amazing. Not only from a park service side, a visitor side, but from a tribal member side because they are so proud to be here and to be the ones to represent their communities. And they get that opportunity to go down when they never thought they might be able to.

Dan Pawlak: That's my ultimate goal. If we can go out to Tuweep for some reason, I will find a reason for it. Way on the western side of the canyon, that would be a really specific reason to go out there. But I would absolutely love to get out to that point too. But into the canyon first.

Meranden: Yeah, that would be really cool. Imagine the supplies that they would have to take down there.

Dan Pawlak: Oh, yeah. We would have to either fly it in, their supplies, or we would have to use the mules to go down. So that's why I'm thinking, like, kachina carvers to go down into the canyon because they can bring cottonwood root that is sized out and they can whittle and also then file down and make kachinas and use the pigments and all sorts of stuff.

Meranden: So, like we mentioned in the beginning, this is kind of the closing of our culture demonstration celebration for the weekend. We had it for yesterday and today, celebrating what we had. So, we had about 12 demonstrators that were set up outside, just outside the tower. Meranden: And we had two presentations. There was one by Ann Marie who talked about her Diné culture. And then we also had Nala Nelson, who was a young girl who sang different songs from also her Diné culture, and they were both from Kayenta.

Meranden: It was a really successful event, and it was really nice for us to, you know, be part of the planning process and see it come alive. But last year, you know, you celebrated 10 years of the culture demonstration program with a celebration similar to this year's. Do you see this kind of event continuing and being annually?

Dan Pawlak: Yes, I definitely do. And I think it's wanted as well. Some of the feedback that we got from these last two days, it's just been incredible.

Dan Pawlak: Karen Abeita paid us many compliments over two days, and she was so happy to see this type of celebration at the canyon. And she's been in the demonstration program since 2016 but hasn't been here since before 2020. So, she had this six-year gap of not knowing what the status of the program is and then to come back and be a part of this celebration, and she was overjoyed.

Dan Pawlak: And so, from a tribal member standpoint, it needs to happen. From a National Park's standpoint, it needs to happen. From the [Grand Canyon] Conservancy side, it needs to happen as well because it's too successful.

Dan Pawlak: And if we don't celebrate the wins, then what are we celebrating? And the win is having a fruitful connection with our cultural demonstrators, with our tribal members. That's the biggest thing right there, and it shows in how we take care of them.

Dan Pawlak: So, I want to see this into the future, and it's also blossomed into other celebrations that happen as well. So, this was the first time last year that we had a big celebration like this. And then in October, my coworker, Kelli, in the back there, she did an Indigenous Peoples' Day celebration, and that was amazing.

Dan Pawlak: The whole weekend was performances and also then demonstrators and PhD presenters coming in from their indigenous communities. And then also Meranden and Lakin in November here took the reins and did more celebrations for Native American Heritage Month. So, this type of stuff, it's not stopping.

Dan Pawlak: We're going to just keep going, and we're going to try and do it better and better every single year and make it more open and have greater perspective on it from greater communities, take the advice of how we should do things and adapt it and try it to see if it really will work for the future. So yeah, I totally see this continuing into the future.

Lakin: Yeah, and it's a good thing that everyone comes out to support these types of events, whether it's the staff or its visitors, getting to know more about the cultures of the canyon and the cultures of the Four Corners region, and that helps understand how to better respect the landscape and also the people themselves. And then you did mention that we did have Indigenous People's Day celebration with Kelli. And it was funny because me and Meranden had a speaks panel discussion, and we sat and talked with those scholars, and we were kind of thrown – not thrown into it, but it was like a huge task to take on, and we handled it pretty well. So it was pretty fun.

Dan Pawlak: You did great, especially for it being your first official Park Service program to do an interview like this with Indigenous scholars. Yeah, that was a big deal. Yeah, you guys crushed it. You did great.

Lakin: Yeah, thank you. Before we get to the closing, I want to shout out Bagel, the cat back there. That's Dan's cat back there.

Lakin: He was taking some sunset photos earlier. I just want to shout him out. And we like to throw in a fun question every now and then. And the fun question for Dan is, what are some of your funniest moments with demonstrators?

Dan Pawlak: Oh, I think one of the top ones that you're going to laugh at, Lakin, is when we had royalty out here last fall. We had Zuni royalty out here, and inside the watchtower, they decided to dance. And they wanted us to join in as National Park Service and dance in the watchtower.

Dan Pawlak: So, the royalty was mostly made up of women, and they're doing a specific movement that is only meant for women. I didn't know that. And so here I am dancing next to royalty, and I'm doing all the female movements when I should be doing the male movements in this dance.

Dan Pawlak: And they tried to get a hold of me to stop me and change it up. Nope, they were just like, let him go. They couldn't get me because I was too involved. And they're just like, let him do his thing. It's all good. So, I think that's one of the top moments, I would say, right there.

Dan Pawlak: And I think just the funny moments, they just happen. And it's just in the conversations that we have. So, I can't remember all those moments, but it's fun to know that they're there in the history. And you can just think about it and laugh, just knowing that good people come here all the time. And you just have those moments to look forward to into the future. But yeah, totally me doing all the female movements in a Zuni dance. Yeah, that's very funny.

Meranden: Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, I'm glad that you can have those kinds of memories and just laugh on it randomly and think of it. So, we are ending with this last question that we would like to pose to you. What additions would you like to see in the culture demonstration program? And what else would you like to see in the future?

Dan Pawlak: Some of the additions for the program, not only include getting greater representation from smaller communities, which is a very hard task, because we're also dealing with communities that are not very big at all. We're talking hundreds to maybe a couple thousand individuals, not communities that have 50,000, 100,000. So if we can get folks to come out and find the right people to come out and represent their communities, that's a big thing right there.

Dan Pawlak: And then not have only artists out here. So the demonstration program is built on art. That's the foundation overall. Dan Pawlak: But culture is not just art. It's everything. It's the language. It's the way people act. It's the way people have lived. It's also just communicating with one another.

Dan Pawlak: It's food. It's so much. And over the years, we've had food demonstrations.

Dan Pawlak: We've had people come out and just teach traditional ecological knowledge, TEK. But we need more of it.

Dan Pawlak: And that's also what's happening over... There's a little stone building poking out between the market and the trading post over there. And that is going to become the Intertribal Welcome Center, designed by the tribes for the tribes. So hopefully in like this year, it will be opened up for the public.

Dan Pawlak: You'll be able to go in and get more education on the communities out here. But there's an outdoor demonstration area that's also being worked on, where Zuni bread ovens are being installed by Zuni youth, like trail crew members from them. A traditional garden is going to be installed there.

Dan Pawlak: Hopefully like agave roasting pits will be in there as well. I would love to have pottery firing demonstrations out there. If we could have like working with hides, that would be awesome to have.

Dan Pawlak: I mean, anything you can think of that happens in a community that's appropriate to have here at Grand Canyon, I would love to see that. I would love to see that as part of the demonstration program because culture is not just art. But one of the biggest things that needs to happen is a desire from the public to say, hey, is this happening at the National Park Service site?

Dan Pawlak: Are you working with tribal communities? What's your relationship like to the people who call this land home? And what do you do about it? So, taking this message and applying it to other parks or monuments, historic sites, battlefields even, that's something we need to see from the public in order to get that inspiration. Because if there's not a draw, there's not as much of a push necessarily to do it. And that's the hard part.

Dan Pawlak: But what has come out of that push are other programs like this, Grand Canyon Speaks. This is now, we're recording Season 3 here. And we're releasing Season 2 right now. Dan Pawlak: But it's born of having conversations with demonstrators and learning about their lives and their inspirations and their culture. And then Kelli running the performances, presentations, and also outreach is born from all of this as well. So we're seeing these great things happen here by various people inside the park and positions are being created around it.

Dan Pawlak: But that's because we're seeing a desire from the public to say, hey, we want more of this. Not just the history that has been around for about 100 years. And so, as we go forward into the future, if you want to see more dances, you want to see more presentations, you want to see the Park Service going out into the communities, you want to see more demonstrators coming into these public lands, ask for it. And that's my greatest thing that I want to see in the future.

Lakin: Thank you. And with that being our last question, we like to open questions and feedback from the audience.

Dan Pawlak Oh, here we go, Mark.

Mark: So, speaking of funny interactions with tribal members and members of the tribal communities, I heard there's a trending TikTok right now of Ranger Dan Pawlak getting pranked. Would you like to defend yourself?

Dan Pawlak: I can't defend myself. It happened today. So Princess Maya, who was out here at Zuni Royalty last year, came out with her family this year, Keith Edaakie and Leanne Lee, and Maya did the two ending prayers for yesterday and today.

Dan Pawlak: And she came up to us saying that she wants to do a TikTok with us on her own personal account. So, this is not the National Park Service's TikTok, anything like that. This is her own personal account.

Dan Pawlak: And she got Kelli in on it as well. And she played her role very brilliantly and pranked me here. And so, it's a trend on TikTok where everybody goes through and says something and you then applaud after each person says their thing, right?

Dan Pawlak: So, then that happened five times, everyone got applauds, and I'm the last person in line. So, I then do the trend, and no one applauds. So, I'm left hanging, and I got punked by a nine-year-old.

Dan Pawlak: So, I'm like, what's going on here? No one's applauding. Oh, I get it. So yeah, that is going to exist out there in the world on Maya's TikTok channel. I don't know what it is, but you might see me at some point in the news that Park Ranger gets pranked on trending TikTok. Yeah, so that happened. No defense.

Lakin: Any other questions, Kelli?

Kelli: Dan, working here several years as a cultural demonstrator coordinator, how many purchases of artwork do you have from our tribal artists?

Dan Pawlak: There's a bus rolling through here and I am thrown under it. So, when you work with world class artists and it is your job to bring them out to your job, it's really hard to keep the wallet closed. Okay?

Dan Pawlak: I do have a number of paintings inside my house now. I have a number of prints as well. So, I got originals.

Dan Pawlak: I have prints. I have kachina doll carvings. I got a lot of pottery now.

Dan Pawlak: Fetish carvings as well. And so, my walls are filling up even in my apartment that I have here. So, I think I need to now switch to smaller things that maybe I can wear.

Dan Pawlak: So yeah, I do have a number of items that I have purchased. Some of it has overflowed to my desk so that it does not take up space on the walls in my house. So yeah, when people walk into my office, they know what space mine is and then when people come over to my house for parties and stuff, they kind of are a little jaw-dropped when they look at my walls. Yeah.

Lakin: That's funny because one of the gatherings we had at Dan's house, me and Meranden walked in and we were like, we can re-curate this wall space because we kind of did that for our November, one of our November events. We had a youth gallery down at the building over there and we had to set up artwork and we were like; we could do this with Dan's place.

Dan Pawlak: Yes. I have made a rule for myself as well that I don't purchase art or jewelry from shops. I only purchase it from the people that come to the demonstration program.So every single piece that I have has a story to it or some kind of memory tied to it as well. So, if I go down to Sedona, if I go down to Phoenix, if I go down to Flagstaff or walk through an art store or whatever, I'm going to look. I'm not going to buy because I know I can bring those folks out here and have a memory to share with it.

Dan Pawlak: So, it's kind of, it's fun to have all that tied there and to tie it in with their art gallery too. But yeah, you could curate a small exhibit with what I have.

Meranden: Okay. This is a little surprise for you, Dan. Me and Lakin made this and we just really want to thank you for being our supervisor like we mentioned in the beginning.

Meranden: Yeah, he's kind of been the main one who really took over and helped us out and showed us what to do and be a really good support system. Now he's taken over officially as our supervisor when we started this new role with Ancestral Land. So, Dan's been a really big part of our journey here and we're really thankful for his guidance and everything that he's done for us that we created something for him and it's the Best Supervisor Award. So, we're presenting that to you.

Dan Pawlak: Oh gosh. This means a lot. This is wonderful. Thank you very much. I figured out in my career a while back that I didn't necessarily want to be a supervisor but when our former supervisor Melissa left for a new job and Meranden and Lakin needed some direction in the office because they are so awesome and do such good work and are good people, I saw myself being able to supervise them. So, for you to give me this it means a lot. A whole lot.

Lakin: Thank you all for coming out here and listening to the program and listening to Dan's experience and just appreciating the landscape and our voices as well.

Ranger Jonah: Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal lived experiences of tribal members and does not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the National Park.

To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices visit www.nps.gov/grca. Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon. These being the Havasupai tribe, the Hualapai tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute tribe.

In this episode, Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps interns Lakin and Meranden sat down with Dan Pawlak, a ranger at Grand Canyon National Park and coordinator of the Cultural Demonstration program at the canyon. Dan shares his experience in this role and how he has created bonds and connections with demonstrators from the 11 tribes of the Grand Canyon. He also talks about his journey within the National Park Service, what led him to being a program coordinator and what his vision is for this program and ot

Tags: grand canyon speaks, nps indigenous, grand canyon, cultural demonstration, cultural demonstrations, program manager, arizona, tribal demonstration, meet the artist

Episode 14

Brooke Damon Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Brooke Damon Speaks

[Brooke Damon] Which was really cool and really exciting because I really love water. I want to work with water in the future and for my life. Because in the Navajo culture, water is life.

And just living in the Southwest, you know how important water is. And being able to maybe bridge those gaps between indigenous knowledge and then also western science. So, I was really excited for this opportunity to come up and kind of put my place into it.

[Lakin] Hello everyone, welcome back to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Lakin.

[Meranden] And this is Meranden.

[Lakin] Today's episode will be about Brooke Damon. She is Diné and shares what her experience was like as an intern with the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals with Northern Arizona University.

[Meranden] She describes the importance of having first voices and traditional ecological knowledge included in the environmental sciences field.

[Lakin] Throughout this journey, it also allowed her to connect a lot more with her Diné culture. And explains what it felt like to be a voice for indigenous people throughout this report.

[Meranden] Thank you for tuning in and here is Brooke Damon.

[Brooke Damon] ♪♪♪ (Introduces self in Navajo) Hi, my name is Brooke Damon. And I am of the Tangle People clan. I am born for the Clamp Tree people.

My maternal grandpa is of the Water Edge clan. And my paternal grandpa is of the Salt People clan.

[Ranger Dawn] Cool. Why don't you tell us what you're working on currently?

[Brooke Damon] Yeah, so I'm currently an intern through the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals through Northern Arizona University. And how that internship works, it's about a two-month internship program. They kind of allow you to pick a host site that you can apply to and then they'll do the rest of it.

Sending your application, resume, all of that good stuff. And I was really excited to see the Grand Canyon opportunity because it's with their Traditional Ecological Knowledge and First Voices program. And the project goal was to integrate indigenous knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge, which is just knowledge that indigenous people hold about their environment because they live in the environment, they see generations have seen the changes in the environment and a lot of their culture revolves around it.

So that's what the goal was to try to integrate that into the hydrology program, which was really cool and really exciting because I really love water. I want to work with water in the future and for my life. Because in the Navajo culture, water is life.

And just living in the Southwest, you know how important water is. And being able to maybe bridge those gaps between indigenous knowledge and then also Western science. So, I was really excited for this opportunity to come up and kind of put my place into it.

[Ranger Dawn] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, we were talking earlier, you're talking about like your background, like the degree you got.

So, like, how did you even get started? Where was the seed planted for this passion?

[Brooke Damon] So, as many people have their COVID stories, I graduated during COVID. I graduated in a car, very funnily decorated car by my mom. So, shout out to her for doing that.

But being that 17-year-old, I had no clue what I wanted to do in life. I wanted to be an engineer. I wanted to do all these crazy things that would maybe make me money.

Because that was like, I guess every teenager's dream is like, I want to make the most money I can. But at the time, I was like, I don't think engineering is for me. Like I like math, I like doing that stuff.

But I don't want problems to be given to me and for me to solve them. So, I was like, what else could I do? And then again, COVID was still going on.

I wasn't sure where I wanted to go to college. Still very undecided, crazy yet to make those decisions being so young. But like, I grew up in Flagstaff for most of my life.

But NAU, my mom, my grandparents graduated from there. So, I was like, maybe NAU might be for me. So, I looked into it.

I saw they had an environmental science program. And I was like, maybe I could do environmental science. I like being outside.

And it was a broad enough degree that you could go into specifics if you wanted to. But it just gives you that nice background if you wanted. But what really solidified that for me was my mother.

Because again, COVID, she is a dental hygienist, but she had to work as a public health nurse to check on patients when they tested positive. Because she worked in Tuba City, one of the bigger cities on the reservation. But a lot of people go to that hospital to get care and treatment.

And one of her patients came from a rural area. So, they didn't have water or electricity. And unfortunately, things didn't go the way it should have gone.

And maybe it would have been different if they had access to the water or to have running water, at least. So, I think that's what really was like, okay, I want to be someone who makes a difference in this kind of changing world we're in now. Because during COVID, the Navajo Nation was sent body bags instead of actual help.

And that was just like, why? Why does that always happen to indigenous people? Why are they always just pushed aside until the problem becomes too much, until it becomes this nationwide, like all eyes on it.

But the help they get is just not really help. It's just kind of just thrown at them to be like, okay, we did something. But it really doesn't do anything.

So that's what I really want to go back to my communities is kind of helping with water resources. Because I think a big problem that may be looming or may even is looming is water quantity and maybe even water quality with mining. Everything that the nation has gone through and kind of suffered. kind of those two different things you're kind of dealing with.

So yeah, that's where I really solidified me going into environmental science and putting myself out there to do these programs. For sure. Yeah.

[Ranger Dawn] You're working on a report right now. Did you want to talk about that a bit?

[Brooke Damon] Yeah. So again, like I said, it's really aimed at bringing in indigenous voices into Western science because, again, history of a part, the traditional voices have been, and people have been excluded from these spaces. And I'm really fortunate to be this kind of person that can be a safe space for other indigenous people to come and maybe share their stories, share their perspective on the natural resources, their importance of the Grand Canyon.

And that's what my report is really focused on, is what the Grand Canyon means to these indigenous people and just really highlighting that voice of theirs, making sure that they're being heard, but also trying to bridge that gap between Western science and indigenous folks. Because as for myself, I grew up in Flagstaff, so I feel quite like kind of out of my culture in a sense because I didn't grow up traditionally. My family is quite religious in the Christianity.

So even my family is not really traditional. So, I didn't have that background. And again, going to school in Flagstaff, you're really Western science.

Getting a degree in environmental science from an institution is Western science. And just having that disconnect is kind of scary at times because that's what I feel right now. It's just like, why am I the person to kind of speak for other indigenous people?

Why is that kind of put on me as a sole person? Because you almost feel like they see you as just this indigenous person. They're like, okay, let's go to her.

She can solve all our problems, but that's not really the case. And that shouldn't be the case because the conversation is much wider than that. It should involve so much more people.

And I think the park is doing an amazing job just taking that first step to kind of have this program, having me come in. And even though I do feel that discomfort, just allowing me to really take stride in the report, having me have the full leadership of it. I finally finished my first draft of it, and I sent it off, and I'm waiting for my comments to get back.

But just having that trust in me to be like, okay, we trust you with this. We know that you're going to do a good job on it has been really like, wow. It really hinders that like, okay, I'm in the right field.

I'm doing the right thing. I shouldn't feel this imposter system that I felt all through my college career because when I walked into class, I was the only indigenous person sometimes, which was scary and intimidating because you would have conversations about resources, and then you would want to ask, what about back home? How are we going to keep moving forward when we're leaving indigenous people behind in some cases?

On the Navajo reservations, I believe the number is still 30% of people don't have running water. And it's like, how do we, I guess, move forward? And making that leap into a sustainable future, but so many people still don't have the basic necessities, and that's something that I kind of think about a lot.

Yeah.

[Ranger Dawn] Yeah, a thousand percent. Yeah, we were talking about that like imposter syndrome of like, yeah, I feel like we had empathy for each other on that. You kind of talked about like bridging the gap between like Western science and indigenous knowledge, but also like older generations and younger generations.

Did you want to talk about that a bit?

[Brooke Damon] Yeah, so again, I grew up in Flagstaff, so a lot of times back home when you talk to leaders, the older generation, one of the biggest criticisms of the younger generation is that we don't know our language, that we don't know our traditional stories, and I guess I am a part of that problem because I can't speak my native tongue, but I can say some things. That's what I'm really trying to hope to do through this report is like reconnect with that and reconnect with my culture because through the report, I focus like a portion of like Navajo creation story, and during that, my partner, they live, their family still live the traditional way of life. They're sheep herders.

They live right on the canyon's edge almost, and I wrote some, I wrote my like little spiel about what the importance of the Grand Canyon is to like Diné people, and I gave it to him to be like, can you check with your grandma about this? Like did I spell this thing right? And like he showed it to them, and they were like, wow, like she got it right.

She spelled these things right, and I was really like, wow, okay, like I spelled these things right. Like I do know some part of my culture, and I think that's something I'm really excited about, like bridging that gap between the older and younger generation. It's just like a lot of times you do feel like the older generation can just get mad at you to be like, you don't know your language, you don't, you're so influenced by everything technology, you get the whole spiel from it, but just knowing that there's like making sure that that knowledge isn't being lost, making sure that that knowledge is stored somewhere, written, in case like older generations are maybe passing on, and just making sure that their stories that they want to tell are being told, and I think that's one way I really want to, one of the goals of the report I have is kind of having a ripple effect on like myself, because I do feel like I'm reconnecting with my culture through the report. Maybe like there's another Native girl or Native boy sitting in a class feeling the exact same things I'm feeling, and maybe if they hear what I'm saying, maybe if they're taking on these like TEK roles, that they do feel that sense of reconnection to their culture, they do feel that sense of self-rediscovery of themselves, and then also making sure that the older generation knows that we are trying, like I try to learn my tongue, my boyfriend, he knows how to talk Navajo, so I'm always asking him questions like, what is, how do you say that in Navajo? And like sometimes when I do say something, I say it a bit funny, and he'll kind of laugh, and I'll be like, I'm never speaking it again, just because you like say it funny, and you're like, oh man. But I think that's been a really cool thing, like stepping into these roles, even though there is that un-comfortability in yourself, you feel kind of, I guess, not in place at times, you do have those like rewarding feelings you get, like his grandma's like really strict Navajo, really, it's probably scary, she scares me.

But to have her to be like, wow, she got this right, she knows how to spell, it was like really rewarding, and really cool, even just to have that. And I'm excited to share that with like other, because the report also focuses on other tribes. So, I'm hoping that they have that same effect like, wow, she got that right, that's what we believe in, like that's what we were taught too.

So I'm really excited for that. And I hope that's something that this report does is bridge that gap.

[Ranger Dawn] Yeah, you talked about like the ripple effect. How do you want this report, like the ripple effect, to be on your community? How do you want it to affect your community and beyond?

[Brooke Damon] Yeah, I think, I guess a lot of times you can think of the ripple really small. You see just the little, I guess, wins I've had through the report. But on a bigger scale, like just knowing that I am a speaker for my community, knowing that I'm, again, trying to do what I'm doing.

It's hard at times, like getting a degree is hard. There's a lot of struggle in that. But also knowing that I am doing good for them, and that I am a voice for them.

I'm a voice for indigenous people. And just building that confidence in myself to be like, okay, I can stand in these spaces as an indigenous woman. And people are going to listen to me.

And they're going to take what I, hopefully they take what I say and resonate with it. So, I hope that's what happens in the community. And yeah, I really do hope it goes beyond just like the park.

And I hope it's something that does be shared with other community members. And they can add to it, even to the report, to look at it and be like, hey, this is what I heard. And kind of almost creating it as a shared space for them, that they can continue to share knowledge.

Maybe like just having those conversations. I'm hoping, I'm hopeful for it.

[Ranger Dawn] Yeah, totally. It's, I mean, water affects all of us. So, I definitely hope that you're, I have confidence that your report will extend beyond Grand Canyon.

You know?

[Brooke Damon] Yeah.

[Ranger Dawn] Yeah. What, you kind of, I guess like what do you want like listeners and our small audience here to like to take away? Like what's the one thing you want them to take away from our chat?

[Brooke Damon] Yeah. I think the biggest thing is like just listening to indigenous voices, allowing that space, allowing them to come into these spaces and share their experiences, share their knowledges and just being respectful to it. Because I think the Grand Canyon does a really good job of that.

Because just recently I was here at Desert View for their 10-year cultural demonstration celebration, which was really exciting to be a part of because I got to talk to different community members about their artwork, learn about what, what they do, why they do it and their excitement about it. And then this Southern Paiute people, they provided a dance, and they shared some of their traditional stories. And that was just so cool to be a part of.

It almost warms your heart in a sense to be like, wow, like we're being brought back. Cause I think one of the conversations I heard between like, like a tribal group programming that one of the tribal members, they didn't like the word, like, “we are still here”. Talking about indigenous people in the park.

They didn't like that phrasing. Like we shouldn't have to say like, we're still here. Like we've always been here, and we'll continue to be here.

And just knowing that and being respectful to it, like the water, they see it as a living being. They see it as it, as it having emotions, feelings, and it can offer happiness. It can offer calmness, but it can also offer like anger.

It can be angry at you. It can be upset. It can be injured.

It can be harmed. And I think that's something maybe we're not looking at in the bigger picture with the park's hydrology team. Like right now they're currently doing a dye trace study of the park.

So they're dumping dye into the sink holes and they're trying to see where the dye is popping up at springs, steeps, just to understand how the aquifer, what's the groundwater recharge is looking like. And so far, it hasn't gone what, like how they expected it to go, which is what science is a lot of times. Because again, you're, you're looking at like this big landscape.

You have the water traveling horizontally, but also vertically. But I guess one thing that we may have not considered is maybe the water's angry at us because tourists are not being respectful to it. We're using so much more water than we need to be doing.

And like traditional practices aren't not as happening as frequently as they maybe want to happen just because of park permitting, all these kinds of bureaucracies and like all these like governmental agencies like come stepping into these traditional homelands and like maybe disturbing it. So, I think that's what traditional and like listening to indigenous people, it just provides you with a different perspective on the environment and maybe like, Hey, maybe we should take that into account. Or maybe that's something we should look at.

Maybe we should look at tourism and the effects that it's having on the river. Cause a lot of the reports talk about like tribal river monitoring reports is because those happen annually. The tribes go down to the river on a river trip for about two weeks a week, just to visit sites that they deem as culturally important and sensitive to them and to monitor it, to make sure that nothing is going wrong with it.

But a lot of times they noted like vandalism, collection piles, like tourists just being disrespectful of it. And it's, it's hard because a lot of the times they don't feel like they have the right or they don't have the power to speak up to be like, maybe we should limit some tourism activity. Maybe we need to teach tourism boat trips about how to be respectful to the water, how to be respectful to these sites we have.

And again, going back to the ripple effect, maybe that's something this report can do is just shining that light on the voices of indigenous people, shining that light on their knowledge and giving them that power back to be like, hey, we took responsibility of protecting and we're stewards of this land. A lot of their creation stories, when they emerged into this world, their creator, they gave them the responsibility to care for the world. And in some cases, their creator told them, if you're not doing it responsibly, we're going to withhold things from you.

We're going to make it harder because that's what your responsibility is to do is to protect. And a lot of times they're not able to do that. But I think that's something I've seen really different because right now at the tribal programs, they have Kelkiyana Yazzie, Vincent Diaz who are tribal members in these kinds of leadership roles that are able to talk to other like the indigenous people and like me as wellbeing this kind of safe space.

Cause I think it's a lot easier for tribal members to talk to someone who looks like you, who had the same experiences as you, rather than like this non-indigenous person stepping into your space, trying to like almost grab and being like, I need that information. I want that information from you. And you kind of, they feel that kind of like, I don't want to give it to you.

Like, why should I? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

[Ranger Dawn] I have another question. What's your, I guess like own idea of like success, like for you, like moving forward and like after this report and like in your career, but also like in your culture and your personal goals and things you're just like, yeah, your idea of success?

[Brooke Damon] When I was in college, I had a lot of stress academic validation. So, I put a lot of my self-worth and self-being into getting good grades, trying to be this person that's top of the class. And that really took a toll on my mental health.

By the time I graduated, I was like so done with it. I was like, I just want to graduate. I, my, I know I'm not in a good mental space.

I'm not in a good head space. And that really took a perfect on my personal wellness and health as well. And, but throughout my undergrad, I had so many amazing experiences where people allowed me to come into these roles.

And even though, again, I feel uncomfortable with it at times kind of being the voice of indigenous people. And because throughout my undergrad, I had another internship with the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, and it was working with an environmental education center in Flagstaff called Willow Bend. And we kind of created a climate curriculum for them that involves TEK and indigenous knowledge into it.

And the first year, of course, when you're trying to build those connections, you're trying to build this sense of what are we going to do? How is this going to look? It's really slow going.

So that first year, it was just a lot of conversation, a lot of talk. So, we didn't really get anything done, but the second year, it was already like hot and rolling. We met with the people at Willow Bend.

We did our programming, we planned it and we basically created a new climate change curriculum for them. And that was really cool to kind of take over what information they already had, but include our own knowledge into it. Because me and the other intern were both Navajo.

So, we focused on the Navajo months because the naming of it really stems down to seasonality and what's happening in the environment. So like January, it means melting of snow. And something that we were trying to stress to the kids is that melting of snow doesn't happen in January anymore in Flagstaff.

It's happening. Our winters are becoming later in the seasons and they're almost becoming more intense in like shorter spurts than it used to be. And just highlighting those like changes that indigenous people have had for so long withstanding these generations, but it's changing so quickly now due to climate change.

And it was really cool because we presented at a local middle school in Flagstaff and there are so a couple of native kids in the class and just hearing their like eyes light up or widen when you talk Navajo to them, when you introduce yourself to them and them being like, doesn't the mountain mean like always with snow and just having that like, wow, bringing it to the younger generation is so cool.

And seeing how eager and so bright minded they are - is one of my successes that I've already experienced. And I think for my greater success is just continuing to do what I do because I know a lot of times I do feel like I'm out of place. I don't belong where I belong or maybe I'm not doing the right thing.

But as I shared throughout tonight, I've had so many like little rewarding tidbits throughout my career so far. And my career has just started since like May since I graduated. It's kind of weird to talk about, but like, I think it's just so cool just being a person that can step in these spaces, growing that confidence in myself and just being like, wow, okay, like I, I am maybe going to be a voice for my community and I can continue to do so by bridging these gaps I see between the younger and the older generation between indigenous knowledge and also Western science and just allowing myself to reconnect with my culture has been really rewarding.

And I think I see that as like my end goal is just continuing to do what I've done and what I've strived for so long now.

[Ranger Dawn] I think you're going to be an awesome voice for your community. I'm so excited to watch you grow. Yeah.

Well thank you so much for chatting with me. Yeah. Thanks, y'all.

[Ranger Jonah] Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal lived experiences of tribal members and does not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the national park.

To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices, visit www.nps.gov slash GRCA. Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon. These being the Havasupai tribe, the Hualapai tribe, the Navajo nation, the Hopi tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache nation, the Kaibab band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute tribe, the Moapa band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute tribe.

In this episode, Ranger Dawn spoke with Brooke Damon, who was an intern with the Institute for Tribal Enviromental Professionals. She shares what it was like working with Grand Canyon and emphasizing the importance of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and first voices through her work in environmental science.

Tags: grand canyon speaks, nps indigenous, grand canyon first voices, indigenous peoples, tek, traditional ecological knowledge, diné

Episode 15

Davis Coonsis Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Davis Coonsis Speaks

[Davis Coonsis] My father was a jeweler, so I always had the art. And then my sister, she would use ceramics and paint them. So that's how I was introduced into art. So art was always around me. To me, it just kind of came naturally.

[Meranden] Hello everyone, welcome to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Meranden.

[Ranger Grace] And this is Ranger Grace.

[Meranden] We are very excited to release this episode that features Davis Coonsis. He is a Zuni artist whose work consists of silversmithing, wood carving, stone carving, pottery, and carpentry.

[Ranger Grace] He was able to speak with Ranger Lizzie about how he has diversified his artistry, how he became a demonstrator at Desert View, and explains the significance of some of his pieces he displayed during his interview.

[Meranden] Thank you for tuning in to today's episode. We hope you have been able to explore the different episodes of Season 2.

[Ranger Grace] And here is Davis Coonsis.

[Davis Coonsis] My name is Davis Coonsis. I'm from Zuni, New Mexico. We come from, we're from Zuni.

We're Pueblo people. And this is one of, the Grand Canyon is part of our ancestral lands. But I'm a carver, I'm a wood carver.

And I also do jewelry, silversmithing, and stone carving also. And I also do carpentry, like building houses and stuff.

[Ranger Lizzie] Awesome. Davis, I thought I would just open up this program and kind of ask you, what is your connection with the Grand Canyon?

[Davis Coonsis] Our origin stories come from the Grand Canyon. It is our legend and, well, it's our story that is like, you know how the Christians have their Adam and Eve story. Well, this is where, almost like our origin story.

This is where our people came out from the Grand Canyon somewhere. And that's why there's a strong connection with, you know, anybody if you're like from Zuni or just Native Americans, because this is where our birthplace of our people was.

[Ranger Lizzie] Thanks for sharing. Can you tell me a little bit about your relationship with the demonstrator program here? How did you hear about it?

What made you want to join or be a part of it?

[Davis Coonsis] First time I heard about it, I think, was through my girlfriend, Noreen. She's been coming here to the Grand Canyon for quite a while now, because she's a potter. And, yeah, she knows that program.

So when I met her, she introduced me to this program, and we both have been coming since. It's been like two years since I came over here. So I'm really gratified that, you know, I've been invited to this program.

You know, it gives us exposure, and then, you know, it shows the people, like, the connections that we have to the Grand Canyon.

[Ranger Lizzie] Totally. So you've been a part of our demonstrator program now for about, you said, this is your third year now?

[Davis Coonsis] About second year.

[Ranger Lizzie] Second year, okay. How long have you been an artist?

[Davis Coonsis] I've been an artist, I don't know, I guess, ten years. But then I've kind of been an artist, like, all my life. You know, as a child, you know, you try to draw stuff and do stuff.

It just doesn't come out. Like, you don't become, I guess, serious about it until, like, maybe, like, until after you've had, like, you've done your college and other things, and maybe those things didn't work out, so you go back to your art, and that's where you find most enjoyment, you know, in doing your art. It's like, you know, people call it work, but, you know, you gotta, it's not really work, it's just art.

You enjoy doing what you do, you know.

[Ranger Lizzie] Yeah, and looking back at, you were saying, kind of your childhood, and you were always creating, what did that look like, kind of creating in your childhood?

[Davis Coonsis] I guess I would draw pictures sometimes, like, late at night, I guess, when, you know, when you have your weekend as a child, you know. You stay up late at night, I mean, sometimes, I don't know why, me and my brother would sometimes, like, be drawing, like, cartoons, like Smurfs or whatever. I don't know, because we're waiting, I guess, for Saturday morning when they used to show cartoons and stuff like that.

But I guess it kind of all started there, you know, just drawing little pictures and things. And then later on, you know, in life, you know, you have your art classes, which they give to you in school. So, you know, do your drawings and stuff like that.

But I didn't go to your regular, you know, like, regular high school, because I went to, like, a Christian high school, and if I went to the regular Zuni high school, I would have been taught, like, they have the Native American arts. But since I went to a Christian high school, I didn't really, wasn't really introduced into the Native arts and stuff like that. Mostly just contemporary art, you know.

But then after, I mean, during high school, I was, my father was a jeweler, so I was, always had the art. And then my sister was, she would use ceramics and paint them. So that's how I was introduced into art.

So art was always around me. To me, I just kind of, I guess, came naturally. And then I would help my father do jewelry.

At first, I would just help him buff, but buff and stuff. And then later on came, like, to where I actually tried the silver, tried the welding the silver, soldering the silver. And then from then on, I just started, you know, liking doing, starting doing woodwork.

While I was doing carving at the same time, too, the stone carving. It's kind of like, I guess everything was just kind of, like, there. So I just kind of, like, dabbing into it.

So that's what I was doing. And then finally, I think I was told to make a bench for some, some cultural event that was happening in Zuni. So, my family, actually.

And so I had to make a small bench. And I think that's where everything started as far as the woodwork. I made a small bench, and then it was just a plain bench.

But then later on, I went to make bigger benches. So I just made one. And then, to me, it just looked plain.

So that's when I just started, like, putting paint on the designs and stuff. And then, and then later on, the carving of the flowers came, came. And then, you know, designing of these, like, the borders.

And that's how it just became. So I guess it's, like, just a progress. Kind of, like, seeing other people's work also.

Like, with the woodworks. See what they've done. And, oh, I can do something a little bit different.

And that's how it just all began. And then, so now that I've grown older, I do, now I do jewelry, too. Like, I do the soldering and everything, actually.

[Ranger Lizzie] So you kind of have a return to jewelry then? Because I know you said you were doing that a little bit with your father.

[Davis Coonsis] Yeah, because it was kind of hard for me when I was just helping my dad. I wasn't, I guess didn't have the patience to do the solder. Because, you know, you have to be a steady hand.

And I guess kind of, like, scared to do it the first time. But eventually I got it. And I'm still learning.

But, you know, I got the basics down.

[Ranger Lizzie] Yeah, so it seems like you have, you know, when you're introducing yourself, you're doing carving, you're doing jewelry, you're doing pottery. You're having so many different art forms. How do you balance all of these different creative outlets and carpentry as well?

[Davis Coonsis] I guess I don't really try to pick any one medium as a favorite. You know, I just try to do whatever I feel like at the moment. And then just let it flow.

And then once you kind of get tired of it, you go on to another thing. Or you try different mediums or things. But balance, I don't know if I really have balance.

Because, you know, I just try to find the time to do it. That's what I do.

[Ranger Lizzie] Yeah, it's hard to find the time.

[Davis Coonsis] Yeah.

[Ranger Lizzie] Kind of coming back to this piece, I know you talked a little bit about how you were inspired by your sister's pottery. And we talked about that earlier. Can you just talk a little bit about the designs here that we're seeing?

[Davis Coonsis] Well, I was telling them that I was always wanting to do pottery. But I couldn't, so there was nobody to teach me. But I started doing the woodwork and then got an idea.

I said, well, what if I just put the pottery designs onto here? So that's how it kind of just all began. Everybody liked it.

I showed it to my family, and they liked it. I said, yeah, okay, well, that's when everything started. And some of the designs I get, too, from just, like, nature.

I guess you look around, because you would think, where did our people, you know, our ancestors, you know, where did they get their ideas? And, you know, they didn't have anything like what we have in our modern days. So I would think they probably would have looked at the sky, you know, see the cloud formations, you know, how they have, like, little wisps and swirls and stuff.

And then just probably how they got their ideas, I would think. Because sometimes I would look up in the sky, I would see, like, a little design or just, like, repetitive design and stuff. Like these designs, they're almost like sometimes when I look up in the sky, you can see, like, these designs, just a single one like that.

So that's where sometimes I get my inspirations from. But, like, these, like some of this, I think this rosette design came from the Spaniards, because the Spaniards had a, they had, like, they came with wooden boxes, and, you know, had art on them, and they had, like, a rosette on it. So I think that's where this rosette came from, for the potters, from the Spaniards.

And then these other designs are, like, the deer designs that comes from, like, I guess the potters, you know, their husbands would go out hunting, so they, you know, wanted to, they were building pots, you know, and they were waiting, and they wanted their men to be successful in their hunt. So they would be waiting, and they would paint these deer, almost sort of like a little prayer onto the bow to make them successful in their hunt. So that's why they painted deer on these.

And some of these, like, these designs, like, you know, represent water. I know I didn't say, like, clouds, but, you know, clouds bring rain. So here, you know, in the southwest, that's what the people, you know, always wanted, like, water or rain, so they would paint these little water designs on their pots.

So, you know, like a little prayer, I guess, on the bow. And some of these are, like, this would be, like, a star. This is something they see in the night.

Sometimes, you know, they would paint those stars up on the pots. So, you know, back in the day, you know, the stars helped the people travel to see where they're going. So at night, you know, they have a star to follow to bring them back home safely to where they live.

And I usually put a little turquoise in the middle that gives it, like, the heart of the whole object.

[Ranger Lizzie] That's cool.

[Ranger Lizzie] Thank you so much for sharing. Yeah, I think it's just amazing to see just how, like, rich these designs are and how connected they are also, like, to your history and to your, also just, like, to nature. It's so cool.

I do have, so, you know, as we were saying before, you have so many different mediums that you work in, and I'd love to share with you guys so you have an opportunity to see all of the different art forms that Davis is doing. I thought that we could talk a little bit about them and then pass them around.

[Davis Coonsis] All right.

[Ranger Lizzie] So I know we have some of your wood carvings. Can you tell us a little bit kind of about, I'll show them here, and then I'll also pass them around?

[Davis Coonsis] That one's Butterfly Maidens. You know, we have a little story about the Butterfly Maiden and, you know, how they, kind of like one of the gods in Zuni. So that kind of represents that kind of blessing and summertime and abundance.

[Ranger Lizzie] Yeah, and I know we talked a little bit about this one, and this was something that you were really proud of. Can you tell me a little bit just about, like, the process of creating?

[Davis Coonsis] Yeah, that's my latest one. It's a credenza. I made this credenza.

It was actually a custom order for a friend of ours, and she wanted it done. So that took quite a while because I think she took, like, two years because I was doing it off and on. But I finally got it done this past.

[Visitor] About a month ago?

[Davis Coonsis] Yeah, about a month ago.

[Visitor] Oh, wow. That's gorgeous.

[Davis Coonsis] Yeah.

[Visitor] That's amazing.

[Davis Coonsis] But that's, like, some of them are, like, I'm still learning. Everything's new to me. Like, the coffee table I've been making, I've made several of them already, but that credenza is something new to me.

So I'm just, like, barely learning how to do all this stuff.

[Ranger Lizzie] Yeah, I think that's something I've seen. Like, talking to you and a theme that I've seen is, like, your ability to pick up new things and learn and constantly learning throughout your life. And I feel like that's just so inspiring to me.

[Davis Coonsis] Yeah, because I usually don't have, like, somebody to teach me. So I just usually go, like, to YouTube and, you know, watch it right there. Yeah, that's how I learn all my stuff, like the woodwork, the joinery, and other stuff.

That's how I learn it. But it's working out, you know.

[Ranger Lizzie] So we have some examples of kind of different artwork as well. We have this really cute frog. Can you tell us a little bit more about this one, too?

[Davis Coonsis] Oh, yeah, this frog. That was—I started making those frogs when I met Noreen. We started—she started doing—when I started doing pottery when I met her.

So that's one of the things I always wanted to make since I already made stone carvings of frogs. I said, oh, let me try one frog out of clay. So I made one of those.

And this foot made the tongue long because, you know, how they snap flies. It's more like a comical look.

[Ranger Lizzie] We also have some examples of your jewelry.

[Davis Coonsis] Yeah.

[Ranger Lizzie] Can you tell us a little bit about the stones that you see here?

[Davis Coonsis] The stones here are mostly turquoise. I mostly—these hearts was my dad's designs. He used to do inlay jewelry.

So that's kind of like the—this design is from my dad. So I just kind of like continued doing the heart designs. And this one, I mostly like—when I do jewelry, I mostly just like to do stones, like wrap them in silver and stone, you know, because sometimes I just like the stone itself, whereas this is like inlay with other different stones.

It takes a little bit longer for the multicolored jewelry, but sometimes I just like doing the stones themselves. There's one big wood carving project that I was doing in Zuni, New Mexico for ZYEP, the Zuni Youth Enrichment Program, which is kind of still—I'm still kind of working on it. It's not finished yet, but it's probably seven feet tall, a cottonwood tree stump, which they cut to build a ZYEP building, and they asked me to, you know, carve something out of it.

So that's what I've been doing. And what I did was I put in our six-directional animals on it. I carved them into it.

So our six-directional animals in Zuni starts out north with a mountain lion or cougar and then go on to the west. This would be the bear, the black bear. And then the south would be the badger, and then the east would be the white wolf.

And then on the sky at the top would be the eagle, and then the bottom would be the mole. And all the directions have all colors to them, too. So the north would be yellow, the west would be blue, south would be red, east is white, and the top is many colors, all different multicolors, and the bottom is black.

[Ranger Lizzie] Wow.

[Davis Coonsis] So yeah, that's all the colors. So that's what I tried to do in that big carving that I made, the big tree stump carving I made. I tried to put all the animals on there.

But I got some part of it done, but I just need to do some details, but that would be in a further project that I would be able to do. But it's an ongoing project. I just try to be limitless, whatever I do.

Try not to be constricted to one thing. Because art in general, no matter what it is, if you can do it or there's a possibility, then I will try it.

[Ranger Lizzie] Is there anything that you are looking to try or that you want to try in the future?

[Davis Coonsis] Maybe some glass. Glass or something like that. I've seen them how they do it, and it's awesome.

[Ranger Lizzie] Wow.

[Davis Coonsis] Different kinds of glass things. I've seen some people where they make glass into crystals or something, like in a cube, but then the cube has little other cubes inside, like the reflecting something. That's a different thing, but then they blow glass to make little stuff like that.

[Ranger Lizzie] Yeah.

[Davis Coonsis] I've seen that one, too, is different. I'd like to try one of them, something like that.

[Ranger Lizzie] Wow. Yeah. Well, I think it'll be really cool to see you continue to just try out new things, and everything that you try and everything that we've shown is just so beautiful, so I'm excited to see that continue.

Yeah. Follow your career.

[Ranger Lizzie] Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

[Ranger Lizzie] I know that you just most recently picked up pottery, and we were able to show one of your pots, a picture of your pot. Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired you to pick up pottery? We were talking a little bit about that earlier.

[Davis Coonsis] I guess what inspired me was when I first saw my sister and the pottery she was making. I don't know, I guess the designs on them just kind of gravitated to me somehow, and I started liking it, and then I would go to old books and see the Zuni history and see the old potteries on them, and say, Wow, I like this one. I just started liking it, and I always wanted to take a class.

Like I was saying, in high school, everybody else went to Zuni. They had clay, a pottery class, but where I went, they didn't have a pottery class, so I was like, Oh, man. I missed all the art stuff that they used to do in Zuni.

But then after that, that's how I got into pottery, was just looking at the old pictures and just being inspired by it. Like I said, I didn't do pottery for a long time until I met Noreen, and that's when I learned to start making pottery, and I liked it. I liked what I did, and I still want to try some more stuff, and I make a big old pot.

That's one of my probably, I guess, I want to accomplish is a big pot.

[Ranger Lizzie] Yeah, and I know you and Noreen also make art together.

[Davis Coonsis] Yeah.

[Ranger Lizzie] Can you tell me a little bit more about that collaborative process?

[Davis Coonsis] Well, I seen she had done, I guess, collaborations with some other silversmiths, so when I met her, she had some of those jewelry stuff, and I looked at it and said, I can probably do that. So that's how we just kind of started out, you know, because she already had done it before, and then since I do jewelry, silver work, and that's just how we started. But I like doing it because, you know, it's really different.

Like the pottery designs are all, you know, cool and perfect, you know, it's all cool, and then you got the silver wrapped around, it's all shiny. I like doing that, yeah.

[Ranger Lizzie] Yeah, and definitely, you know, follow along with that journey because I'm excited to see what you make next. Yeah. Everything that you're doing, it's so cool to see so many processes at work at once.

[Davis Coonsis] Yeah.

[Ranger Lizzie] Yeah. Well, my final question for the night is just, what do you want people to take away from our conversation?

[Davis Coonsis] The Grand Canyon is very sacred to all the Native Americans and probably to everybody else, you know, because, you know, it is a special place, it's one of the wonders of the world, you know, and I guess respect it. But just hope everybody enjoys coming to the Grand Canyon. Enjoy your stay and be safe.

[Ranger Lizzie] Awesome. Well, we do have just a few minutes, I think, before sunset.

[Visitor] Yeah, I've noticed that a lot of your paintings are symmetrical.

[Davis Coonsis] Yeah.

[Visitor] Is symmetry a big part of art?

[Davis Coonsis] For me, it is. I guess I just want to have it always, like you said, symmetrical. So whatever I do, it's always got to be matched in the other way, in a certain way.

It's always got to be symmetrical. So I do measure out my designs, like how I'm going to put them. So that's how I keep it symmetrical.

[Visitor] So for your carving, do you, like on the table specifically, did you hand carve that? Do you have like a router tool?

[Davis Coonsis] Oh, no. So everything is done with just a knife and a chisel. Because if you use a router, you can't get these sharp points.

So I just use a knife and then a chisel. I just cut them out. And then same way with the flower over here, I just use a razor blade and I just cut them off, and then basically that's it.

And then with this part, I just chisel out all the stuff that you don't want.

[Visitor] Incredible.

[Davis Coonsis] Thank you.

[Visitor] Yes? I've noticed that a lot of your artworks have an elk with an arrow pointing to its mouth.

[Davis Coonsis] Oh, this one's a deer. It's a deer. And this is the heart line of it.

It's like the deer always has to have like a heart line or any animal. That's like their breath, their life of it. So that's why we call them the heart line.

So it's like the life of the animal. That's what it means.

[Ranger Lizzie] Oh, yes?

[Visitor] Did you study from other Zuni people or did you study from books?

[Davis Coonsis] I guess, yeah, I would read books on the Zuni people, and then I was beginning to learn more about it, and then everything just made more sense to me. And then the connection here, that's when I kind of got into checking out our other ancestral sites where our people used to live. We lived from here to there, like the Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde.

Because all our people are connected with those places because that's part of our migrations where our people, from coming out from the Grand Canyon, some of our people went to Mesa Verde, and some of them went down to Chaco, and then they went as far as the Rio Grande River. That's where our people migrated, but along the way, people wanted to stay by the river, so that's how some of the tribes began, because our migrations. Some of them stayed.

They went down a little way, and some of them wanted to stay there because everything was perfect for them. But some people still traveled on. They felt that they didn't have found a middle place.

So we may have went around all the way, like down towards Las Cruces, and then we came all the way back up this way, then all the way towards Zuni, back to Zuni. That's where we're living right now.

[Ranger Lizzie] Well, thank you guys all so much for joining us. Davis, thank you so much for talking to us tonight.

[Davis Coonsis] Thank you. Thank you for coming out.

[Speaker 3] Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal, lived experiences of tribal members and do not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the national park.

To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices, visit www.nps.gov/grca. Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon. These being the Havasupai Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.

In this episode, Davis Coonsis spoke about the different artforms he works on from silversmithing to carving to carpentry! As he displayed some of his artwork, he was able to explain what each piece meant to himself in his Zuni culture.

Tags: grand canyon speaks, grand canyon first voices, zuni, meet the artist, indigenous peoples, arizona , audio podcast

Episode 16

Ed Kabotie Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Ed Kabotie Speaks Transcript

Ed Kabotie: In my culture, I feel like every day begins with land acknowledgement, you know. I mean, you're encouraged to rise up every day when the sun comes up to greet the sun. You know, that's, to me, that's land acknowledgement, you know.

Ed Kabotie: We pray for the world, we pray for the people in it, our loved ones, just like we all do.

Lakin: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Lakin.

Meranden: And this is Meranden..

Lakin: In this episode, Ranger Kelli talked with Ed Kabotie, who is a Hopi and Tewa musician, painter, and advocate for his Indigenous communities.

Meranden: Not only does Ed address many issues that our Indigenous people face today, but he also performs a couple of his songs that carry a theme of empowerment.

Lakin: Take a listen to Ed's journey, and we hope you enjoy this episode.

Ranger Kelli: I would like to have Ed Kabotie introduce himself. Let's give a round of applause for Ed.

Ed Kabotie: [Speaks Hopi]

Ed Kabotie: So, first of all, my name is, Flutesong is my Hopi name, and I'm from the Badger Clan and from the village of Shongopovi, Second Mesa in Hopi, but hang on.

Ed Kabotie: [Speaks Tewa]

Ed KabotieL My name is also Cloud Mountain from my mother's side, and on the Tewa side, I'm from the village of Singing Water in northern New Mexico, and still from the Badger Clan. So, I'm both from the Tewa people and Hopi nation, and as Kelli had mentioned, I've had the blessing of hanging out here at Desert View quite a bit.

Ed Kabotie: My grandfather did the murals at the [Desert View] Watchtower on the second floor of the Watchtower back in 1932. So, ever since I was a kid, you know, coming to this area has been special for me in my relationship with my grandfather, who was a very strong mentor to me. He was born in 1900.

Ed Kabotie: His father was sent to prison in 1906 for refusing him to sending him to Carlisle Indian School, and he was only six years old at the time, you know, but I'm grateful that my great-grandfather made that stance, even though he was put in prison for it. But my grandfather leads a very colorful life, you know, leading up to the Watchtower paintings, obviously, and he passed away when I was 16 years old. So, he was a very important role model for me, and it's really a blessing to me anytime I come out, so, it's a blessing to be here.

Ranger Kelli: Thank you, Ed. And like Ed said, Grand Canyon is actually ancestral homelands for 11 traditionally associated tribes here, and the 11 tribes are the Navajo Nation, Hopi Nation, Zuni Pueblo, and as well as the Havasupai, Hualapai, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Las Vegas Band of Paiute, Moapa Band of Paiute, San Juan [Southern] Band of Paiute, and as well as Kaibab Band of Paiute. So, there's a lot, and Shivwits Paiute.

Ranger Kelli: Sorry, I'm just trying to remember all 11. So, these traditionally associated tribes really have, this place is a very close connection of Grand Canyon. It's a place that is still home to the tribal members.

Ranger Kelli: And with Hopi, and this is just a picture that was passed around of Ed's grandfather, Fred Kabotie, that did the murals here at the Watchtower in 1932 when this was built. So, really great. You can kind of see a lot of the culture representation that is built here in the tower.

Ranger Kelli: And then for Ed, I know you said that your grandfather is your role model, and you're an actual artist here. And Ed Kabotie is actually here for two more days as part of our cultural demonstration program. And he's just not an artist, but he's a musician as well.

Ranger Kelli: So, he's just all around an amazing person, you know, that has been really expressing his story through his artwork. And I want to, like, you know, ask you, when did you start painting and doing your artwork?

Ed Kabotie: Yeah, this is a cool question, you know, because I feel like in Native communities, when people ask me, when did you start playing music? When did you start doing art? I always say, you know, really where I'm from, everybody is an artist, and everybody is a musician.

Ed Kabotie: Because at the time you're a child, you know, I mean, I have a little grandson that I see every now and then in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Whenever I see that little dude, you know what I mean, first thing I'm going to do is what most grandparents do in our culture. They'll sit him on your lap, you start singing to him, you know, and you start making his arm movements, you know, of what he would do, you know, if he were dancing.

Ed Kabotie: And so, I think I would have to say the same thing about art, because we don't think about it this way, but you might say that we're all raised in the arts, you know, as Puebloan people, you know, we are symbols, the symbols that we interact with, the symbols that we communicate to the universe with, to communicate with one another with, the songs that we sing, you know, it's not necessarily looked at as art, but rather as the way that we interact with and worship the universe, you know, worship the creator.

Ed Kabotie: I do have a remembrance when I was four years old, and my father put this in a poem called The Buffalo Dancer, because when I was a kid, like most Pueblo kids, you know, I mean, our first love is the drum, you know, and we just love jamming out, and we, I mean, we just, to me when I was a kid, everything was a buffalo dance, you know, and so I had a little Linus blanket, and I'd tie horns on the ends of it, tie little knots, and I'd throw it on, and that'd be my buffalo dance, you know, I'd take the knots out, and I'd stretch it out, that made my eagle dance, you know, my wings, you know, and my father wrote down a poem, he called it The Buffalo Dancer, and at the beginning of the poem, he quoted me when I was four years old, I remember this, this is a very early memory, I said, "this little boy is an artist, and he's four years old, and this is for his dad," I was just painting something on, I think, a paper sack, but anyway.

Ranger Kelli: Wow, and I know a lot of your artwork, and you're a musician, your songs, you kind of really focus a lot on Native American history, and I found this article from Arizona PBS of ASU, which was really amazing article that ASU wrote about Ed Kabotie, and it said that your songs that you create are designed to fill in some of the blanks that are missing from the version of history that many Americans grew up hearing, and your song that really just kind of resonate with what the article said, was a song of land acknowledgement, and I think that, you know, hearing that song, and just knowing what that song's about, why is it important for people to kind of learn about why land acknowledgement is important to hear and to talk about?

Ed Kabotie: That's cool, I think that's a really cool question, because you're kind of opening a can of worms. Let me just say, you know, like there's this popular thing, you know, in our country right now of land acknowledgements, you know, I have mixed feelings about it, in all honesty, you know, in my culture, I feel like every day begins with land acknowledgement, you know, I mean, you're encouraged to rise up every day, when the sun comes up, to greet the sun, you know, that's, to me, that's land acknowledgement, you know, we pray for the world, we pray for the people in it, our loved ones, just like we all do, you know, but to me, that's land acknowledgement.

Ed Kabotie: What I think people should be doing, when they say they're doing land acknowledgement, is not only recognize that we're on, we're all brothers and sisters in this world, that we're really living in kind of a borrowed space, I don't think borrow is the right word, you know, but this is the land of the creator, you know, I mean, it's his land, it doesn't really belong to us, we can act like it does, but you know, even the world itself will teach us that, you know, it doesn't belong to us, you know, what I think is missing in popular land acknowledgement is a blood acknowledgement, you know, I mean, yes, you're on the lands that were previously inhabited by Supai Nation, by Navajo Nation, by Hopi Nation, you know, other parts of the country, you know, you're acknowledging different tribes that were there before, but I'm like, so why do we just call it land acknowledgement?

Ed Kabotie: Why don't we acknowledge how we acquired these lands, you know, the blood that was shed to acquire these lands? You know, to me, that's really what needs to be said, so maybe what Kelli's talking about is a specific song, and maybe I can play that for you, so you kind of understand the context of the question as well. So just asking for the Creator's help, and yeah, I'm gonna play this tune called Land Acknowledgement, which is really a reaction to land acknowledgements.

Ed Kabotie: What does it mean to acknowledge a land that's been raped and plundered by the greed of man? What do you mean when you speak our name while still you occupy the lives that your fathers claim?

Ed Kabotie: Why remind us that your cities and towns are built on places we call hallowed ground? Remember the people, acknowledge the land, acknowledge the blood that stains our hearts and hands. Fifty million women, children, and men were sacrificed to buy you your religious freedom, destroy our lives, strip away our pride, send us out of sight, out of mind to die, and now they're butchering the lands of our reservations to build their instruments of devastation.

Ed Kabotie: Remember the people, acknowledge the land, acknowledge the blood that stains our hearts and hands. Your words never seem to me to comprehend the atrocity. Words will never be a way to heal the guilt of this country, but this land was never yours or mine.

Ed Kabotie: We've been gifted to live in this space and time. The one who made all things can bring both endings as well as new beginnings. Rend your heart, see through the veil of lies, relearn to live within the circle of life and then remember the people.

Ed Kabotie: Acknowledge the land, acknowledge the blood that stains our hearts and hands. Your American dream has never been what it seemed. Sacrilegious, blasphemous, disastrous destiny.

Ed Kabotie: A little bit of a twist on land acknowledgement.

Ranger Kelli: I don't want us to start so heavy, so I apologize, but because we're just kind of tying into like, you know, Grand Canyon National Park, we're really including in our park goals of more Indigenous connections and part of this Indigenous connections is starting to acknowledge the tribal nations who have lived here before it was a National Park and a lot of Ed's music and artwork really focused on a lot of social and environmental justice and his artwork.

Ranger Kelli: I see a lot of your work really just tying into water, you know, too. So, and I think that, you know, here at Desert View at Grand Canyon, a lot of our park ranger programs, we really focus on the western science of how Grand Canyon was formed and one of the elements that we see here at Desert View is focusing on this very powerful river called the Colorado River and we only know the western science of how Grand Canyon was formed because of that river, too, to build, obviously, the canyon, but people don't really realize, too, about the cultural ties and the significance of this water and a lot of your artwork and his grandfather's artwork. If y'all have a chance, if you're here tomorrow, definitely come out to the watchtower and that second floor where his grandfather has this amazing mural and you can definitely know that is a Colorado River and your artwork has a lot of the water representation, too, and I just want to kind of acknowledge that you really focus on water is life.

Ed Kabotie: Yeah.

Ranger Kelli: And you educate about that to the public across the Colorado Plateau. Can you talk a little bit more about what water is life to our visitors here?

Ed Kabotie: Yeah, there's so much water imagery in ceremonial clothing, you know, there's so much water imagery in our songs, you know, it's just a constant thing. So, it's in some ways water is life, is a very literal thing obviously for people who live in this desert region.

Ed Kabotie: Picture this, that in Hopi, you know, just to the east, directly east of us, that's the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America. Walpi, Songopavi, Ojaivi, and Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico all were established about a thousand years ago, you know, we're not the typical United States come and pull the rug out from under us type of people, we're not, you know, we've never been relocated, we're at the same places we were at time of contact in 1539 and we're in the same place as we were 500 years before that, you know.

Ed Kabotie: What's remarkable about that is if you ever go to Hopi, because the scientist has told us that, you know, Utah and Colorado, like Mesa Verde area and Bears Ears area, that emptied out from Pueblo in occupation around 1300 and they say it's because of a drought and I say this, well if it was, and then they went south, right, and began settling along the Rio Grande, which makes sense if it's a drought, but what doesn't make sense is the boost of the population in Hopi, like if you're leaving a drought, you don't go to Hopi, you know, there's no running rivers there, you know.

Ed Kabotie: What's remarkable about that 1,000 year occupation there in Hopi is it's been totally 100 percent dependent upon rain for our survival. It's dry farming out there, you know, that's how we've been farming for the last 1,000 years, it's dry farming techniques, you know, without water, you know, so yeah.

Ranger Kelli: And I know that like, you know, there's one picture that really speaks a lot and I think that kind of resonates with what you were saying about farming too because a lot of your artwork and your painting, you have this brown river connecting with this river here and people don't really understand why these two rivers connect, mean a lot for a lot of the tribes here in the southwest and just kind of give you a little bit of history too about the Colorado River.

Ranger Kelli: This river goes over 1,000 miles and supposed to come out of the Baja California, but now we have dams that are kind of in place along this whole river and I do have a visual of a map of the Colorado River and tribes that surround that river in their traditional homelands, but these tribes on this map don't live all surrounding the Colorado River anymore, so these tribes are now in reserve areas, what are called now reservations, and this water here, none of the tribes actually have rights to it, but we can use tributaries that feed into the river that we have rights for it now, which amazing part of this history that just happened was the Hualapai Nation just started getting some rights to use a lot of that water now, so it's just, you know, this is today news this year, so this is just like a long time of these systemic issues that Ed Kabotie really puts in his music, but also creates events that is around what the Colorado rights are to Native communities, and one of these events that you do year-round is Rumble on the Mountain, and I know this past year you did one and I went to that, it was a really amazing and powerful event, oh my gosh, six hour show, yeah, all day, can you explain what this event that you do, you know, hosts every year, and you have different themes every year, and I would like for you to just kind of talk about that.

Ed Kabotie: So Rumble on the Mountain started about 10 years ago, it's a show that was named after an earthquake that took place in Flagstaff after a local ski resort opened with, became the only or the first ski resort in the world to use 100% reclaimed sewer water to create artificial snow, in direct opposition, in opposition to all of the outcry of every single tribe listed on that piece of paper right there, you know, the city of Flagstaff turned up their nose at us and sold reclaimed sewer water to the to the Snowbowl, and so that created the impetus for this show.

Ed Kabotie: I mean there's a lot of backstory, but I'll kind of spare you guys that, but every year what we do is we focus on an issue, the first year was focused on that ski resort issue, you know, but we focused on the Colorado River, we focused on this past year, we focused on the only operating uranium mine in the state of Arizona, on Navajo Nation there's 500 to 1,000 open pit uranium mines left over from the Cold War, the mining companies that came in and extracted the ore didn't take any responsibility to clean it up, neither the government that bought the ore take responsibility to clean that up, they leave that to the tribes, so consequently we've got what 500 to 1,000 open pit uranium mines on Navajo Nation today, you know, poisoning their water systems, etc., so because of their experience all of the tribes in Arizona have said no way do we allow uranium mining on our reservations, but that has not stopped Energy Fuels Company from coming in and working with the Forest Service to acquire lands seven miles south of us, and so the Grand Canyon Mine, aka Pinon Plain Mine, is the only operating uranium mine in the state of Arizona today, and it sits on top of the aquifer of the Havasupai Nation.

Ed Kabotie: The Havasupai Nation were kicked out of the Grand Canyon in 1918 so that we could have a National Park in 1919, and today we're poisoning their water systems, you know, where we relocated them with the only operating uranium mine, so this is a big concern and we hope to have another set of shows like Kelli was talking about to raise awareness, because people don't know this, you know, they don't know that out in Hopi land that our water systems are riddled with arsenic, you know, they don't recognize that on Hopi and Navajo that many of our people still don't have running water or electricity.

Ed Kabotie: National spotlight during the pandemic was kind of showcased the disparity that we live in in health care, but that also involves the land, it's not only the people, it's not only the treatment of the people in northern Arizona, it's also the land that has suffered. People come from all over the world to visit Grand Canyon National Park, and unfortunately, but I'm very grateful for you guys, because unfortunately so many people leave just as ignorant about the conditions of the tribes, who we are, our experiences as they were when they came, so this is really a blessing to me, you know, to be able to share some of this with you.

Ranger Kelli: Thank you, and you said Snowbowl, and that is, this is just an amazing place at Desert View to kind of see a really beautiful mountain south of us. People always ask, what is this mountain? And that is also a sacred mountain for a lot of the tribes here in Arizona, and part of that mountain and the Grand Canyon, and seeing these very sacred places here at Grand Canyon, or not Grand Canyon, around the region, as we're, as visitors are driving through it, and not knowing these types of history from the tribes, and the challenges that we have lived, and the Park Service is really wanting to start working with tribal people today to start learning about the management of this land before it became a National Park, and with this goal that we're creating here in the Park Service is also putting people, actually not putting people, but starting to open the doors and having the tribes now have, are wanting to have access back to their home again, and I think this is a really amazing goal that Grand Canyon National Park is doing, and how do you feel about how this direction of the Park Service is going?

Ranger Kelli: Like, you know, knowing that the Havasupai name has, or the Havasupai, I keep saying Havasupai Gardens, but it used to be called Indian Gardens down on the Bright Angel Trail, but just had the name changing of that location on the Bright Angel Trail to Havasupai Garden to really honor the tribe, and this happened on May 4th [2023] last year, so these are like historical events that are just very new to the Park Service and to the history of our people, so how do you feel about this? All of these amazing things are happening now moving forward, and I, yeah.

Ed Kabotie: Skeptical. Yeah, I honestly, I mean, that is probably my first reaction is like, okay, what's going on here, you know, but in my conversations with Grand Canyon Park Superintendent, you know, he's been here for a little while, Ed Keable, and when he first came, a lot of the development here at Desert View kind of amped up, and they said they want to, you know, they want to focus on indigenous interaction here, and my reaction to that would, well, that's cool, right? You got the least traveled spot in the entire park, and you're going to stick us on this little corner of it, yeah? It sounds like a reservation to me, you know what I mean?

Ed Kabotie: And I'm really grateful that I recently, Ed Keable and I did some work at the Grand Canyon river guides training seminar, and he used, he quoted me in his speech, and he remembered that statement, and that makes me hopeful, you know, because he said, you know, I understand that sentiment, and that, you know, the objective is that this will be a ripple, and I feel like Grand Canyon National Park is proving that to some degree, you know?

Ed Kabotie: It worries me, and I'm still skeptical. I worry when we're moving too fast, you know? I worry that we're not acknowledging, I'm worried that we're not acknowledging what the canyon is to our people.

Ed Kabotie: I'm worried that we haven't defined what our etiquette should be in this landscape, but at the same time, I am encouraged by initiatives that do have some feet on them, you know?

Ranger Kelli: Yeah, it's, you know, it's hard to think about historical trauma that has been still embedded with tribal members today, and with our families, and they kind of teach us survival tools to live in this, I would say, colonial world, you know, that we have never, our grandparents have had a hard time living through, and I feel like what you said just a while ago really resonates in, like, how do we do this in a way of bringing multiple perspectives, multiple stories, multiple safest ways where every community member does feel like this is a safe place to now have that relationship and connection back in this place, and when you were singing, you know, a while ago, the water song in your language, I almost cried because the canyon needs to hear more of those songs.

Ranger Kelli: The canyon just needs to hear the voice of the tribal members. The canyon just misses it, and it also, it's a reconnection for us as tribal members here, and that's a very powerful message, and right now, we are almost, we have, like, about 15 minutes before sunset or 10 minutes before sunset. I'd just like to ask you one more question before we kind of open it up to the audience if they want to ask a question, but what would you like the people to take away from what we just talked about in our moment together?

Ed Kabotie: Yeah, I love that question because, you know, what I would really love to emphasize to people here is that, is the plight of the people and lands of the Colorado Plateau. I appreciate that Kelli mentions the song in my language, you know, Kelli's Dine, you know, I'm Tewa/Hopi. We're not the same.

Ed Kabotie: We don't have the same culture. We don't have the same beliefs. There's many tribes here.

Ed Kabotie: When you go to Europe, you recognize that Spain is not Germany, and Germany is not Poland, you know, and Poland is not, you know, Italy, but for some reason, when you come to America, we're all Native American, you know, and somebody finds out you're Native American, they say, hey, you know this guy in New Hampshire, you know, you know, he's an Indian, you know what I mean? I'm not picking on you. Coincidence, but, you know, it's like we're many nations, you know, I would like people to recognize that when they come to the canyon, you know, recognize the great diversity here, but also recognize that each one of those tribes has their own story and their own experience of heavy injustice, especially here in Grand Canyon region.

Ed Kabotie: I don't know of any other place that the tribes are exploited the way that they are here, you know, the threats to the Havasupai with Grand Canyon mine, the situation with Hopi with arsenic in our contaminated water systems. That's if you have running water in Hopi, you know, the Navajo with uranium contamination on their reservation and the water systems there. The fact that today, right, we have Grand Canyon Mine and we have a mining company that says they're from Canada, and they want to take uranium from the Supai here at Grand Canyon, essentially one reservation, take it from the bottom of Navajo Nation to the top of Navajo Nation to the already impacted communities of Navajo, take it on up to yet another reservation in Utah to the only existing uranium mill in the entire United States of America. Where is that located?

Ed Kabotie: Right next to the Ute, Mountain Ute Reservation, only threatening their water systems. And it's outrageous. And I think if the public eye could see it, they would recognize that it's outrageous, you know.

Ed Kabotie: We've received national attention to our national conscience about one Standing Rock, but I would say there's 500 'Standing Rocks' that we still haven't heard about, you know, and this really is one of them, you know, northern Arizona. So I would say that's what I would want people that come here to know and to hear and to send us a prayer. We're sending prayers for you all the time.

Ed Kabotie: I mean, really, literally, and hopefully that's what we do. You know, we pray for the whole world. We pray for all of your families and the goodness and the balance of all life, and we would just ask, you know, that you would also do the same.

Ed Kabotie: Yeah, think of us, pray for us. Cool.

Ranger Kelli: Thank you, Ed. Oh my gosh, I'm like, ah, I'm just gonna have to applaud. Ed Kabody is a very inspiring person to me because as a being a Native woman, you're a speaker for all Native people across, you know, and this, we call it, I call it Turtle Island, you know, and I feel like you really help bring us awareness, but also awareness through music that speaks for itself when you sing it, you know, you can feel that connection, you can feel your emotion in how you sing it, and I just want to ask you one more time, do you want to play us one more song?

Ed Kabotie: Yeah.

Ranger Kelli: Before we enjoy sunset? .

Ed Kabotie: Yeah, it's happening. I'm gonna play you a song from a Native American band who was on Motown Records in 1970 and 71, 72. I venture to say most of you have never heard of them, but it's a band called XIT, and I love the sentiment of this song.

Ed Kabotie: Our people have survived, and our eyes flow with memories. The reservation, it is our home, and for now we're gonna let it be. But the battle, it is not over.

Ed Kabotie: Yes, our struggle has begun. A new hope, it has been born, and our sunny day will come. [Chorus] Look up in the skies, as the wind whispers in the trees, atop a floating cloud that echoes to be free.

Ed Kabotie: In time we'll get back the life that they took away, and their land of make-believe will be ours again someday. [Chorus] Thank you, thank you so much. Ranger Kelli: Right now, sunset's happening, so I just want you all to, you know, get a moment to enjoy sunset, and have a good evening.

Ranger Jonah: Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal lived experiences of tribal members and does not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the National Park.

To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices visit www.nps.gov/grca.

Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon. These being the Havasupai tribe, the Hualapai tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute tribe.

In this episode, ranger Kelli talks with Ed Kabotie who is a Hopi and Tewa musician, painter and advocate for his Indigenous communities. Not only does Ed address many issues that our Indigenous people face today, but he also performs a couple of his songs that carry the theme of empowerment.

Tags: grand canyon speaks, grand canyon first voices, podcast, audio podcast, nps indigenous, hopi, tewa, civil rights

Episode 17

Chris Lewis Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Chris Lewis Speaks [Chris Lewis] Knowing how deeply rooted it was, and that everyone was turning to imported baskets, my sense and my thing was, we need to bring actual handmade baskets back to the village, the technology behind it, to learn and do all that.

[Meranden] Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Meranden.

[Lakin] And this is Lakin.

[Meranden] We would like to take the time to thank you all for listening to Season 2 so far. It has been a lot of fun being able to work on and publish these episodes over the year.

[Lakin] We are also recording and interviewing over the summer for Season 3 at Desert View, so if you're ever in the area, come check it out for our evening sunset talks.

[Meranden] Getting back to the episode, this is about Chris Lewis. He is from the Pueblo of Zuni and shares his studies and passions as a fiber artist.

[Lakin] His basketry has allowed him to learn a lot about ancestral weaving and understand how he can revitalize it in his own work.

[Meranden] He also mentions his participation being on the board of directors for the Bears Ears Partnership and the importance of educating people on ancestral lands.

[Lakin] Once again, thank you for tuning in, and here is Chris Lewis.

[Chris Lewis] ♪♪♪ (Introduces self in Zuni) Hello, my name is Christopher Lewis from Zuni. My clans are Badger, and I'm a child to Corn. My parents are Jocelyn Lewis and the late William Lewis.

I'm honored to be here to speak with you guys.

[Ranger Kelli] Chris, if you could just kind of talk about what you are doing down at the Watchtower with our demonstration program.

[Chris Lewis] I'm here as a fiber artist. Not a lot of people use that term, but I deal with fibers, textiles, strings, then the basketry, getting to plant materials and grasses and feather work, which is all part of the fiber arts. So it's a wide range of things that I work with in that capacity.

[Ranger Kelli] And I was speaking earlier with Chris down at the tower, and, man, I was down there for about three hours, by the way, just talking to him about all the stuff that he does. And I actually watch one of your YouTube videos, and on there it said basketry. I know that you have some baskets here.

I just want to know how long have you been doing basketry, but also textile through weaving as well?

[Chris Lewis] Basketry, I've probably been doing maybe, I would say, about 18 years, physical work of making basketry, but the passion behind basketry, study of basketry, started back in high school. Baskets are deeply rooted in Zuni culture. A lot of things take place with the basket being there.

In Zuni, baskets are called ho'inne. Also in Zuni, a human being is called ho'inne. So the baskets and the human being share the same name.

Until recently, I found out that the baskets, the very, very middle of a basket is called the belly button, and the spiral from the belly button out is called the road that we live on till the end of where the basket terminates. That's the human life and where our roads terminate in that basket. But I assume and think that a lot of those traditions come from when the basket makers, all they made were baskets.

Those traditions and things are yet far deeply rooted in the Pueblo culture. So I would say physically, working with my hands about 18 years, but the study of basketry has been about 40, 45 years.

[Ranger Kelli] And we'll go more deeper into what he meant by, like, studied basketry for 45 years a little bit later because I have so many questions to ask about that. But I just want to know what inspired you to work in baskets and weaving and textiles.

[Chris Lewis] I would say about the time I started learning different styles of basketry, there were maybe three or four people left in Zuni doing any type of basketry. If it was grass or plated pot rest, that was it. Nobody was weaving or making coil baskets, plated ring baskets, any type of basketry at all.

A lot of those completely had died out in the village. So just trying to think of how to revive and bring that back. And yet the wicker work also was.

I think there was only one person left doing wicker work in the village. So knowing how deeply rooted it was and that everyone was turning to imported baskets, my sense and my thing was we need to bring actual handmade baskets back to the village, the technology behind it to learn and do all that.

[Ranger Kelli] I love the language that you said, revive. And I think that's very powerful as into kind of like what we're doing today here at the canyon. You know, I think that your voice here is reviving these like traditional knowledge that needs to be heard out in the public.

And as Grand Canyon, we have about three million visitors that come every year to the South Rim. And these stories are carried down for many generations. And it's just really amazing to see your tools here that are very traditional.

And I'd like for you to kind of, if you want to explain a little bit more of these tools that you have here to our audience and maybe like the meaning of it, what would you use that for?

[Chris Lewis] Before I do that, I'm going to jump back to the first question. You asked about textiles. I said revive.

It's also revive and to revitalize. Those are the two important R words in the basketry and stuff. Revive, revitalize.

Textiles, the reason why I got into textiles was I could not constantly afford to buy my kids belts. All the different dances they do and stuff, I wanted to learn. And then also not only buying for the family, but also buying for paybacks.

We have a lot of godchildren, so when we have godchildren, we have to have traditional clothing, street attire that we put into bundles that we give them after we accept them. The belts are one of the items. Then also mantas, capes.

I weave all in traditional twills that I learned. Very few people nowadays weave in those traditional twills, diamond twill, diagonal twill, herringbone, all of that. A lot of it was declining, but there's a revitalization in that also, in the textiles.

Out of necessity, I learned to provide for my family, my kids, my nieces, nephews, other family members in that way. I always say as a Native artist, I don't think we'll ever become rich because half of what we make, we end up giving to relatives for ceremonies, weddings, birthday, Christmas, things like that. It's not the store-bought gifts, the money, but to get items like that, we say that makes you richer as a human.

A lot of that goes to that. That's where I got into the textiles and textile arts. Now to go to the basketry, the bone tools I use came out of the necessity of when I started working with baskets.

I don't know how far I'm going to go back into the next one, but I work on a project that I get to study artifacts in major museums from the greater southwest area, from around Grand Canyon all the way to Mesa Verde, all the southeast Utah and northern Arizona. Some of the things I look at are archaic basket maker, so you look at a couple thousand-year-old objects, and I replicate. I study them in museums, and I take pictures.

When I look at them, I take pictures to help me remember. Then I go back home, and I try, try, try to replicate that style of basket. Mesa Verde plated ring basket with a false braid rim was made 950 years ago, and then during the pandemic, I replicated one.

Those baskets, I studied those at the Penn Museum. I studied 11 of them, found 9 variations of that braid, and I've replicated 3 of those styles of that braid. In order to replicate them, you have to have the tools that our ancestors used prehistorically.

So a lot of my tools, and my kids love to tease me about it because they call me a Flintstone because I work with bones and stones, rocks. But a lot of my tools, I had to learn how to shape. A lot of my tools are all deer leg bones, so grinding them down, getting the shape, the same way that you see prehistoric awls.

The majority of my awls are all deer with the exception of a few eagle wing bone awls for finer things. Some of the visitors today got a kick because they said, these bones are heavier. I said, yeah, they were dinner.

They're sheep leg bones. So whatever bone, I try and see how they'll work and play around with them. But a lot of my awls, I did have to learn how to make to keep the work similar to what our ancestors prehistorically made.

[Ranger Kelli] I think that's really cool to reconnect with the past of people who have, I guess you can say, in a way have lived in these areas in the southwest region. Mesa Verde, if you all haven't been around to that park, it's actually a national park area that is near the Four Corners region. It's a very amazing human history there of the southwest, especially of the tribes that are still here today that go back to those locations and learn about their ancestors.

And I just want to ask you, Chris, how do you feel reconnecting in that way of the work that you are doing with replicating the tools, but as well as the styles that you are learning from the past? How do you feel about that?

[Chris Lewis] I guess in a way, I feel honored that these objects, I go into collections, first thing I do, stepping in, I acknowledge, I greet, and I feed. When I walk into museum collections, we believe every object we touch and study still has the soul of the plant, the soul of the maker, and still a living entity because of that. So we acknowledge them, we greet them, feed them, and offer our prayers and offerings to them.

So in turn, I think with showing that respect and everything, the makers impart their knowledge and make things clear when we're studying to see what they look like and how they go, how they're assembled. Then for me to see and handle them, my mind goes, just looking at a basket, how intelligent that person was, knowing how baskets are made, but the way they were made. There's one basket that I'm currently trying to replicate.

Today we think the size of the basket is determined by the length of the yucca leaf, how big and how deep you can make it. This basket I had studied at the Penn Museum is 16 1⁄2 inches across by 9 1⁄2 inches deep. So that means you have to be long yucca.

It's made up of three short pieces, and the locks they did are very intricate. Baskets are woven on an eight-sided hexagon shape to fit a ring. This basket is woven on a 16-side.

That's why I'm intrigued to try and figure out how they wove it on 16 sides. It's not a two-strand bind, it's a single loop bind, which I'm really wanting to try my hand at because looking at it, trying to see when I studied it. And if you can believe this basket I'm studying, I have over 300 photos of one basket.

I've counted every strand in it and how many strands before this lock goes this way, how many times this one goes that way. It's ridiculous. I actually made a trip back to the Penn Museum to spend four hours with that basket to get those pictures, to study it, count, do all the counts and everything on it because I just assumed it was made the way we make them nowadays, but getting home and looking at the pictures, there's some really different ways this is done than making that trip all the way back to Philadelphia to study it.

There's another type that's late Pueblo period. They're mostly found in the Kayenta area, but they're woven of three different styles of basketry in one, and the way it's constructed, it's mind-boggling. But how many of you know what a platoon is, like in the Old West saloons?

They're globular with that flared top. This is the exact same shape of the basket. It's globular with a small opening and like a 3- to 4-inch wide collar at the top of it.

Now we're talking maybe 300 years to 400 years before European contact and Pueblo people were weaving that shape. I'm like, okay, what were they used for? How were they used?

But that's the second one I'm looking at. There's another one which we thought was Pueblo period but comes back earlier. Radiocarbon date comes back earlier.

The only way I can term it is not a true basket but a basket bag. When you pull the top, it expands out, and when you pull the yucca cord, it closes back in. But they found that bag about the size of a basketball with 2 pounds of red corn.

Some of those really intrigued me and I sit there and try to figure out how they were constructed just off of the pictures. Some of them I can't empty out the content so I only get exterior photos. But other museums, I might put it out there and other museums say, oh, we have something similar and they'll send me a picture that says that's what I'm looking for and I'll travel up there and look at their baskets to see the insides and stuff and put two and two together.

It's just a lot of that working with the materials and figuring out how they were doing things and just also thinking of where their intelligent level was at to construct some of these baskets and what they were doing.

[Ranger Kelli] And that's why I was like, you're just not a fiber artist. You are a Native researcher. And when I say Native researcher, it's interesting because I think of traditional ecological knowledge versus Western science.

And the stuff that you were telling me today, you actually go to the museums, put on white gloves, and do your own investigation of these baskets. And having these scientists ask you for help, and that's amazing to know that basically I think that it is important to replicate and understand and learn how these baskets are made. And one story that kind of really, I think, touched with me was that you're basically talking about different paints from different plants that actually has been grown around the region, but these scientists can't identify what plant this is to make that paint color.

And you said sunflower. And I was like, this is really cool to know that you can identify these plants around the region to know what specific plant is making that paint. And I don't think you're just a Native researcher, but also, Chris, another work that I think is also very important to talk about is you are on a board with the Bears Ears Partnership.

And if you all don't know, Bears Ears is actually a location, it's a national monument that is in Utah, and it is an amazing cultural and natural resource site that also works with tribes out here in the Southwest. And can you tell a little bit more about that partnership and what that is?

[Chris Lewis] Yeah, I am a board member. I sit on the board of directors. We work a lot with indigenous communities that have ties to the Bears Ears.

When I first was accepted onto the board of directors, I was the first Pueblo representative to sit on the board of directors. So that gave Pueblos a voice over our ancestral sites, our shrines, our cultural areas in the Bears Ears. We do a lot of work.

The biggest one was the litigation over the national monument. I don't know if you guys knew, in Obama's, when he was president, he made that a national monument. And then when Trump went in, he shrunk it down.

Then he went back to almost the size it was designated as, but there was litigation with the state of Utah over some of that, which we played a large part of with other groups to fight them against it, which I'm happy to say that Utah dropped their lawsuit on that and everything's staying. Currently right now, there's some stuff going on with the lands between. Those are not within the designated monument, but the state of Utah has thousands, hundreds of thousands of sites all over the state of Utah that are ancestral Puebloan.

Then you have also, and I believe they're trying to change the name, but there's the Diné, the Navajo Pueblitas, the fortified homesteads, and a lot of other things, also youth sites and things like that. And then we have the ambassador program, the Visit with Respect, teaching visitors how to respectfully visit those areas, meet and greet. Then we have an education center where we educate visitors that come in about not only the Bears Ears and the sites around, but also the indigenous communities around the area that have associations with Bears Ears.

And the only way we do a lot of this stuff is through the donations from the small community of the Bears Ears Partnership.

[Ranger Kelli] Really amazing to hear you not only protecting and preserving ancestral tools that you are trying to revitalize, and also you're trying to create a voice for not only Zuni, but like you said, Pueblos, nations across the Southwest to protect ancestral sites. And that is part of Bears Ears National Monument. And I think you did say that you want to also educate visitors who are visiting these locations to kind of recreate respectfully, but also leave no trace.

I just want to hear from your perspective of why that's important to educate that.

[Chris Lewis] Not only ancestral cultural sites and areas, but overall, even your front yard, back yard. If you throw things on the ground or dump things that can be hazardous, it won't affect you right away, but maybe the next generation of your family, the accumulation on the earth, that a lot of the plastics, things like that, don't degrade right away. I was surprised, even when you're hiking, you think peeling a tangerine, a cutie, and throwing it under a tree, that you're helping the environment to continue by composting, but an orange will not decay for 100 years.

So that orange will just stay on the surface, could harm the wildlife that may try to eat it, the oils and chemicals that oranges naturally produce. So even minor things like that, like cans stay on the surface a long time, rusting and things like that. So it's always in the back of my mind.

If you go somewhere, what you carry in, carry out. Try not to change the environment except for your footsteps. A lot of these things can affect plants, and also in myself, it's really unsightly to come across someone else's garbage that I eventually pick up and carry out, but it's always like completely remote areas coming and finding huge dump sites, everyday garbage.

[Ranger Kelli] It's interesting because I think that people don't realize how much not staying on the trail can damage the environment. It can reduce the vegetation. Also the native plants that you are trying to study to keep those plants going for understanding your history as a pebble.

So I'm just going to ask one more question. What do you want the audience to take away from what we just talked about? What is one thing you want the audience to take away?

[Chris Lewis] It would be that indigenous-made crafts, especially basketry and stuff, the continuality of it goes back thousands of years for us Pueblo people to know that the baskets carry the life of the plant, carry the life of the maker, because when I'm working, the sweat, I guess you could say the sweat, the skin cells, and sometimes my blood ends up in a basket, so my life is going into that basket. Any basket maker, their life is going into that. And then that the name in our language for a basket and a human are the same, representing life.

Just the appreciation of it, because that's one of the main arts that is the hardest to do, and not many people are doing them anymore, are the baskets. So just knowing that all that work, hours, days, months to create one basket, the appreciation of it.

[Ranger Kelli] Thank you so much. I know we had a very short conversation. I'm very sad.

And if you do have any questions, Chris is going to be here. Come up here directly to him. And have a great evening.

[Ranger Jonah] Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal lived experiences of tribal members and do not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the National Park.

To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices, visit www.nps.gov/GRCA. Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon. These being the Havasupai Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.

On a rainy day, Ranger Kelli got to speak with Chris Lewis about his work as a fiber/textile artist and how he’s incorporated his studies of earlier basketry over the years. He was also able to talk about his position on the board of directors for the Bears Ears Partnership and be one of the voices for Pueblo of Zuni.

Tags: grand canyon speaks, grand canyon first voices, zuni, weaving, basketry

Episode 18

Darance Chimerica Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Darance Chimerica Speaks

[Makwesa]

I'm going to do this, and in two years, I'm going to be really good. I'm going to go to all these shows. I'm going to, you know, make it big.

Hopefully get a car or something for myself. But that didn't happen. It took a very, very long time for me to accomplish some of the things that I had envisioned.

[Lakin]

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Lakin.

[Meranden]

And this is Meranden.

[Lakin]

In this episode, Ranger Dawn spoke with Darance Makwesa Chimerica, who has been a Hopi Kachina carver since 1997.

[Meranden]

He describes how his art allowed him to explore many places around the world with his family and develop as an artist.

[Lakin]

In addition to his carving, he is a dryland farmer and sits on the board for Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture, which is a non-profit based in the village Kykotsmovi.

[Meranden]

Thanks for tuning in, and here is Makwesa.

[Makwesa]

I'm Darance Chimerica. A lot of the people at home on Hopi refer to me by my Hopi name, Makwesa. I live about an hour and a half from here on the Hopi reservation.

And I'm here for three days to show some of Hopi culture, Kachina dolls.

[Ranger Dawn]

I wanted to start off by asking you about your craft and how you got into Kachina doll making and what it means.

[Makwesa]

I started in 1997. I had grandfathers on my mother's and my father's side that both did Kachina dolls. And my mother's father, my grandfather, he was a textile weaver, so he did traditional textile weaving.

And in high school, elementary, you're already starting to prepare for what you want to be. You ask children what they want to be when they grow up. Some want to be doctors, policemen, firemen, astronauts, all of these things.

But me, I really had no clue of what I was going to do after when I graduated high school. So at the time, during my high school years, my aunt's boyfriend at the time introduced me to carving. Kachina doll carving.

And I did some of the basics. And after high school, I did masonry, fence working, and all of that. But it just didn't really fit me.

I didn't really have the desire to continue. So I started looking into Kachina doll carving. You know, being out of high school, being young, 18 years old, thinking I'm going to do this.

And in two years, I'm going to be really good. I'm going to go to all these shows. I'm going to, you know, make it big.

Hopefully get a car or something for myself. But that didn't happen. It took a very, very long time for me to accomplish some of the things that I had envisioned.

Three years after high school, you know, it's still, you know, I was struggling. And in 2003, luckily, you know, I met a gallery owner and he introduced me to other people. And those people were the ones that launched my carving career.

That was my first big show in 2003 when I went to a gallery and I was able to display some of my Kachina doll carvings. And to this day, there's, I'm still, you know, connected to them. And we, there are older men now, they're in their 70s and they're up there in their years.

So after I went through so many trial and errors, failures, and, you know, accomplishments. And, you know, reaching some of my goals and then applying to some of these art shows that I saw advertised. Thinking, you know, it would be easy getting into these shows, but they're very, very, you know, competitive.

And your work, you're competing against some of the high-end artists. So me being, you know, down at the bottom of the ladder, you know, it didn't come. So finally in 2008, I finally got into the big market, the Santa Fe Indian Art Market, which is held in August.

And I think that's when I felt like things started to turn for the good. After that, you know, I just kept going. It's just very competitive in the art world, especially carving amongst hundreds of Hopi carvers.

You know, they look down on you, they look at you, they see who you are and your style of work. So it was pretty hard at the moment to where I almost kind of gave up. But with Hopi dolls, it's just not just an art form, but it's also a traditional practice that is taught to the Hopis.

Kachina dolls are given to young children, females, and they're given to them as teaching tools when they're first born as infants. And then as they grow up to the age of 12, and that's when they start to go into another phase of approaching adulthood. And then after that, you know, the doll grows with them.

They're given simple dolls, and as they grow older, they become more detailed and more elaborate. But there's a lot of history in Kachina doll making and the people that first started carving them. But that's just a little bit of history of how I started and where I came from.

[Ranger Dawn]

Yeah, it sounds like you had a big support system behind you getting started.

[Makwesa]

Yeah, I did. I had family. Well, my mother, my father, they didn't push me to, you know, you got to do something, you know.

They just left it up to me to, you know, figure out what I want to do after I graduated. And I have three children. I have my son, my oldest is 11.

I have a daughter that's nine and I have my youngest is four. Right now, my support is solely my immediate family, my kids and my wife.

[Ranger Dawn]

Yeah, when we were talking earlier, you were describing like your current lifestyle now, like with your children and how school works. So do you want to like kind of talk about that?

[Makwesa]

Yeah, so my kids, they're homeschooled. The benefits of that, you know, being self-employed is I get to wake up to my children every morning. My wife, you know, she's a homemaker.

Plus she has she works with the university with the cancer prevention program. So she's able to work from home. And yet she's able to, you know, when the kids are in school, she tends to them if they need help or if there's a parent that needs to be involved, she's there.

And occasionally I'll be a part of it when I'm not too busy. But I'm the one that, you know, makes the money, pay the bills and, you know, carry all that load. But my children are homeschooled and I do a lot of different shows.

Recently, I just got back from Washington, D.C. And that's the good thing about, you know, homeschooling. I'm able to take my children with me to these shows and they're able to benefit from that. Going to the museums, learning and then seeing the different environments and then the cities and then, you know, just participating in that way.

And I'm thankful for my wife. You know, while I'm doing my art show, she's there to tend to the kids, take them to all the museums. And, you know, they have a blast.

And, you know, I think it's good for everybody, for us, you know, because they're able to. We were in Washington. They went to the Lincoln Memorial.

They went to the Spy Museum. And it's a good thing, you know.

[Ranger Dawn]

Yeah, that's definitely a unique experience growing up with a lot of hands-on learning, which I thought was really cool. Yeah. So when you're taking your kids to your shows and they're watching you make art, how do you want to be a role model to them?

Like, what do you want to impart on them?

[Makwesa]

Well, you know, it's just, you know, some parents are, you know, you got to go to university to succeed. While with me, I don't feel that it's particularly you have to go to a university to succeed. You can go to a trade school or you can go into the art world.

But with my experience with being an artist, you know, I'd rather not have my children go into the art world because it's very, you know, it took me a while. I've been doing this for 25, 26 years. And it took me a while to know, to find my place in the art world where I know I feel like I am succeeding.

And all of the failures and accomplishments, like I explained earlier, you know, those things sometimes can wear you down. But I just tell my children, you know, well, my only daughter, she already has something envisioned that what she wants to be is she wants to be a dentist for kids. Because she really likes, she's really friendly.

She's really outgoing. She's really, you know, when she sees babies, she's like really attentive to them. So that is kind of something that's probably that would fit her.

And then, you know, the Hopi values of where we come from, you know, that's another part of what I try to incorporate with our daily lives. Our culture is still active. We're still trying to preserve it the best way we can.

And I'm heavily active in my culture, tending to Hopi cultural activities. And my son, you know, he's 11 and he's getting to that age to where, you know, I'm going to start to teach him all of what I know. You know, planting, we Hopis are dry farmers.

All we rely on is the elements, the snow and the rain. And those are my goals is to try to be the best parent, you know, raising them in both worlds of the Hopi and the modern society. So, but that's what I want to teach my kids.

You know, and then what I what I'm doing, you know, hard work can get you somewhere. You know, you just got to be good at it and not, you know, go half ass on it.

[Ranger Dawn]

Yeah, so true. Yeah, I feel like when I was talking to you, I got a sense of just like how resilient you were, like doing this for so long. And then all the ups and downs you had to go through.

So I think that's great that you were trying to teach your kids that. So you've been doing this for how many years?

[Makwesa]

26 years. 26 years. Yeah.

[Ranger Dawn]

How do you see yourself growing in your craft?

[Makwesa]

Well, OK, when I first did my first show, one of my first, he was a gallery owner in Santa Fe and he retired and he's almost about 80. But I remember in 2003 when I met him, he said to me that this was just like maybe two, three years ago. He told me that, man, you changed a lot.

And he goes, when I first met you, you never really said anything. You were very quiet and just trying to make you talk, get you to talk was kind of a task. So doing the art and then demonstrating and going to these art shows, I think I've started to develop myself into learning how to speak.

Because when you're on Hopi, we're really secluded. Where Hopi is located, it's about an hour and a half here. And there's three mesas, first, second and third mesa, and there's 12 villages.

And each mesa has different villages. For instance, like the first mesa, there's three villages on top of a plateau. And those villages are called Walpi, Sitsomovi, and Tewa.

Then on the second mesa, you have Musangnuvi, Supawlavi, and Songoopavi. And then on the third mesa, you have Kikotsmovi, Old Orayvi, Paaqavi, and Hotvela. And then 45 miles from all the villages, there is a farming village, and that is called Munqapi.

And just trying to teach my children about Hopi values and the modern society, it's challenging with the distractions. But it's not going anywhere, so you just got to incorporate it and try and live both lives, two worlds.

[Ranger Dawn]

Totally. Yeah, that makes sense. Not only is Darance a kachina doll carver and a very talented one, he's also really into permaculture.

So I don't know if you wanted to talk about that a bit.

[Makwesa]

Yeah, so I'm on the board of the Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture. And what that is, is that it's a local program that is funded by Hopi-owned couple. Their name is Jacobo and Lillian Hill.

And what they do is that, well, when they first started, they were building straw bale homes for Hopi families. And they were using natural resources from around the area, building materials, straw bales, cob, using all the clay. So with that, Jacobo, the organizer, approached me and asked if I would like to be on the board.

I said, sure. So I'm new to the board now. I just recently got on.

I've been on there for now two months. But we actually live in one of those permaculture homes, straw bale homes. And with that, it's a great thing for the environment, using all natural building material.

Nothing chemical. The earth is earthen floor. The walls are straw bale.

The inside of the walls are cob. And it's a really good home for winter insulation. But then city life, building codes, they vary.

It's interesting that we do plants, trees. They do farmer's markets. They try to incorporate Hopi seeds, native seeds.

And they distribute to other families to try and help them build up their seed bank. So that's what permaculture is about.

[Ranger Dawn]

I'm personally a super fan of that. I love that. I think that's so interesting.

And it definitely shows how much you value exposing Hopi culture and teaching others about it, which I think I can definitely tell you value that a lot, which is great. You kind of touched on it earlier. What is your idea of success?

[Makwesa]

My idea of success is the basic things. You're more rich than you think you are. If you have food on the table, a roof over your head, and transportation, and your family's healthy, I think that's more success than anything.

And that's what I have. I have the basic necessities. I have a home.

My kids are healthy. Sometimes just being humble about what you have. Anywhere in any society, movie stars, art world, musicians, artists, all that, you have different personalities.

You have some that like to be out there, are very outspoken. But me, I'm kind of more of the silent person. And just be humble and just let my artwork do the talking.

And with that, I think that's part of my success, is just letting my work do the talking. If you like it, good. If not, then it's OK.

I've gone through a lot. What I do, I'm very fortunate to where I had no idea where I was going to be or where I was going to end up. I went to Japan for 18 days, and I was able to experience the culture there, the foods and all of that, meet the people.

And these dolls took me there. And recently I was in Florida and Washington, D.C., and I still got other events coming up through the year. So it's been a very good journey so far.

So that's what I think is success, with anything, just to go hard at it.

[Ranger Dawn]

Yeah, that's a great sentiment to share. And yeah, Darance is definitely very humble when he's talking about his work. He's very talented and has been all over the place with his work.

I guess I have one last question. What do you want them to take away from this talk, from your work?

[Makwesa]

Well, I can't really tell you what to think or what to say or how to feel. But just the kachina figure did have a real big impact on society. So what I'm trying to incorporate is that I'm trying to revive some of the techniques that were done back in the 1800s, early 1900s.

Being very simple, using natural material, paints. And back then they used vegetable dyes, mineral dyes, and they used yucca plant for a paintbrush. So all of that, they tried to incorporate what they had in their environment into their kachina dolls.

So with that, there's the meaning behind the kachina dolls. And Hopi is katsina. And they represent life, long life.

And not just for the Hopi people, for everybody, for every race. What we do inside the kivas is not just for ourselves or for material things. We do it for the sake of everybody and for every living thing.

We don't do it just to do it. So that's part of what we are, of being Hopi. We're agricultural people.

We are not like some of the tribes up in the north where they're the Sioux, the Crow, the Blackfeet. They're more of a warrior tribe, the Comanche, the Apache. They are the warrior tribe.

But the Hopis are more of a peaceful people, agricultural people. So what I have here is a (Hopi word), which is a clown. And what he does is that during a dance, when there's a kachina dance, a group of these clowns will come off the roof.

And they'll be yelling, and then they'll be screaming and laughing. And they'll be talking in Hopi and talking to each other like, how are we going to get down from this roof? And then we'll be looking down and see.

What they see on the ground is everything is green, everything is nice. And they want to get down to the bottom to see all of that. So they'll maybe get a rope and have a tire.

And then they'll throw each other off the roof like a bungee, like one of those bungee cord things. I don't know what you call them. They'll be getting off, and ladies and people will be yelling and screaming and laughing.

So they'll get to the bottom, and they kind of mimic the bad things of society. And you see, you hear the people laughing at what they're doing. So it's kind of a teaching that you're laughing at some of the things that you guys are doing that is wrong.

They misbehave. They say things that's really not, you know, very nice. But they are the ones that, you know, kind of teach the people how to be and not how to act and, you know, proper behavior.

So then this one, this one's called (Hopi word). He is considered one of the rain kachinas and symbolizes the big cumulus summer dark rain clouds, moisture, and the rain, and all the good things of water. When he appears, he usually carries a boar, and he'll spin that, kind of like making that noise, that vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom.

So what that's, what he's representing is that he's trying to bring all the moisture, all the clouds, all the rain, and everything to him. All of the symbols are all traditional Hopi symbols. So each kachina has a meaning.

So a lot of people wonder, like, you know, did I make up the designs? I said, no, these are, these are all traditional. And these are all painted with natural earth mineral paints that I hand collect, and I hand process myself.

[Ranger Dawn]

So, yeah. No, that was great.

[Makwesa]

Kind of went, went the long route on that one.

[Ranger Dawn]

No, I think it was wonderful. Thank you so much for, for sharing your dolls and for sharing your story.

[Makwesa]

Yeah.

[Ranger Dawn]

I can open it up to questions now, if anyone has any.

[Makwesa]

Yeah, everybody have any questions? You know, yeah. Do I see any changes from the 10 years I've been here?

Well, there's one thing I've been really excited about. So when I first came, when I would do a transaction, I would have to walk to the post, to that, the ice cream store there. And then when they're doing construction, this was last year, I had to walk all the way to the bathroom to get my transaction done.

But this year was the first time I was actually able to do it inside the watchtower. But going to my work from my workspace at home, doing my, my artwork, not knowing where my dolls are going to end up. Who's going to, you know, I can't predict where they're going to be.

So, you know, when I do these shows, people that approach me, the reactions, the feelings, you know, that I get pays off. And plus, you know, it pays bills and daily life, you know, to live in society. But that's the most rewarding thing that I could ask for is, you know, just meeting the people, experiencing the places that I've been, eating the foods.

And, you know, it's just been wonderful. And, you know, I don't I don't want to stop. But with me being a self-employed, you know, you get to manage your own time schedule.

You know, I don't want to work today. I want to spend time with my kids. I want to take them.

I want to take them to the zoo. I'm able to do that. But, you know, at the beginning, you know, it was kind of, you know, unpredictable if you were going to make it through the show, if you were going to have income.

And then when COVID hit, you know, that was a very scary time because being self-employed, I wasn't able to rely on the check coming. It wasn't guaranteed. Then, you know, friendships was the real big thing that really got me out of it.

And I'm really thankful for that, for the people that I've met. I feel like I owe them a lot for helping me and getting me through those hard times. And right now, you know, you still kind of feel the effects of it.

But now I think it's trending to a good, you know, the economy is not very well, but, you know, people are still out there. They're buying and then, you know, things are looking good and I'm happy.

[Ranger Dawn]

That's wonderful. I love that you like grounded yourself in gratitude and that things are looking up for you. Well, it was so wonderful talking to you and getting to know you.

Yeah. Thank you so much. Everyone want to give a hand for this.

[Ranger Jonah]

Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal lived experiences of tribal members and do not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the National Park.

To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices, visit www.nps.gov/GRCA. Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon. These being the Havasupai Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.

In this episode, Ranger Dawn sat down with Darance “Makwesa” Chimerica about being a kachina doll carver for over 26 years. He provides some insight into how it’s been a journey of challenges but also many accomplishments. He also speaks on his involvement with the Hopitutskwa Permaculture as a board member.

Tags: grand canyon speaks, grand canyon first voices, hopi

Episode 19

Caroline Wilson Speaks

Transcript

Transcript

Caroline Wilson Speaks

[Caroline]

I tell my grandkids and my kids, I said, you can't dwell on what things that might have happened to you, what happened to your people a long time ago. It'll just bring you down. So now, you have to look forward.

Look for the good. Only for the good. Yes, remember your history, but look ahead.

That's what I teach the young people and those that I love.

[Meranden]

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Meranden.

[Ranger Eliana]

And I'm Ranger Eliana.

[Meranden]

In this episode, Ranger Dan spoke with Grand Canyon Conservancy employee, Caroline Wilson, about what it was like growing up at Grand Canyon with her grandparents.

[Ranger Eliana]

She describes what her childhood was like, from carting wool with her grandma to spending her high school summers working at the hotels in the Grand Canyon village and the town of Tusayan.

[Meranden]

She also talks about some very interesting delicacies you can find on the Navajo reservation.

[Ranger Eliana]

As always, thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Season 2 has been filled with so many amazing episodes, and we're glad to be sharing them with you all.

[Meranden]

And here is Caroline Wilson.

[Caroline]

Hey. Good evening, everybody. My name is Caroline Wilson.

Bighorse is my maiden name. First of all, I'm an elder. I call myself an elder of my people and of my family.

So I'm a grandmother, a mother, and a wife. So it's good to look at people and know who you're talking to. And I figured that's what I would do this evening.

So how many of you know about the Navajo people? Okay. So I want to teach you a word.

Some of my coworkers already know the word. In the South Pacific during World War II, they used our language, the code talker language. And I want to teach you one word, and that way we'll greet one another.

How's that? And so this is not a code word, but it's a greeting word, okay? So I'm going to say it to you, and I want you to say it to me, okay?

Yá'át'ééh. Yá'át'ééh. One more time.

Yá'át'ééh. Yá'át'ééh. Nice to meet all of you also.

And welcome to the Grand Canyon. And I so appreciate Dan for being here. He's kind of a support, and also my coworkers.

Thank you for your support (Speaks Navajo). So it's very nice. The canyon is a blessing to me right now.

I was working at another place, and I was kind of stagnated in my job. I wanted to do something else. And for some reason, I was looking through the newspaper one day, and I saw a conservancy ad in there.

And I didn't know what a conservancy was. I didn't know the meaning. And as I have come to learn what the meaning is about, it's to raise funds for the Grand Canyon.

And in a way that we sell products here at the Watchtower, and 84% of that money goes back into programs that are made available to you that visit us here every day. And I so appreciated that. And I've been here for probably 2 years and 4 months, going on 5 months.

So it's a wonderful place, and I'm sure you agree with me because you're here today to experience this awesome site. And Dan was asking me, what is it that you gained from knowing about the National Park? When I was young, I remember one experience when I was young, maybe around 6 or 7.

My grandfather, he was a medicine man. And he would go out and gather herbs. I didn't know what they were.

So my grandma and him, my grandma and my grandpa, for some reason, I just got in and we came up here. I don't remember which area. And then I followed them.

I guess he was looking for a certain herb. And even though I was really young, I noticed the reverence that he had. And so he went to a certain bush, and then he stood there for a bit and he said a prayer.

And then he finally knelt down on the ground and he reverently took some of those herbs out of the ground. And then he showed me without telling me that this is how you treat plants, especially the ones that you're going to use in ceremonies, and maybe the type that maybe you're going to eat also. And so I remember that to this day.

And then my grandmother, she was a practitioner also. She also gathered herbs. In Navajo, they call her a (Navajo word).

It means to bring children into the world. It wasn't a job because she just knew what to do. And so back in the day, they didn't have hospitals.

And so sometimes a mother would have difficulty giving birth, and then they would send for her. And then she would use these herbs to relieve the pain, and she was able to turn babies also. This was my grandmother Grace.

And so I feel inadequate right now because I didn't learn those things from her. I wasn't able to spend 24 hours with her for the last 67 years, but I was able to appreciate what she did and how I was able to experience her teachings. She was also a weaver also.

And so these are two great people that I've known when I was little. So I'm sharing that with you. It's very personal.

My mother. My mother is Julia Curley, and there's 10 of us that she raised. I'm the second to the oldest.

My brother is the oldest, and then I have siblings. One of them is sitting right here. And so very awesome lady.

When we were little, we didn't have a vehicle to get around, and I didn't know at the time that we were very poor. We didn't know that, or I didn't know that. So the way to get to the hospital, to the grocery stores, we'd go on the road and hitchhike, and then somebody would just pick us up and then take us to the grocery store or to the hospital.

And then that's what I remember. We would either live in a hogan, a tent, or maybe just a shed structure. At that time, we would move with our livestock, my grandparents' livestock.

And Dan was asking me about that. And here, up in the high desert, it doesn't rain constantly, and sometimes you'll have a drought for maybe two years. So you had to move where the water was, where the feed for your animals were.

So we moved great distances, and that's why we lived like a nomadic life. But there was a lot to learn. My grandmother wove, so I must have been about five.

She would say, Here, I want you to card this wool. Here, I'm just a little kid. And the carding things are about this big.

And so you'd be sitting there carding and scratching your arm. But it was something that you'd learn. And you would make a pile of it, and she would look at it.

And she would pick this one out, and then she'd say, Redo these. And you would be sitting there with your arms scratched up. But it was a learning experience.

From carding wool, then you did the spinning. You would sit there, and you would spin the wool. I only got to that point.

I didn't learn to weave. Thank goodness. I mean, there are other people that are really good weavers, but I didn't learn.

So at the age of 10, my mother was introduced to a religion. Missionaries came to see her. I'm not sure why she did it, but I'm sure she probably saw an opportunity where her kids could be educated.

And so we were sent away to school to Southern California, to Los Angeles and San Diego. That's where we learned to speak English fluently. That's how we learned to mingle with everybody.

We lived with different families, but the families that I stayed with, they were my second family. And I appreciate what they did for me, and it made me the person that I am today.

[Ranger Dan]

Thank you for that, Caroline. Those are great words and excellent things for people to understand. Just growing up, you've had so many experiences that you just mentioned.

We could touch upon all of that tonight, and you'd be here until the moon is out and over the horizon. You were talking about how long your family's been in this area earlier. We got back into the 1800s, talking about your great-grandparents.

You're stable today. You're in one location, right? But your great-grandparents, they moved. They moved across this landscape. Can you tell everyone how they moved across this landscape?

[Caroline]

Sure. So the Navajo people, they're a matrilineal society. Everything goes through the ladies, through the women. So our clan system stays with the women.

It goes through the daughters. So they're the ones that are the owners of their land, whatever property that they have. The men, they come in, become part of the family.

And so in the old traditions, the uncles, they're the ones that taught the young ones, the mother's brothers. They're the ones that would teach the offsprings of the mom. The dad was basically there for support and to bring, you know, good things to the family.

And that's what the Navajo people are about. So after the long walk, they were able to go home. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but there was a time that the Navajos were gathered up.

They were incarcerated at a place called Bosque Redondo, New Mexico. And they were there for close to six years. And I think there was possibly maybe around 3,500 left of our people.

And they were finally allowed to go home. And they did a treaty with the United States government. And from there, they were allowed to go home.

And this is our homeland here. But some of our people, they weren't rounded up. Guess where they ended up?

Down here. They hid from the soldiers. And they lived most of their time down here.

And once the treaty was signed, then they were able to come out. And they say, well, we were never caught. But there were a lot that were.

And my grandmother on my grandfather's side, she was 10 years old when she walked all the way to Fort Sumner, New Mexico. That's where it is. And so a lot of our people did that.

And so once they were back at their homeland, I think the government, through the treaties, they were given livestock. And they were given different things. And so from there, they rebuilt themselves.

And at the time of my grandmother, she was my grandmother, Grace's grandmother. They called her a (Navajo word). So she had very light-colored hair.

Anyway, she was the only sister to six brothers. So you can imagine the clanship went through her, and a lot of the things went through her. So she was pretty well off.

And so at the time when she was probably in her prime, she had over 2,400 herds of sheep and horses. At that time, they didn't have cattle. And so you can imagine 2,400 sheep, what they eat, and how much water that they needed.

So the people that had that kind of wealth and livestock, they had to travel great distances to find water and feed. And so they could go as far as San Francisco Peaks, all the way into probably southern Utah, all the way into Farmington. So they were able to roam where they were able to take their sheep.

There was no restriction. It wasn't until later that they had to go be only in their area. And so she was able to do that, and she had family members that would help her with that.

And how they used that. You're considered wealthy when you have that much, you know. And Dan asked me what type of monetary, how did they use that.

Did they use money? Did they use, you know? No, they used what they had.

So yearly, spring lambs were taken to the trading post, and the trading post owner would buy those from them, and then they would cart them off wherever they sell that. Sheep wool was very expensive. They would have hundreds of people go from one sheep camp to the other, just shearing, shearing.

It's hard to do. I've done it. My sister just did that for her sister a while ago.

My back won't allow me, but it is very hard. But they used to fill gunny sacks taller than way up here, and then they would go and take those to market, and they would get money for that. And a lot of them, my people were good silversmiths, and they're still well known for that.

The women, well known for their weaving. And all the women that I knew in my family, the older ones, they all wove, and so they would get money from that. And so they were very industrious people when they were at that time.

And I think we still are, even though I don't weave, even though I don't have silversmithing, even though I don't have sheep. I made it my goal to work, and I feel that that's part of the continuing self-sufficiency. Do it for your family.

I have four daughters, my husband Albert. I have ten grandkids. My husband worked for Peabody Coal Company.

They had a coal mine over here at Black Mesa. He worked there for close to 40 years. And so my daughters, they would say, I want to be a welder like my dad.

And then my dad goes, no, that's not a good place for a woman. And guess what they did? They're welders.

And so, yeah, that's what they do, and that's how they support themselves and their families. And so there's not, jobs are not available. As you can see, we have to come all the way out here.

So my son-in-laws, they're also welders or iron workers. So they go as far as Phoenix. It's Utah, sometimes as far as Wyoming, Montana, where jobs, good jobs are available.

So that's why they do it. So that's where we learn to be self-sufficient.

[Ranger Dan]

So you're talking about self-sufficiency, industrialization, being industrious and taking things into your own hands and making something out of it. I mean, like, you were handed wool at five years old and told to cart it, and you're making a product at that point. But you told me earlier that in order to kind of get an escape, but it also was on that self-sufficiency side that the kids from Cameron would come up to the canyon here, work in the hotels or the restaurants, and do some part-time jobs like flipping beds and doing whatever else.

What was that time like to come up here?

[Caroline]

That was high school years. When you want to be away from your parents and get into things you're not supposed to get into. So I think I started around my junior year, and I had a bunch of friends at Cameron.

I said, let's go do something. And so we hitchhiked to the village and then to Tusayan, and we were hired right away to be bussers. And they gave us a room there, and we stayed in a dorm.

And that's what we did all summer long. We probably made about $500. But hey, that's money.

So you buy maybe a pair of pants or a shirt or something nice. And we did that every summer when we were free. It was a way to get away from our parents and just have fun.

And so a lot of us were bussers. Some of them helped the maids take the sheets off the beds. And then in the evening we would take off, and we knew young people would be at the movies or they would have that in the village there.

And that was a fun time.

[Ranger Dan]

Yeah, it's part of the community at that point. It's the community of Cameron. It's the community up here as well.

And yeah, there are great ties for everyone to come up here. So out of curiosity, did you work at the El Tovar ever, the Bright Angel, the hotels on the rim of the canyon?

[Caroline]

We did one stint at the El Tovar. They had a dorm right there behind the El Tovar where they would house the kids. And then one of my friends says, let's go to Tusayan.

Let's go over there and do some bussing. They give good tips over there. And guess where we went?

We went over there. Yeah, cool.

[Ranger Dan]

Yeah, I hope the people at the El Tovar are getting good tips now. It's the swanky hotel up here on the rim of the canyon. So your time frame here has changed as it's gone on.

You've become stationary. You've had the family. You've grown in this space here, but also traveled at the same time, like going out to California, being educated.

Do you feel your views on this area, your perspective has changed as time has gone on?

[Caroline]

Oh, yes, uh-huh. I believe it has. So when you're young, when you're really young, you have the influence of your grandparents and your parents, and they teach you up to a certain point.

But as you get a little bit older and you're a teenager, then you have another perspective, and then you learn things, maybe things that you shouldn't learn, you know. But that's a great lesson too, you know. And you say, well, I'm not going to do that again, you know, those type of things.

And then now, I've been working for quite a few years, and I do have a different perspective. I may not be as traditional as most Navajos because I have teachings that were given to me from a lot of people, not just my own family. And you choose your path.

It's not bad, you know. You choose what people have taught you. And I try to teach my daughters and my grandkids, but they're still going to make that choice, whether they want to be traditional or nontraditional or maybe semi, you know, whatever they want to do.

Maybe they'll carry both traditions. And so I have grandkids that are, their ancestry, they're part German. And a lot of the Navajo people, the world has opened up to them.

And what we've been taught as kids, the kids, you know, they don't take that and use it. They go their own way. That's why we have a lot of in-laws from all over the world.

And they live on our land, and our people have moved to New York City. They live in the Caribbean. They live in Hawaii.

Some of them even, my granddaughter, she's in the Navy right now. She's somewhere in France. So she goes, I can't tell you, it's a secret.

[Ranger Dan]

And the postcard's redacted.

[Caroline]

But her name is Caitlin, and now she's traveling the world, things that I didn't do. I don't like airplanes. So my kids wanted to take me to Hawaii.

I said, you're going to have to put me to sleep to go over there. But anyway, that's how it is nowadays. And my grandparents used to say, you marry your own kind.

Don't marry outside your tribe. And it didn't work. And that's why we have so many people that we live with here in this area, people of other nations.

And I'm sure at one time we were enemies. We didn't like each other. We killed each other, you know.

There was a time that that's how it was. And all over the world, that's like that. There's a time you become who you are, and through your teachings, you look at people a different way.

And it's good that you're able to do that. And that's why I love being here. I get to meet people from all over the world.

Your humanity starts showing, you know. Because when you're a minority like I am, I've experienced a lot of racism. It's a hard thing to deal with.

But you also meet a lot of good people out there. And I tell my grandkids and my kids, I said, you can't dwell on what things that might have happened to you, what happened to your people a long time ago. It'll just bring you down.

So now you have to look forward, look for the good, only for the good. Yes, remember your history, but look ahead. That's what I teach the young people and those that I love.

[Ranger Dan]

I think, yeah. (Applause) Thank you. I think your teachings go beyond your family.

I like to say we've got the Grand Canyon family up here as well. And so learning from you and from Marian, I learn something every day. And so those teachings go beyond just your family.

It might not be said outright, but with the staff here at the park, yeah, we learn a lot from both of you every day up here at the canyon. And we're very proud to call you all family and friends. Awesome.

Thank you. And some of these lessons, we talk a lot about food. If you hang out with me, you'll learn that I like to talk about food.

So if you spend time out here, you get to know that there are certain things that are like delicacies in the area. And we brought one up today. I have not had it yet, but I think people need to learn about Piccadilly a little bit here just to get a little flavor of what a treat this is in the surrounding communities.

[Caroline]

Anybody know about Piccadilly? How many of you like pickles? How many of you like Kool-Aid?

How many of you like snow cones? All right. So they combine all that into a treat, plus the pickles.

And that's a Piccadilly of the Navajo Nation. And gummy candy. And when I first tasted it, I wasn't too sure.

And I'm like, oh, gosh. And after a while, it tasted okay. And then now I'll have it every other week.

So see this tree right here? This is a juniper tree. So some of them already have the berries on there.

They're edible when they turn purple. So it's a native food. So what we do with that is you can crush it, dry it, and use it in a porridge.

Or you can just plop it in your mouth and eat it if you want to. And so you can take the little nubs, like the leaves, you burn that into an ash. And then you put it in your cereal with corn.

Or you can take coffee. You can do that with cornmeal, too. And it's a type of delicacy that we have that we use in our foods.

So if you look up here, up here, this is a pinyon pine tree. Do you see the little nubs on there? That's going to produce the pinyon pine nuts.

And we're going to have a good crop this fall. It's very hard on the knees because you have to get down on your knees and pick up the pine nuts. That's another storage food.

You would gather those in the fall and store it. And that was another way to survive the winter. So just a few of the foods that Dan is talking about.

There are so many. So I want to share one experience that I had while I was out pinyon picking. Oh, I love to pick pinyons.

I'm one of the first ones there. So one morning I called my mother. I said, Mom, can you go pinyon picking with me?

And she goes, No, I'm busy. So I'm calling around to people, and then I found my uncle's wife. Her name is Eileen.

She goes, Yeah, yeah, yeah. She talks really fast. She goes, Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's go.

So it took us like 30 minutes to get everything together, and we took off. There's a place right over here. There's big pinyon trees.

So we went over there. We got there around 8.30, and we just immediately just started picking pinyons. Then around 1 o'clock, let's take a break.

Let's eat some lunch. So we took out our Vienna sausage and crackers, and we had that for lunch. As we were finishing up, I said, Eileen, let's move the truck over here, maybe 200 yards.

So she said okay, so she took off again. So I got in my vehicle, and I moved the truck away. I was getting out of my vehicle, and I heard 2 girls talking.

It was coming from the east, and there's a road that goes along the side of the forest. I thought, I wonder who's parked over there. When they were talking, I couldn't make out the language.

I said, I wonder who is that? I stood there waiting for them to come out of the woods. Then curiosity got the best of me, so I went out there, and I started walking up a little ways.

Then I kind of had this tingling on my back. I said, oh my gosh, what is that? Then they never came out.

Then I looked around. Before I started picking pinons, I walked maybe a half a mile around radius to see where I could find the big ones. So I looked around where I walked.

I didn't see anything. I said, I wonder if they came before we came. Then I'm standing there, and then again I heard the two girls talking, two young girls.

They were laughing. I thought, who are they? I said, hello, and there was no answer.

Then I just thought, wow. While I was doing the check in the morning, I came upon some ruins. They look like this, but a smaller version, just to the east.

They were the old ruins that you see out in the forest. So I said, Eileen, come back, because I kind of got, it got a little bit eerie after that. So the only thing that I could come to about that experience was they were people that lived there before.

They were laughing and talking and walking and talking with each other. I didn't meet them, but I heard them. So that was my experience I wanted to share with you.

So you are in their land. They used to live here, and now we do.

[Ranger Dan]

. This place is home to the people now, and also before, but also for the people in the future.

[Caroline]

Exactly.

[Ranger Dan]

This is a place to be preserved and cared about, and it's wonderful to see that come through with you every single day, working here at the Watchtower and for the Conservancy, because as you've expressed here, working with them is doing the good things that you like to see preserved here and help to protect this place altogether. Completely agree with you. So for a final question here for you, when they come here, and this is also to park staff, anybody who comes here, one thing they should remember about this landscape?

[Caroline]

Just what you're talking about. Don't litter. My grandfather used to say the high places are sacred places.

And I think every place is, when you really think about it, but they would go up into high places and say their prayers. That's what I consider here. This is sacred ground to me, and anywhere on the rez when I go, I envision that.

So I want my great-great-grandchildren to come here and see what you see. And so let us all take care of the National Parks. What a great legacy we're going to have when we do that.

That's my takeaway from that.

[Ranger Dan]

Thank you very much, Caroline. Thank you.

[Ranger Jonah]

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Grand Canyon Speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy. A special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music. This recording reflects the personal, lived experiences of tribal members and do not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the National Park.

To learn more about Grand Canyon First Voices, visit www.nps.gov/GRCA. Here at Grand Canyon National Park, we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon. These being the Havasupai Tribe, the Hualapai Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe.

In this episode, Ranger Dan spoke with GCC employee Caroline Wilson about her experiences growing up at Grand Canyon with her grandparents. She shares how her Diné culture has played an important role throughout her life and even mentioned some tasty snacks you can find around the Navajo reservation.

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