Grand Canyon Speaks (U.S. National Park Service)

Episodes

Season 2

Episode 15

Davis Coonsis Speaks

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.

Episode 16

Ed Kabotie Speaks

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.

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.

Episode 17

Chris Lewis Speaks

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.

Episode 18

Darance Chimerica Speaks

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.

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.

Episode 19

Caroline Wilson Speaks

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.

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.

Episode 20

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd Speaks

Transcript

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd Speaks

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: We are probably, probably like the very least important thing in this life. The very, and, and we think that we humans, we think that we're important.

Ranger Dan: Yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: We think that we're above the four-legged and the winged ones and the plant life and all that. We're not. We're not.

Ranger Mark: Hello and welcome back to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Ranger Mark.

Ranger Grace: And I'm Ranger Grace.

Ranger Mark: This episode is with Rosabelle Shepard. She is a fifth generation Diné silversmith and in this episode, she talks to Ranger Dan about her relationship to her craft.

Ranger Grace: They had to record this episode inside the Desert View Watchtower because several thunderstorms were rolling through the area. Rosabelle shares how her silversmithing work pulls from important elements like clouds, rain, thunder, and lightning.

Ranger Mark: She also talks about her family. She grew up watching her father silversmith, and now her grandson is learning the practice. So, enjoy listening to Rosabelle in this episode and thanks for tuning in.

[Music]

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: (Speaks Diné). Normally, that's how Navajo people introduce themselves. We would say, we would give our greeting of yá'at'ééh. And some people say that means hello. I guess it could, but in our language, yá' is the universe, e'éh is ourself, and t'ééh is Mother Earth.

So when we use that greeting, we are acknowledging the universe, our father, ourselves, and Mother Earth. So it's kind of like, maybe like a blessing. So that's what yá'at'ééh means.

And then we say our name and always we introduce our clan. We introduce our mother's clan first, our father's clan, our maternal grandparents, and then paternal. So those four, we actually recite.

And then that's really our way of like building kinship among, you know, other Diné people. And then I just said that I'm originally from a place called (speaks Diné). And really, that's my middle name.

And (speaks Diné) is really from my grandfather, a place that he brought the family to during the summer for their livestock. It's actually a canyon, the Blue Canyon. And he brought the family there. And in the canyon, there were cottonwood trees. And they're still there. And he knew that there was water there.

And so he started digging around underneath the cottonwood, and he actually came upon a spring. And so when he found that spring, later on, the government came in and they built a well, a pump well. So we would go down there in the summer, and we would, you know, pump water for our sheep and our horses and our cattle.

And it had, like, a cement trough. And so, when he did that, and they named that place (speaks Diné) is actually cottonwood trees, and (speaks Diné) means underneath, and then tó is water.

And so they named my grandfather Isi'at'óni. So from that name is how, you know, when the census people came in, and they would ask the Navajo people, you know, what is your name? What is your last name? And we don't have any of that. And so they went and gave my mother's last name is (speaks Diné).

And so that's where that name comes from, (speaks Diné). And I use it in my signature. So my signature will be Teesyatoh Shepherd.

And then my silversmithing actually came from my father. So I always, you know, honor him by using my last name Shepherd. But that's, that's where I come from and that's who I am.

Ranger Dan: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Rosabell Teesyatoh Shepherd: Lengthy, huh?

Ranger Dan: It's good. It's a good intro. I wish I had kind of like a, an intro like that. I'm Dan from Minnesota. The land of many lakes. Like, that's about it kind of right there. We really like ranch dressing and casseroles and hot dish. But you already touched upon a little bit of like what your father used to do for silversmithing.

And as a cultural demonstrator for eight years here, you have been demonstrating your skill as a silversmith and you told me today that you kind of picked it up a little bit later in life, right?

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: I did. I waited till I was 40. Being stubborn.

Ranger Dan: Yeah. Yeah. But it doesn't show that like, it shows that you have been doing this longer than since you've been 40. Like, it's very polished. It's very clean. And it holds true. It really does as an art form.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Yeah. I, I had been around silversmithing really all my life. I remember about four years old, I would sit and watch my father silversmith. And I would watch my father, I would be playing outside and I would watch my father going back and forth to the Hogan.

And I would look up every now and then, and I'd see him, you know, come out, take something in. And then about 30 minutes later, he'd come over to where I was playing and he would say, ‘come and watch me silversmith’. And so I would go into the Hogan with him and he had an open fire going.

And he had a little blanket over here on the side and that was for me to sit. So I was like four years old and I would sit there and I don't, I don't remember like being bored or wanting to, you know, leave. And he would explain his process of what he was doing. And in that time, you know, our men were really silversmithing the old way where they would actually melt silver coins.

They would actually melt it and then they would pour it. And then they would take that and they would be hammering on it. And my father had a railroad tie and it was probably about that long because it's nice and polished.

And then the open fire was used for that melted silver strip that he, you know, melted. And he would take prongs and he would stick it in the open fire to reheat it up. And then I remember that metal being like pinkish and he'd bring it out and he'd pound, pound, pound, turn it around, pound, stick it back in, in the open flame.

So he was explaining to me what he was doing. So I actually watched him, you know, work like that.

I'm like right in the middle of five brothers, two older brothers and three younger brothers. And I was the only girl in the middle. So my brothers were actually silversmithing when they were teenagers. My older brothers were silversmithing by the time they were like 13 and 14.

And then my younger brothers, they were, I remember my youngest brother being like nine years old and he was like using a buffer. I mean, that thing is like, that thing's like dangerous!

Ranger Dan: You're talking the buffing wheel? On a motor?

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Yeah, that, you know, spinning, yeah.

And the last, and he was -- the last two were buffers and I remember watching them work like that. So I was, you know, around silversmithing throughout my life. And I didn't, I didn't even touch it till I was like 40.

My brothers were the ones that, you know, kept, you know, telling me, you know, ‘you need to do what we're doing’. You know, I was working, you know, a regular job and, and they would always, you know, comment to me, you know, ‘why are you like running your life down for the government? You know, you need to do what we're doing’. I got so tired of hearing that because I'd be like so tired from work and, and then they would start, you know, and so one day I just like stood up and I just said, you know, I can't do that.

And my older brother, you know, grabbed me by my shoulder and he kind of like shook me. And he said, ‘what do you mean you don't know how to do this? You grew up with it!’ And that's what made me start thinking.

I started thinking about it. And within like six months, I actually, like, made, you know, made a decision that I was going to do it. And I like actually changed my life around and I actually left the public health and, and I started, I started.

And when I started, it was, it was just like so easy. I knew what to do. I knew what process to do.

And I didn't even have to like go to them and say, you know, well, what do I do now? You know. I knew the process. I seen the process. My thinking, my, you know, like the designs that I wanted to do, you know, were like constantly in my head. And even now after, after 20, I, I'm going to be starting my 26th year in silversmithing.

And even now my mind is still like that. I still want to create. I still, you know, can see, can look at something and, and I have another idea that I could like add on to it. I'm still good.

Ranger Dan: Yeah! Excellent! Yeah!

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: At Jewelry making.

Do you, do you fall asleep silversmithing? Do you just like hear the pounding of the hammer on the stump and like shaping the silver, creating rounds?

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: I know Ariel sometimes will say, ‘I just love that sound of when you're cutting’, you know, and most people, when you're cutting, it makes that like screeching noise and it can make you like kind of shiver.

Ranger Dan: Yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: And she always says, ‘I love that cutting noise that goes on, you know, all day long’.

Ranger Dan: Yeah. She would like that noise. Yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: And then the stamping noise, you know, boom, boom! My family's used to it. I've never heard any of my family complain.

They did say, ‘take your worktable, can you put your worktable in your room?’ I was like, no, I'm going to keep it here in the dining room and kitchen area.

And it's still there.

Ranger Dan: Yeah. Nice.

That's good. So you talk about, you're still thinking about new ways to create pieces, to add in different patterns or try something brand new. Where do you find inspiration for your work and what do you normally incorporate into it?

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: My work is really based on, you know, all the designs that I do really are based on elements. Elements that are very important to, you know, the Diné people, the Navajo people. The majority of my designs are going to be rain clouds, rain, plant life, lightning. Those really are the designs that I use and it's my way of acknowledging the elements.

You know, my parents, my grandparents, my ancestors, they lived a life where they gave offerings and did their prayers three times a day: early in the morning, midday, and sunset. Those three times of the day were when they made their offerings and their prayers and these prayers and offerings were made to the elements. And sometimes I think, man, you know, that's a lot.

You know, I fall short on that. You know, I'm not able, you know, to keep that, what do you, ritual or --

Ranger Dan: Devotion?

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: you know, I fall short on it. So, I figured that, you know what, when I'm working is going to be my time of giving acknowledgement.

Ranger Dan: Yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: And so, when I'm working, I, you know, in my way, you know, I'm giving acknowledgement to the elements. I feel better about that because I think a lot of the, you know, like my generation and younger, we've lost that regiment of, you know, the praying three times a day.

Ranger Dan: Yeah. Yeah. But it's also comforting to know that your work for 26 years now is being worn all around the world. I mean, you're here at the canyon, people from all over, our folks from Germany here. I mean, like, if you want to buy something, it'd be tomorrow. But it's, I mean, there's folks that are wearing your work and it's that acknowledgement that is then going around the world too. To different places, to different countries, to different cultures. And so, it's there.

It might not be three times a day, but it's every day. It's constantly, which is really cool to think about because before people were just here. Now we're really expanding and going all over.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: That’s true.

Ranger Dan: So, I think you're doing a fantastic job.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Thank you. Thank you, Dan.

Ranger Dan: Yeah. And so, with the elements too, I think they really came through today because we've had two massive thunderstorms come through Desert View. And when we were talking today earlier, you were mentioning what you grew up with for having to acknowledge these storms with your family.

Can you tell us what that was like?

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: So, how I grew up, I was telling Dan today, you know, like when it started to rain and people, you know, ended up being stuck in here, you know, everybody sat down. And I mentioned to my grandson, I said, you know, this is what we're supposed to do when it rains. We're supposed to actually sit down.

The way I grew up was anytime it was, you know, it would start to rain, you know, my brothers and I wanted to like run around in the rain. And my father would always, you know, ‘come in, come in right now, right now!’ And we'd have to go into the hogan and we would have to sit.

I mean, we had to sit. And we'd sit around, you know, in a circle. And my father would always say, ‘you are not supposed to be running around’.

You're not supposed to be, you know, even, we couldn't even like drink water or eat. We would just sit there and we would revere the rain. So, we would all get herded in and we'd sit there, you know, 30 minutes, 40 minutes.

And after it would stop raining, then my father would say, okay, you can go out and play in the water. And I remember during the summers, my brothers and I would herd sheep all day. We'd come home and my mother would have, you know, dinner for us.

We'd eat and we'd, you know, maybe stay up for an hour or so. And then we would be so tired that, you know, we were ready to, you know, go to sleep. And we would fall asleep.

And then in the middle of the night, like midnight, one o'clock, two o'clock, it would start raining. And my father would ‘wake up, wake up. You're not supposed to be laying down when it's raining’.

So, rain is actually sacred. It's a sacred movement and we're supposed to acknowledge it and revere it. And so, in the middle of the night, you know, we would all have to wake up and we would have to sit, sit and just, you know, we could talk a little bit, you know, but, you know, we couldn't like go back to sleep or lay back down.

And I would think, man, I am so tired. And we kind of drift off and my father would, you know, ‘don't sleep. You're not supposed to sleep’.

So, it was actually our way of revering it, revering the element of rain. I was telling Dan that anything of the cosmic nature too is actually a sacred movement. We cannot be in like the eclipse.

We can't be in it. We can't view it. We have to go inside our homes and, you know, close our curtain.

We can't see that darkness because it's sacred. So, things like that, you know, I still observe and I want my children to observe it and I want my grandchildren to observe it. And I hope that, you know, they, you know, with their own children and grandchildren, they'll, you know, keep, you know, observing it because it's really important.

It's very important. These elements are actually, they have so much power that we cannot acknowledge, you know, we can't turn away from it. They have so much power, you know, that without these elements, you know, we wouldn't even be living.

We wouldn't even be living. So, that's how important elements are to the Navajo people.

Ranger Dan: Yeah, they're integral.

And I remember you saying that you can't say a bad thing about them as well.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Yeah, you know, like, ‘ah’, you know, ‘I hate that wind’ and stuff like that. I always tell my kids, don't, you know, you're not supposed to say that.

‘Oh man, the rain's coming down again. I hate it when it’, no, no, don't say that. Don't say that.

Don't, you know, you don't talk ill of the elements.

Ranger Dan: It's all interconnected in some, in some fashion.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: It is. We are probably, probably like the very least important thing in this life. The very, and, and we think that we humans, we think that we're important.

Ranger Dan: Yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: We think that we're above the four-legged and the winged ones and the plant life and all that. We're not. We're not.

Ranger Dan: We all coexist.

Yeah. And so like your, your work, it reflects what your upbringings have been. It might not be as stringent as like your family observed growing up, but it's in your work and it has a place for sure.

And now when you're demonstrating here, you have Sage with you as well.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: My, my oldest grandson.

Ranger Dan: Yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: My oldest grandson is now 29 and at 20, he wanted to learn what I was doing. And immediately we sat down and started and I started teaching him, you know, everything that I know, everything that I know, you know. I, I, I've been teaching him and I'm waiting for, I want all my grandchildren to know. I want, I want them to at least try it once or twice. If they can just do that, you know, I would, I would be okay with it.

Ranger Dan: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's really cool to know as well that you are a fifth generation silversmith and now Sage is the seventh generation silversmith as well.

But you also mentioned that, are you the only...?

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: I, I might be the only female in, in my family that is a female silversmith. Because I never heard my father speak of, you know, any like, my grandmother, you know, none of them, you know, silversmith.

And so I might be. And if I am, I'm, I, I'm, I'm like, ‘cool, Rosabelle’.

Ranger Dan: It's pretty neat. It's awesome.

It's your work. It's your standalone. It's your mark and your family.

It holds, which is really, really cool to think about. But what does it, what does it mean for you to be here with Sage, seeing him be the seventh generation silversmith?

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: I, I feel complete. I really do because I have at least one grandson who is interested and who has the ability and the capability to do it because he has that creative bug in him.

Ranger Dan: Yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: In my old age, I'm happy with that. That I know that at least I have one grandson who is going to carry it on. And, and even now when he talks, he'll, when we have, you know, like our little conversations, you know, ‘I, I want my son, Zayden and Ry-Ry to, you know, learn silversmithing’. I said, ‘don't forget about your daughter too’.

So he already has in his mind that he wants them to learn that trade.

Ranger Dan: Oh, that's neat.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Yeah.

Ranger Dan: That's great.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Yeah.

Ranger Dan: It lives on.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Yeah.

Ranger Dan: That's, that's beautiful. We know, we know you still got some years ahead, right? For the silversmith in here.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: I hope so. Some day I'll be hammering and I'm thinking, how much longer do you think I'm going to be hammering like this? I mean, a three pound hammer?

Ranger Dan: It's a lot to swing repeatedly. Yeah. Yeah. That's a whole lot.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: It's not just like tapping. It's like, boom, you know, and I'm, and then I'm at the buffing machine too. And I'm hanging on to my jewelry while I'm polishing it.

And then I think, dang, you know, I wonder how much longer I'm going to be doing this.

Ranger Dan: Yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Because I'm beginning to feel the aches.

Ranger Dan: Okay.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Yeah. The muscles after working. Yeah. Before, you know, I hardly felt it, but now even from sitting, when I get up, you know, I'm like creaking. I'm stooped over until I straighten up.

Ranger Dan: and everything just pop, pop, pops right into place.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: And I think, man, I wonder how much, do you think I'm going to be silversmithing at 70? But I met one of my, um, old, old friends that I know. He silversmiths and he's like 85. And so I greeted him and I, and clan wise, he's my father. And I said, [speaks Diné].

‘Hey father, you know, what are you doing?’ He goes, ‘oh, I'm just out and about today trying to sell my work’. And I'm like, ‘are you still silversmithing?’ He goes, ‘yeah, yeah. I'm still silversmithing’.

And he told me, he goes, ‘when I first started and I was silversmithing’, he goes, ‘daughter, I've even been to Japan’.

Ranger Dan: Oh, cool.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: This is like 1950, 1960!

Ranger Dan: Yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Yeah. ‘I've been to Japan. I sold my work out there’.

Ranger Dan: That's cool.

Rosabelle Shepherd: Holy cow.

Ranger Dan: Yeah. I think, I definitely think you’ve got some demonstrations ahead of you for sure. More time to be back here at the Canyon and yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: I'll see.

Ranger Dan: Well, whenever you do come back in the future, bring the rain again, because we will, uh, we will gladly welcome it. Yeah.

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: Yeah. It's good. The rain is good.

Ranger Dan: Absolutely. Well, thank you very much, Rosabelle, for participating tonight. And it's always a pleasure to have you out here. It's great to see Sage as well.

When, uh, he's demonstrating and seeing his work come so far by spending time with you and seeing his work just get polished up and yeah. So I can see the aspect of you feeling complete in, in all of this being passed on. I think that's really neat to see.

Thank you very much. Yeah. And have a wonderful safe evening tonight, folks, and watch out for storms while you're here at Grand Canyon.

So thank you.

[Applause]

Rosabelle Teesyatoh Shepherd: I had, I had a customer one time I was, um, I was swinging my, um, hammer and he walks by and he says, a woman with that, a woman with a big hammer like that scares me.

[Laughter]

Outro: 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, listen to Rosabelle Shepherd speak with Ranger Dan about her experience as a Diné silversmith. She shares stories from her childhood, the inspiration for her work, and how she hopes the younger members of her family will give silversmithing a try.

Episode 21

April Unkestine Speaks

Transcript

April Unkestine: Whenever you see an artist, remember that, you know, it wasn't machine-made. It was something that they made from their heart, something that, you know, they put a lot of effort in working on and be appreciative.

Ranger Annie: Yeah, appreciative.

Lakin: Hello and welcome back to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Lakin. Meranden: And this is Meranden. Lakin: In this episode, Ranger Annie interviewed a multi-talented artist from the Zuni Pueblo.

Meranden: April Unkestine is best known for her inlay jewelry and traditional designs such as the sun face.

Lakin: She shares her experience as a demonstrator and the symbolism behind her work.

Meranden: Take a listen to April's story and we hope you enjoy.

April Unkestine: My name is April Unkestine. I am from the Pueblo of Zuni, New Mexico. They asked me to talk with you guys about my jewelry and our connection with the Grand Canyon.

Ranger Annie: Yeah. And so, when did you start making jewelry?

April Ukestine: I started making jewelry when I was 15 years old. I grew up with my grandma. My grandma was diabetic and, you know, couldn't really support me. So, I ended up, you know, working on jewelry. And my aunt was the one who taught me how to make jewelry.

Ranger Annie: Nice. And so, who were kind of your biggest inspirations? Your aunt and...

April Unkestine: Well, most of my family were silversmiths. My grandma and my grandpa did silversmithing, just like my husband and I. He does his own thing and I do my own thing. My grandma and grandpa did their own things. My grandma did a lot of, like, inlay, similar to the famous Dishta work.

April Unkestine: And then my grandpa did his own petite point work. So, I used to watch them and sometimes I would help my grandma, but I never got to help my grandpa because even when he tried to teach me, I couldn't pick up that. I couldn't do his work. It seems simple, but I can't do his work.

Ranger Annie: So, can you kind of describe the process of, like, inlay and stuff like that?

April Unkestine: Actually, the inlay is, like, stone to stone. You make the bezel and then you do stone to stone, depending on what stones you use. Like, for me, I use a lot of mother-of-pearl, pin shell. I use turquoise, coral, you know, whatever's available to me. Sometimes I like to go and use a lot of different other materials, like I use gabasite. Gabasite is a stone with black lines and white spots on it.

April Unkestine: And it comes out pretty nice. It looks like it's cracked when you polish it, but it's pretty nice. I've also used what they call Newland. There is, like, a new turquoise, which is from Nevada. It's almost like the gabasite, but it's pretty neat, too. So, I use a lot of different variations in my stones and channel inlays, like, just stone to stone.

Ranger Annie: Yeah, and has your process kind of changed over time or...?

April Ukestine: No, not that much.

Ranger Annie: What are some of the...I was looking at a lot of your work earlier, and there were a lot of really intricate, cool symbols. Can you kind of tell us a bit about, like, the symbols in your artwork?

April Unkestine: The symbols in my artwork are symbols of the sun face. So, in our culture, we pray to the sun, which is our father sun. We ask for blessings, you know, and also the sun gives life, so we ask for a longevity of life. So, it's basically, you know, something that I picked up from my aunt, and that's how she explained it to me, so.

Ranger Annie: Nice. Yeah. So, and you had said, when we talked earlier, you had mentioned or you were describing the style that you had, and you said that it's not your style. But that it's more of, like, a shared style. Did you want to talk more about that?

April Unkestine: Yeah. The sun face is widely used in my village. Like, there's a lot of people that make sun face jewelry similar to mine, but theirs' are a lot different. A lot of this jewelry that all of us make in the Pueblo was, like, it's almost, like, shared. Like, so, my uncle, I mean, my grandmother's brother married into this family who made the sun faces, and then that lady used to be married to somebody else that made sun faces. So, it just, you know, carries on, like, I don't say this piece, this sun face is mine.

April Unkestine: Like, it's not my design. You know, I attribute a lot of my work to people that passed on that have made the sun face. They're not like mine, but they're similar to mine. So, it's a lot of the jewelry in Zuni are, like, shared. Like, a certain family member made this, but married into another family, and that family makes the jewelry now. And so, when a lot of people say, you know, that was my work, you know, it's been shared.

April Unkestine: People pick it up, you know, they share it with this person, that person. So, a lot of the jewelry making is, like, shared.

Ranger Annie: Yeah. And in the context of sharing, too, when did you kind of get started with the cultural demonstration program?

April Unkestine: The cultural demonstration, I started about three years ago. I've been wanting to, like, do shows and art shows and stuff like that. And one of my artist friends, we were working together. Well, I work with a group of artists in Zuni where we were helping build a park for our youth. And so, I got to working with these artists who go out and do shows. Like, they do big shows in bigger cities and stuff like that. So, you know, I told them, I've never done shows. And they're like, well, you need to try it.

April Unkestine: So, they mentioned this program to me about the Grand Canyon [cultural] Demonstration program. So, I was like, so how do I get started? So, it goes, oh, contact this person and this person. And so, that's what I did. And then when they called me, when the first time we came, me and my husband, we were like, what do we do? You know, how are we going to do this?

April Unkestine: But, you know, it kind of got a lot easier later on, you know, just, you know, calm down. Yeah. So, that's how we started doing demonstration. And we do do little shows. We haven't gotten into the big shows, which I'm trying to do. But, you know, there's a lot of process in it. You do applications and also you need to do, like, professional photographs of your work. And sometimes when I have jewelry, it goes out the door and I can't take pictures of it. The only pictures I have are on my phone.

Ranger Annie: But I know that your work got a lot of notability somewhat recently with the band Queen. Yeah. Do you want to talk about that?

April Unkestine: Well, I usually sell my jewelry to a store in Santa Fe. That store is called Keshi, called the Keshi Connection. It's run by, it was put up by a teacher that used to work in Zuni that bought fetishes from Zuni people. When she retired, she went to Santa Fe and opened this store. So she started buying jewelry and stuff. Anyways, going forward, she buys a lot of my jewelry. So she bought my bolos, my sun-faced bolos. \

April Unkestine: And one day she said, this guy came in. “I didn't know who he was. He was laid back. You know, he walked in and was walking around.” And he said, he got to your bolo. And he says, "I want that." So she sold the bolo, not knowing who he was. And then about two weeks later, a week or two later, it showed up on the red carpet.

April Unkestine: And it was Brian May that had gone into the store, bought the bolo. This was the time when they made the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. So he bought the bolo. And so that's how my fame started. And I don't like, you know, a lot of attention. It was so stressful for me because I would go to, even in my own town, I would go to a store. People would come up to me and say, hey, you're so-and-so. I saw you on the news. I heard you on the radio. Now you're on the magazine and all this other stuff. And it was just crazy. And I was like, no, I can't do that.

Ranger Annie: Did that, how did that kind of affect your work and life after that?

April Unkestine: I actually had a career working as a nurse assistant. I was working with disabled individuals at the time that that happened. So with a lot of demand in my work and my jewelry, I was like, I can't, you know, juggle my work and then, you know, do jewelry. So I had to quit working on, you know, working with disabled individuals, and I ended up working just on my jewelry.

Ranger Annie: That's incredible. So to bring it back to the canyon, I know you had mentioned that this was like your first time coming to Grand Canyon, for the first time you did the cultural demonstration program. But you have a larger like cultural connection to the canyon. Would you like to talk about that?

April Unkestine: Yes. It is said that our, when we came into the world, we came in from the Ribbon Falls. We came out from the Ribbon Falls, and then we made our journey through Zuni Pueblo, where we're currently at. And I had also explained to you about, you know, how we're told that certain times of the year, we're not supposed to talk about our migration story. And this is the time of the year, we don't talk about our migration story. So we talk about it in the wintertime.

April Unkestine: So in wintertime, we will sit around and our ancestors would, you know, our elders would tell us the story about, you know, how we migrated from the Grand Canyon. And then we went to Zuni Pueblo.

Ranger Annie: Yeah. How does it feel to return here to the canyon? Like, you know, for the demonstration program?

April Unkestine: It's really nice. I like that, you know, we have this program, where we're able to show our work and, you know, let people know what process it takes to make a lot of the jewelry that we make, or a lot of the carvings and the pottery, the paintings. There's a lot of artistic talent in our Pueblos, with the Native Americans, they have weaving baskets, whatever. And it's good to show, you know, the people, you know, like, the process of from starting to end, where, you know, you go into a shop, and there's no demonstrator there, you look at the piece, and you're like, Oh, I'll take this.

April Unkestine: But a lot of people don't know what the process is in making the jewelry or the whatever the art that they have. Or how, like, like you asked me, what the significance is in the piece, you know, so they don't know a lot of that, a lot of that stuff. So it's good to have demonstration where people actually see how it's done and how it's made.

Ranger Annie: Have you ever done any art like outside of jewelry?

April Unkestine: Yeah, I actually did a little bit of carving. I did a little bit of carving. I did other types of work. Oh, and I did a little bit of pottery. Sometimes I like to sew. I know they say that sewing isn't art, but it is. Anything is art, even music, dance, anything is art. So I did a lot of that. So I did a variety of stuff.

Ranger Annie: So how did you kind of settle on like jewelry is what you were wanting to do?

April Unkestine: I think jewelry is like my strength. Like when I'm so stressed out, like, everything's falling. And I feel like everything's falling. You know, I sit down and I start working. And it releases a lot of that stress. Like, I'm just sitting there doing my own thing. It keeps me calm. I'm working with my hands. I like working with my hands mostly.You know, I, you know, there's other things I did. But you know, I think jewelry is my strength.

Ranger Annie: Yeah. So you had said that your granddaughter actually said that you should be called an inspirational teacher. How do you see yourself filling that role with your jewelry and your art?

April Unkestine: I, you know, I try to teach younger kids like my granddaughter, other people, I try to teach them, you know, like, do something that makes you happy. You know, like, we have jobs like we have professional jobs, you could be most miserable there. But when we find something, you know, we're more at ease like my jewelry, you know, I'm more at ease doing a lot of that. And whereas when I was working as a nurse assistant, it was like chaos to me.

April Unkestine: I was like, some mornings I didn't want to go. I don't want to go there. So I tell people, you know, do what you like, you know, it's not, it's not the money that counts. It's how you feel, you know, how it makes you feel, you know, how good it makes you feel to do the things you want to do. You know, you know, that's that's how I, you And I've been doing programs in school where I talked to kids about, you know, how doing jewelry, but also remember that, you know, stay in school, have a professional career. Because sometimes in in professional careers, you know, there's setbacks where you're let go or something happens and you don't have a job and you can have like jewelry or some kind of art to fall back on just like in college where you have a major, have a minor.

April Unkestine: So, you know, have art as a minor or, you know, whatever makes you happy, you know, that's what I tell them. Yeah, I love that. Yeah.

Ranger Annie: So when you were growing up, how did you kind of think of the Grand Canyon?

And has that changed since you've been doing this program?

April Unkestine: I've just heard a lot of stories about the Grand Canyon, how we were connected, you know, a lot of stories about, you know, the migration, but I've never really been here before the demonstration. And when I came here, it was like, it's just a certain type of feeling that I felt when I got here. I'm just like an emotional person. So when I came here, I was so emotional. I was like, oh, so this is where it all started, you know, to be here and to actually see a lot of things around here. It was pretty nice.

Ranger Annie: Yeah. And you brought your granddaughter. Not to shout you out.

Ranger Annie: Yeah. So and how many times have you been here with the demonstration?

April Unkestine: I think about three times. Three times. Yeah.

Ranger Annie: How do you feel that, like, this style, how is it kind of different from like what your mentors and influencers sort of design?

April Unkestine: They had their own kind of style when they started working, like a lot of their work was similar, but you had to see the pieces to compare different styles to what mine are. I think theirs were like older style. And then mine was like the newer, like the now style.

April Unkestine: So and they had like more different, I guess, different stones, different, you know, supplies that they use. Like they, a lot of people use turtle shell back then. And now it's outlawed that you can't use turtle shell in jewelry. A lot of different stones that they use we don't use them anymore. So the basic stones that I use are a lot different from what they use back then. And plus, like, it's not really available anymore.

April Unkestine: Like when I started working and when I was 15 years old, we could buy turquoise like just anywhere. Now you have to go and search for turquoise. And like I was explaining to some of the people that came to my stand is that they're starting to make stabilized turquoise, which is not really, you know, like the natural turquoise.

April Unkestine: It's made with a lot of chemicals to keep them together because they're so brittle. But now they smell like plastic. They've made it to where before you can't tell the difference with a hot pin.

Now you can't tell any difference with it because they made it to where it's almost like the natural turquoise. So a lot of our supplies have gone down and I've noticed that a lot of coral is getting, like, hard to find too because we used to find, like, bright red, maroon color coral. Now we're finding, like, orange, some stuff that we really can't use and we'll have to pick through.

And it's a lot of things that have changed over the years. So many changes. Ranger Annie: Yeah, and I know COVID had a large impact too.

April Unkestine: Yeah, during COVID it was like we couldn't go get our supplies. We had to, like, if we went to a trading post, we had to wait in line. Like, they'll send, like, one person in or, like, they'll just bring it to you or whatever.

And we didn't have much people to sell to or we couldn't go out in public and sell like this. And it had a huge impact on our economy and our work. So we had to find ways to, you know, work with getting that money and selling our products.

So we would go online or, like, Facebook was great because people would look you up on Facebook and they say, hey, I see you make this. So we started selling to public. But that's also what I try to help a lot of people in my community.

It's like, you know, you'll be the first person to sell because when we sell to stores, I tell them we're the third person because, you know, a lot of the stores, they'll sell retail and we're, like, the way down there. So I try to tell them, you know, go out and sell, you know, be the first person, you know, do it yourself.

Ranger Annie: Yeah. Having more, like, kind of control over the process.

April Unkestine: Yeah.

Ranger Annie: And so you sell to stores and then I know you're talking about, like, shows and stuff. And what are some of the differences between, like, doing the shows versus the cultural demonstration program?

April Unkestine: During the shows, you don't really have to show them, you your product. You just, you know, put them up there. They come by and they buy, especially if they know you, like, you know, from the stores, they'll come by and they'll buy. And then also doing the shows is a lot more challenging because some shows are juried, meaning that you have to send a professional photo in and people look at it, the jurors look at it and they say, oh, we can bring her in or bring him in. And then then if you're accepted, you get in. But then you also pay a fee, a booth fee.

April Unkestine: And you and the shows, you have to pay your own way to get there. You have to get a motel or wherever you're going to stay. But with the demonstration, I'm glad that, you know, you have, you know, have a place to stay so we don't have to go find a place to stay. Or, you know, a lot of other things are so different from the show to demonstrating.

Ranger Annie: Do you have, like, maybe a favorite memory from demonstrating here?

April Unkestine: That's a tough question.

Ranger Annie: Maybe a good memory.

April Unkestine: Just the first time we came, we didn't know what we were doing. But the second day, it was pretty easy. First day we came, it was chaos. We didn't know what we were doing. We didn't know how we were going to sell or, you know, how we were going to price things or we didn't have that little square where people can swipe their cards to pay us. So it was all cash. And then we started learning all these different ways that they can pay. So we finally got up.

Ranger Annie: Now you're pros.

April Unkestine: Not really.

Ranger Annie: I don't know. Everyone should definitely stop by. Y'all will be here until Thursday.

Ranger Annie: Yeah. So, yeah. And I just kind of want to ask you, like, what would you like for the audience to sort of take away from this discussion and kind of, like, experience here?

April Unkestine: Just like, you know, whenever you see an artist, remember that, you know, it wasn't machine made. It was something that they made from their heart. Something that, you know, they put a lot of effort in working on and, you know, be appreciative.

Ranger Annie: Yeah. Appreciative. Great. And on that note of being appreciative and stuff, I do want to open the floor up to any questions if anybody has any questions for April.

Ranger Annie: So, yeah, the question is, we had a previous demonstrator who encouraged, like, going to reservations to buy directly there. Would that be appropriate, too, for you?

April Unkestine: Yeah, we actually have a little store down there that's owned by artists that they opened up not too long ago. I think it was before, right before the pandemic, they opened up the store for artists to bring their artwork in and for people to come in and buy directly from the artists.

April Unkestine: So we actually have that store. And then we also have one that recently came in Gallup. It's called the ZART. It's Z-Art. But they call it ZART. So there's another store in Gallup and then one in Zuni that, you know, they buy directly from the artists.

April Unkestine: And sometimes in our community, we have that art walk where they open their houses and people come in and they welcome them into their houses and they watch them work and buy their art there, too. I'm not a part of that, but there are a lot of artists that do that in Zuni. But even though I'm not a part of that art walk, you know, when people come in and they ask for me, they tell me and I say, oh, well, send them up.

April Unkestine: So they'll come to our house and, you know, they'll buy directly from us, which is a lot better than buying from the store because then that helps them, that helps the artists.

Ranger Annie: When is the art walk?

April Unkestine: It's just any, you can go down there any day and say, you know, go to the art center and they'll let you know who's all on the art walk.

Ranger Annie: Oh, cool.

April Unkestine: And you'll know who's on the art walk. They have like colorful rocks piled up on their driveway. So that's how they tell them that, you know, this is the art walk.

Ranger Annie: Oh, cool. Yeah, Zuni Pueblo.

April Unkestine: Yeah, you can come down there. Yeah, just any time of the year. But oh, we have certain time of the year where all the stores are closed is when we're fasting. Usually it's one time in the wintertime, usually December, like maybe the second or the third week of December, and then the summertime. Well, the summertime isn't closed, huh? No, summertime isn't closed, just the wintertime.

April Unkestine: But some of us do have fasting where we can't sell, buy, you know, spend money, so.

Audience Member: And then you said your jewelry was in the movie, Bohemian Rhapsody? It was in the movie?

April Unkestine: No, it was on the red carpet on Brian May when he went to go receive the award for it.

Audience Member: Oh, he wore it?

April Unkestine: Yeah, he wore it on the red carpet, yeah.

April Unkestine: There was one other time on Dumb and Dumber, the first movie, Dumb and Dumber. The pretty part where he's on the toilet. Oh, man.

Ranger Annie: Yeah, so you said Brian May is also a royal astronomer for UK. Incredible.

April Unkestine: Yeah, I tried getting a hold of him, he won't respond back to me. He's laid back, friendly, and whatever, and so I emailed him and nothing.

Ranger Annie: There's still time.

Audience Member: Your name again is?

April Unkestine: Aprilene Unkestine is my full name, I just go by April.

Audience Member: And the last name was?

April Unkestine: Unkestine.

Audience Member: Okay, I remember seeing it, yeah.

April Unkestine: Everybody asks me if I'm from Europe because it sounds European.

Ranger Annie: Yeah, so she was saying that a lot of the jewelry, you have the four colors for Zuni jewelry. Do you use any colors outside of those?

April Unkestine: I use a lot of different colors. I know that a lot of our colors represent different directions, so I use a lot of colors and also outside of the colors that we use. So I just use a variety of colors, like I had showed the pink mussel, what are the others? Abalone. So it's just a variety of colors that I use.

April Unkestine: There's still traders that sell abalone shells, just like the turtle shell, it's been outlawed. You can't use the turtle shells, but it was used a long time ago. I still see some of the jewelry in museums that have the turtle shells, but we can't use those anymore.

April Unkestine: My older son is making fetishes. My younger daughter is starting to make jewelry. My older daughter, she makes jewelry, but not like mine. Hers are, she makes little turtle earrings. And my granddaughter, she does butterfly earrings, yeah. So she's starting to make jewelry, too. But all in all, my family, my kids, they have their own careers, but they still work on jewelry. My older son is basically just working on fetishes. His name should also be in one of the fetish books, too.

April Unkestine: Oh, and I have an 11-year-old grandson who started working on fetishes, too. So he's done some, so his grandpa's, you know, I guess their inspiration.

Ranger Annie: Cool. Nice.

April Unkestine: Any other questions?

Ranger Annie: Well, thank you so much, April, for coming out and doing this program, and thank you all for staying.

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 Annie sat down with Zuni jeweler, April Unkestine. Her work has been made popular by collectors and celebrities such as Brian May. Like many Zuni jewelers, April incorporates the Zuni sun face design into her channel inlay work but with her own twist. She also shares the cultural significance of the Grand Canyon in relation to Zuni and its history. Take a listen to this episode and enjoy!

Season 1

Season 1 Trailer

Grand Canyon Speaks Trailer

Transcript

Janet Yazzie: I had to believe in myself first to become an artist. Gerald Dawavendewa: Being an individual is one of the last things you are. Aaron White: You know, music is a very powerful tool. Chasady Simplicio: I really do hope one day my pieces will stay around for like longer than I am. Ranger Jonah: Hello, and welcome to Grand Canyon Speaks, an online podcast series that interviews members of the eleven associated tribes of Grand Canyon National Park. This is an experience we have in person in the park, and we are now bringing it to your ears and your home. Through this online series, we hope you enjoy the authentic representation of people who call Grand Canyon home. Noreen Simplicio: It's all going to get taken away. Well, that hasn't happened. I'm still creating. So, grandma, I'm sorry, but I think you were wrong at that. Aaron White: Bunch of crazy 18-year-olds. And then when the clubs would close out at four in the morning, people would pour into the streets. Gregory Hill: I want to combat all the negative things in the world by creating something that's going to bring joy to the world. Cassandra Tsalate: Yes. Over time, it will break, it will diminish. But when it does, that's when you know that life was its full potential. Chasady Simplicio: You're going to have to do some editing. LaShae Harris: (laughter) Start over.

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.

Episode 1

Gerald Dawavendewa Speaks

Transcript

Gerald Dawavendewa: As a Hopi, you're taught that being an individual is one of the last things you are. You're a member of your family. You're a member of your clan. You represent your clan. You represent your community; you represent the religious societies you belong to. You represent your village, and you represent the Hopi as a whole. And then you are an individual.

Ranger Melissa: Hello and welcome! My name is Ranger Melissa.

Ranger Jonah: And my name is Ranger Jonah.

Ranger Melissa: Hey, Jonah. Who did we interview in this episode?

Ranger Jonah: Yeah. We talked to Gerald Dawavendewa. He is a Hopi painter and a really nice guy. It was a ton of fun to talk to him.

Ranger Melissa: Yeah, I love talking with Gerald and hearing about how he uses his experiences as a Hopi astronomer in his artwork.

Ranger Melissa: Absolutely. He was just so knowledgeable, and it was really great listening to him dive into the meaning and the culture behind his work. Turns out a lot of his work is also at the Hopi house. So, if you're in the park, check out his work at the Hopi house. So, without further ado, Gerald.

Gerald Dawavendewa: Umhinsaki! My name is Gerald Dawavendewa. My Hopi name is Lomasohu. So, we actually have two names. As a side note, originally in Hopi culture, you only have one name, and then your family is part of a clan, and currently, there are probably a little over 30 different clans, and I'm a member of the Sun Clan, and then your name is usually associated with that clan. So, my Hopi name, Lomasohu, refers to a star in the constellation in the sky. Dawavendewa is translated as rainbow or halo around the sun. So, there's that association there. There are also other clans the bear, the corn, parrot, badger, and various other clans. And each one has their own history and story. The Hopis we live, what, about 60, 70 miles? Which direction? About that way. The Grand Canyon is a very large part of our history. This is the symbolic emergence of the Hopi people into this world. The Hopi believed that there are three previous worlds. The third world became corrupted, and we wanted to find a way from that world. And so, this is the symbolic entry point. There's a site in the Grand Canyon at the bottom of the Grand Canyon called the Sipapu, which is the emergence place.

Gerald Dawavendewa: And so, the Hopi came through that into this world that we called Túwaqachi. And then each group separated and went into the four directions in order to explore this world and see what was here and what it had to offer. So, each clan has their own stories that differ from others. So as a Hopi person, I don't speak for all the Hopis or have the authority to say that what I say is the defining history of Hopi. So, you'll often find other Hopis that will have other stories or other interpretations, and that stems from their own unique journeys that they took. So, like the sun clan, we traveled with other clans south. And in our migration stories, we traveled all the way down to the end of South America until we reached a large wall of ice, and then we turned back and then came back up this way and eventually came to where we are now, where we see as the Hopi center of the universe. So, all our stories are related to the areas now that we know of as Mexico and the Incas and all these other groups and places, whereas other groups had settled towards the Pacific and others towards what now is Canada and other towards as far as the Mississippi River.

Gerald Dawavendewa: Each clan, when they reached a large body of water, would turn left and then return back. So that's sort of the origin of how we're connected to this site. And we still have pilgrimages yearly from various Hopis who belong to different religious societies who come here to gather among the sacred sites and areas here within the Grand Canyon.

Ranger Jonah:So, Gerald, you are not only a Hopi tribal member, but you're also a painter that takes a lot of inspiration from the Hopi people and the Hopi culture. Now, I understand you grew up in the Hopi Reservation and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what it was like to grow up there and then also if you had some early inspirations, what inspired you to become a painter, to do what you do today.

Gerald Dawavendewa:I grew up in the Hopi village of Mùnqapi, which is associated with Third Mesa. There are three mesas at Hopi. First, Second and Third, which are sort of low, flat-topped mountains and the majority of the villages are built on top of these mesas. My village, Mùnqapi, is not physically on Third Mesa, but there is a village on Third Mesa called Oraibi, which today is considered the oldest continuously inhabited town in the Americas. And so, they found it Mùnqapi. So we owe our allegiance to Oraibi. And so that's where I grew up at. This was at a point where we didn't have electricity, plumbing or any of those modern conveniences TV and things like that. So, it was very much a very isolated area for us. It's a small village. At the time there were probably about less than 600 people who lived at Mùnqapi. It was sort of a transitional point where as I grew up, my grandmother's house was the first house to get electricity. So, I say it's my grandmother's house because Hopi is a matrilineal society, which means in Hopi, all the material wealth, the houses, all the items inside the house, vehicles, now the fields, they all belong to the women and the women take care of them.

Gerald Dawavendewa:So, for the men, we are in charge of the religious societies and making sure that the ceremonies are performed correctly throughout the year. And so, when a woman marries a man, in which she proposes not the man, she will have a special bread called piki, and she will make that and present it on a Hopi tray. And if he accepts that tray of piki bread, then he has accepted her proposal in marriage. The wedding ceremony takes some time to do it's usually tied in with the ceremony year, but at the end the husband will move to her village and build her a house. And so, she's in charge of that, and she takes care of that as well as make sure the fields are cared for as well. As Hopi men and family members, we ask permission from the head of the household to be allowed to grow the corn and crops in the field. And so, when we grow the corns and crop, we own the plants, or we are responsible for the plants when they are grown. So, who do you think owns it when it's harvested? The women own the plants when they're harvested and they can do whatever they want with it, but often they'll keep it and make sure that the family... So, in Hopi, not necessarily status, but the success of a home is the ability to feed the family.

Gerald Dawavendewa:And in fact, my grandmother was very proud of the fact that if anyone came by, even to ask for directions, she would insist that they sat down and ate first, and then after they finished eating, then she would ask, "why did you come here?" And so, she was very proud of the fact that no matter who came by, she was able to feed them. And that was something that she was very proud of. And so, I grew up in that area, and to me, as an artist, there's not a real profession out there in Hopi. Nobody says, oh, that's the artist of the village, or he's the best artist. I grew up with art. Everyone did art. My grandmother made baskets. My grandfather made crafts and arts that were related to the religious societies because they require certain items and objects for these ceremonies. I had other uncles and cousins who carved Katsina dolls and other family women who made pottery. And so, I grew up not knowing anybody who did not know how to do some sort of craft. So, it wasn't unusual, and it didn't seem out of place. And so, I was inspired by a lot of people there.

Gerald Dawavendewa: And in Hopi, people don't tell you, oh, you need to know how to carve, or you need to know how to draw. If you have an interest in it and they see that you have an interest, they may say, oh, here, try this carving. Here, I'll give you a piece of wood and why don't you whittle on it and see if you like that. If that's something you like or something else. So, there's never that insistence that, oh, you're going to be this and sort of try to fit you to that mold. And so, it was something I grew up with, and it was something that I enjoyed because it was a way for me to express myself in Hopi by capturing a lot of the day-to-day things. And apparently, I spent too much time on it.

Ranger Jonah: It happens to the best of us.

Gerald Dawavendewa: I actually ended up flunking first grade. I had to take it over twice, and my report card said: he's a very bright and promising student, but all he does is draw, and we feel that he could spend another additional year at this level. So, I ended up having to take first grade twice.

Gerald Dawavendewa: So, that sort of started my career. So, I've been sort of drawing all my life. And of course, my first inspirations were my grandmother and my grandfather. Watching them make things and later on being introduced to a lot of things from my aunts and uncles. And then, of course, as I traveled around the village because there are ceremonies that we do that are taken to other villages. So I get to meet other Hopis in other homes, and of course, you meet other artists. And I was fortunate in, I guess, the history of Hopi in that we were at a transitional point because my grandfather and his father in Hopi, the majority of the art was done for religious reasons. It was not made for sale. It was not made as fine art. It was made because it needed to be made for the ceremonies. Even my grandmother's baskets, those were baskets that had practical uses. There were sifter baskets. There were baskets used to carry items. There were baskets to give away as a custom. And so, everything made had a purpose and a reason that fit within Hopi culture. So, there was no such thing as I'm expressing myself or I really want to talk about my angst through this painting.

Gerald Dawavendewa: It was basically part of my father's generation and then, of course, my generation that you begin to have artists. You did have some who were famous in the past, like Nampeyo, who was a very famous potter, but her art was the pots she made. The majority were used for mixing bowls, for cooking bowls. And of course, the early tourists, especially from here, you had the Fred Harvey Company who would send out tourists to Hopi, and they discovered the pottery, and they wanted and Nampeyo became very famous. And one of the side notes for that was Nampeyo noticed that people paid more for her pots because she was touted as the famous Hopi potter. And so, she encouraged other Hopi women to bring their pots, and she would sign them because she wanted them to have... She wasn't trying to cheat people. But in Hopi, you want to be part of the community. You want to help the community rise together. And so, she signed their pottery so they could get just as much money that hers got. So, there are a lot of pots out there that she never made, but they have her name on it.

Gerald Dawavendewa: And she's actually one of the earlier Hopis that signed her work because back then, nobody signed their work. You made an item and it kind of just rotated into the culture. There are these wicker plaques that were given to the young girls during a ceremony called Powamuya. And the girls kind of used it almost like a currency exchange. As they got older, if somebody did a good deed for them or helped them out or something, they would give that basket to that person, to that Hopi person, and then down the line, that person might eventually give it to somebody else. And so, it wasn't unusual that one of my nieces would get a basket and, of course, she would give it out maybe a year later. And then five or six years later it shows up again because somebody did a nice thing and oh, I remember that basket. That used to be your basket when you were little. But that's what started it. You begin having these Hopis like Fred Kabotie who did the murals in the watchtower, you had people saying, oh, you need to sign your name. It needs to be identified. And so that didn't occur until the 50s or 60s and then that's when you begin seeing Hopis who were taught silversmithing after World War II as an occupation.

Gerald Dawavendewa: Some of them started signing, not all of them, but some of them begin signing their names. And so that began what we would, I guess, consider fine art or art for art's sake in a sense. But it still was grounded in traditional designs. Everything was very in that design. And that's what I grew up being inspired by. And then of course, later on for me, finally, there was a young group of men who, they're much older than me now, but called Artists Hopi. And they decided to really explore or push the boundaries of what Hopi art could do. So, they went through cubism and abstraction and all these other types of art forms that didn't exist in Hopi and even tried political artwork and other things. But it would all have to do with Hopi. And they inspired me because their work was so different from everything else. And so that kind of led me to feel that this was something that I could do. And so, after I graduated from high school, I eventually went to the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Ranger Jonah: So, it worked out after first grade. It's all easier from there! (Laughter)

Gerald Dawavendewa: I was basically like: I'll show you now! So, I got a degree in what was a major in graphic design and fine art. But I eventually started working in the museum field, using my graphic design. For me, the high point was I helped with graphics and did Hopi consultation for the Hopi section of an exhibit called The Paths of Life, which was a 10,000 square foot exhibit. And I invited my grandfather to come down to look at what I had done. And so, after he had seen everything, he turned to me and told me, in Hopi, "this is something worth doing." So, in Hopi culture, you don't hear a lot of praise, a lot of stuff you do, you're expected to do it. And so, to have my grandfather tell me that it was something worth doing was just the greatest compliment I could ever receive. I don't think I touched the ground for a week or so from that. And that sort of continued leading my visions. One of the challenges or one of the things that I've, I guess in a sense, placed upon myself is as a Hopi, you're taught that being an individual is one of the last things you are.

Gerald Dawavendewa: You're a member of your family, you're a member of your clan. You represent your clan, you represent your community, you represent the religious societies you belong to. You represent your village, and you represent the Hopi as a whole. And then you are an individual. And so that's the last thing. You're always taught to think about what you are doing. How does that reflect on everything else? And so, I continue to do that now in my artwork. When I do my artwork, I always am reminded about how other Hopis or how my community is going to feel about this. How are other people going to feel about the reflection of what I am showing of Hopi to them. For the most part, I do not do individual personal artwork. I'm not going to talk about maybe something that happened in my personal life or that may be considered positive or negative and express it through the art medium. But what I do is to try to instill a sense of pride towards my art. That was something that my grandfather had taught me. He constantly reminded me that our culture has a lot of great accomplishments and a lot of great knowledge and wisdom that we've gathered over literally thousands of years. That we are not simply Indians or what other people may think of us because we did not invent the aircraft or the computer.

Gerald Dawavendewa: But we have other accomplishments. And those accomplishments were made in this type of environment, in the desert. Our priority was not to leap ahead in technology, but our aim was to integrate ourselves within our environment and survive within a very harsh desert area that has very little rainfall. So, to do that, we've genetically manipulated corn and other plants to grow in a very dry desert. We've developed our own agricultural system called dry farming. And we've done other things like kept track of the movement of the suns and the planets and the moon. This is very important to us because we have very short growing seasons. We need to understand very specifically how the year goes, when it rains and when it snows and other aspects, because literally our life is dependent on it. We need to know when to grow our corn, when to grow the second crop, when to harvest and other items. We have a high level of looking out through astronomy. We see it more in a practical sense rather than a mythical or a spiritual sense. We do imply that to it, but we understand the solstices and the equinoxes and the lunar levels and things like that because that's important to us as well.

Gerald Dawavendewa: And so, he instilled in me that pride that we do have our own accomplishments and that's why we've survived for so long and we continue to survive and still try to maintain those ideas. We're considered one of the most traditional indigenous groups in the Americas. And we've been able to maintain that because we're very careful about what we want to bring into our culture. And so, I try to reflect that through my art and try to remind other people that this is a very dynamic and very successful culture that I hope that continues to continue on and survive.

Ranger Jonah: Yeah. And for those that don't know, as we talk about his art, Gerald is a part of our cultural demonstration program. So, if you come into the Watchtower tomorrow between nine and four, you can actually see a lot of his art up close and personal. And I know you brought some here today, so we're going to talk about that in a little bit. But first I just kind of wanted to dig in more into the process of actually making art. How does that process go for you? Do you see the whole thing before you start? Do you say, I want to start with these colors and then we'll see where it goes from there? Or is there some other way that that transpires?

Gerald Dawavendewa: You see a lot of this imagery, like with Katsina dances. We have these dances where we have these spiritual beings called Katsinam that appear at the villages, and they perform ceremonies and rituals. They're very colorful. They have these elaborate dances and songs and those inspire me as well. And I've been given the opportunity to speak some to the elders and they talk about different aspects. And just having heard them, it creates that imagery in my mind that I want to capture in an art form. Or there's Katsinas that you want to carve and depict them in the wooden form. If you've seen these around in the shops or like the Hopi shop or down there. They're these wooden carved images of these spiritual beings and they represent different elements of Hopi culture. They represent animal life that we depend on, elements of the cosmos and even historical events. There's a historical event where one of the villages was attacked, and one of the young women was having her hair done. And it's an elaborate hairdo. I'm sure you've seen Star Wars, Princess Leia. They were inspired by the Hopi hairdo. It's this large swirl hairdo actually represents a squash blossom, which represents the ability to give life.

Gerald Dawavendewa: And so, this young woman was having her hair done that way, and she had one up, and her mother was still combing out her hair on the other side when the village was attacked. And rather than run with all the other women and elderly and children, she grabbed her brother's bow and arrow and rushed out and defended the village successfully. And so, when she passed from this world, she became a Katsina spirit. And now that Katsina shows up to remind us about the strength that she had and the role of women in Hopi culture. There's that aspect. So, when you carve a piece of wood like that, for me, it's almost like a discovery, because you always hear that from a lot of artists, like a lot of carvers or a lot of people who do stone. They say, I'm just chipping away what's not supposed to be there. That figure is already in the stone. And I kind of feel the same way because the other thing is about the wood. It's not perfect. Sometimes it has cracks in it, sometimes it has knots in it and stuff. There are times when you carve it, you have to remove things because you know they're going to break off or you know it's going to split more that way. And in a way, it almost dictates what's going to come out. Sometimes the wood is, I guess, in a sense, perfect. And you can say, oh, I'm going to make a mudhead, or I'm going to make a snow Katsina. And other times it's just like, oh, I got to get rid of this, and I get rid of that. And then suddenly it's like, oh, it's going to be a bear Katsina. And I wasn't planning that, but it came out that way. And so there's that kind of excitement, too, that sometimes you plan. I'm going to draw or create this specific thing, and other times it's like even I don't know what it's going to become. I have to sort of share it with the elements, the object or the material I'm using. Because even the canvas or the paper or the stone or the rock or whatever I'm using, it has its own imperfections or perfections. And they do guide the creation of the artwork sometimes, even if you're not planning to go in that direction. And so that's sort of that type of thing. One of the things that I guess I'm known for, or what people seem to comment about, is that my work is very bright, and I think they're not used to seeing work with that much color.

Gerald Dawavendewa: But for me, when you see the Katsinas, what they wear with the bright parrot feathers, the pure white cotton kilts, and the red and green embroidery. It's a very colorful imagery, and I try to capture that in my artwork. But it's an ongoing process, and I enjoy it because sometimes you don't always know what you're going to get, even though you kind of try to plan for it.

Ranger Jonah: Yeah. And we also have a Hopi Katsina carver this week. So, if you come to the Watchtower tomorrow, you will also be able to see what he's talking about with these wood sort of figurines.

Gerald Dawavendewa: Yeah. And what's unusual that, if you notice, is that even though Hopi we all carve Katsinas, we all paint Hopi, or they do different baskets and stuff, they each have their own very unique style and how they go about doing that, because there are literally hundreds of Hopi carvers. But you can tell, especially some of the ones that are more prolific, exactly. Oh, that's so and so, or, oh, I know who made this just by looking at it, because they have such a distinct style, and yet they're all coming from the same point. They could all make the same bear Katsina, and they would all be different. But it's still the bear Katsina.

Ranger Jonah: Yeah. So perhaps we could bring out one of your pieces of work and talk about it a little bit. I know it's a little windy, so I could help hold it.

Gerald Dawavendewa: This is, I guess, an enlarged version of the original. I did a series of drawings, probably more than 20 of these images, and they're all drawn with ink and copper paint. They're all done on handmade Nepal paper. And this is a series there's actually a book that I eventually published, and it depicts, like, as I was saying earlier, some of the understanding the Hopis have about astronomy and how we interpret the sky. This particular design is the lunar eclipse. So, at the top, I have the sun with the face, and in the middle I have the Earth with all the life elements in it. And then below that, in the copper paint, is the Moon. So as the sun is above, I have the Earth moving in front of the sun, casting its shadow against the Moon, creating what people call like a blood or a red moon. So, we're familiar with that celestial event. And in Hopi, especially during the prehistoric times, we have Hopis who are specifically are called Sun Watchers. One of their roles is to track not only the sun's movement, but the Moon's movement as well, and maintain where the sun rises, and the moon rises and lowers. And those are used to determine various ceremonies and rituals throughout the Hopi year. And so, we're able to interpret it completely, also entirely in Hopi symbolism. Hopi has a huge collection of symbols that it uses. And in fact, I could draw a cloud, snow cloud, rain cloud, sprinkling, thundercloud, billowing cloud, a cloud about to rain. I could do a range of different weather elements because they're so important in Hopi that we've developed a lot of icons to determine what each part represents, or each element represents. It's a rich history of design.

Ranger Melissa: Yeah. So, to finish up our discussion about this piece of work, does anybody have any questions? All right, we'll move to the next one.

Gerald Dawavendewa: Well, what we do is various Sun Watchers who are located at different villages, they have one particular place that they will always stand at, and they'll either use a large geological feature, like a butte or even San Francisco Peaks as a marker, or they'll have rocks close by, and they'll track using those as points of reference. So, if you watch the sunset, like out here, and if a Hopi came here and was able to come here every day, he might use this row of rocks here, and he'll put marks into it or designs representing different aspects of the sun rising or the Moon rising. And once you do that, over literally several years and sometimes several decades, you start noticing a pattern within that. And that way you start being able to predict when things equinoxes, solstices, eclipses, and other phenomena start occurring, and you're able to plan for them, and even when certain stars appear in the sky. So, like, the women have a social dance that's translated as loosely the basket dance, and that occurs when the three stars of Orion appear. But in Hopi, we see those as three maidens from the basket dance ceremony. When they appear closest down towards the Earth, that's when that ceremony begins. And so even the position of the stars in the sky either determine a ceremony or it'll tell you when something is going to occur. So, we keep track of that as well. This one, if you're familiar, at Flagstaff, the San Francisco Peaks in Hopi, we believe that that's the home of some of the Katsina spirits. They live there. And so, this painting depicts the Katsina spirits upon the San Francisco Peaks. And in Hopi, these spiritual beings not only perform ceremonies and rituals, but they remind the Hopi how to live a proper life. There are over 400 different personalities, and each one has their own history, their own type of personalities, how they dress, what songs they sing, and what rituals they do. And we have an entire religious society that's responsible for that. And that's one of the reasons why Hopi has been able to maintain its traditions. It's not like some other tribes where you maybe have one religious person who is in charge of maybe perhaps the knowledge of medicinal, what medicines or what plants help you heal. And they may have one or two apprentices, but if he dies or those apprentices choose not to follow that, then that line ends. In Hopi culture, it's like going to college. We all specialize in different parts of the Hopi culture. There is a group that takes care of the Katsinas, which my grandfather did. And so, his entire lifetime role was to understand all these Katsinas. So, he never understood all 400, but he was pretty up there compared to me. That's their whole role. There are other societies that specialize in other aspects of Hopi culture, and that's just that part they understand. And that's how we're able to maintain our tradition so strongly, because it's not kept by just one person, it's kept by a whole group. And they're all taught all that information together. So even if one or two of them passes from an accident or something not expected, it doesn't die with them. There's a whole society that maintains that knowledge. And so, I have here a lot of different Katsinas that are coming here. I have a morning Katsina, a Katsina Mana, a Long Hair, and each one has their own personality. The Long Hair is known for this wonderful melodic song that it sings, and it brings showers, light showers when it sings. Whereas this tall one, the Shalako, which actually rises about 15ft tall. In real life, he rarely appears because he's known for causing floods. There's also a female that comes with him, so they're not often asked to come unless there's a real drought because they're known for unpredictable weather. And then there are other ones. In the middle with the big feathers, that is Crow mother or Angwusnasomtaka. And she comes during a ceremony dressed in her bridal outfit, because the story is that she had just gotten married. This was a time when the Hopis were having a hard time, their crops were not successful. As she was crossing Hopi, she heard the Hopi's prayers for help. And so, she immediately headed to the village, and she appeared as the sun rose, still wearing her bridal gown, followed by all these other Katsina spirits, bringing fresh green bean sprouts and other foods to give to the Hopis so they could survive. They also brought gifts to the children. And that ceremony still occurs every year. And then we have others. A warrior Katsina, and then we have Eototo and Aholi, they're sort of called the lieutenant and his assistant. They're involved in the Soyal ceremony. Also, when the equinox occurs, they come and perform a ceremony there to help the sun begin its longer or shorter days. So, they all have their own purposes. There's even a Katsina that shows up to remind us to clean out the springs that we depend on. So, there's even some practical aspects to it, and it's all integrated into Hopi culture. And so, I depicted that, the last one at the top, this is a Katsina that represents the power and maintains the balance of the universe. So, I have him reaching out and throwing the stars into the sky. He's a very powerful individual. When he comes to the villages, all the other Katsinas stay away from him because of his energy. So, he's one kiva or one building behind all the other Katsinas. They will not go near him. He's very deliberate. For me, everything he does is perfect. Every step he takes is very deliberate and slow and he speaks very quietly. He has a very quiet song. But I'm always amazed at his actions when he's there because everything he does, he uses the minimalist of energy and everything is deliberate. I've never seen any other Katsina like that. I've always been impressed by that.

Ranger Jonah: Does anybody have any questions that they want to ask about this particular piece?

Audience Member: I am an audience member and I have a question. The knowledge that you're referring to, is that written down or mainly just spread via word of mouth or how does that work?

Gerald Dawavendewa: It's mostly word of mouth. I mean, the society I belong to. . . there's one called like the One Horn and Two Horn Society. Their knowledge is sacred to them. So even though we're fellow Hopis, since I'm not a member of that society, he's not going to tell me what they do and I'm not going to tell him what I do. I mean, there is some information that we will give each other and there is some information we will give to the general public as a whole, but we're not going to tell anyone the most sacred or the greater knowledge in Hopi. We believe that those have to be earned. You have to go through the stages. You have to be initiated. You have to be a part of this. You have to gain this knowledge or wisdom or other aspects as you go through life. And therefore, as you get to a certain point, then you are eligible to acquire that knowledge. A lot of stuff. So, basically, a lot of the information I talk about, mostly it's what a young child would be told because they're not initiated then. And then when you get initiated, then you're given the opportunity to learn even more knowledge as you get older. We don't write that down. There is stuff that we do allow out, but to us it's very rudimentary. It's not the core of our beliefs or our religion.

Ranger Jonah: So, being a professional artist, you have to travel, or you do travel with your art around to art shows. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what an art show is like and maybe being here at Grand Canyon doing the cultural demonstration program. How that's different? How that's similar? What you maybe like or dislike about being out here at Grand Canyon and what it's like to be an artist at these art shows.

Gerald Dawavendewa: It's kind of a challenge in a way, because when I went down to the University of Arizona, I, of course, did my art and wanted to make a living off it. And as you've seen, some of my art, like the first one, it's very abstract. It's a lot of Hopi symbolism. And so, there are not a lot of galleries or a lot of shops that specialize just in Indigenous art. So, I would take it to other galleries that just showed all sorts of art, and they say, well, this is Indian. You need to take this to an Indian shop. And so, I take it to the Indian shop and they're like, this is too abstract for us. You should take it to the galleries. Because a lot of collectors or customers or people, they've kind of have this specific expectation that when you say Indian art, what comes to mind? And a lot of it tends to be art that is sort of from the 1960s or 50s on back. They have an idea that Indian art has to incorporate maybe feathers or dull colors or leather work and these certain types of things. And to them, that's Indian art. And so, if you come up with a hand-blown glass vase, which we have a Hopi artist, he was the first one to do that. He had a hard time because that's not Hopi art because Hopis don't blow glass. And so there's that challenge that a lot of galleries or a lot of collectors will tend to pigeonhole Indigenous art. And of course, there are other collectors who they know what the art is and they go after it. They find specific artists who make styles that they like. But it's a real challenge because a lot of Native art people tend to want a certain style or a certain imagery. And if you try to go outside that, then you get very few people who are interested in buying it. And so that's always a challenge. So, early on, I've just recently really stopped doing it. But there are art shows or art fairs specifically just for Indigenous artists. The Heard Museum in Phoenix has one. There's a very famous one in Santa Fe in August where it's just all Native art. And so when you go there, all the artists there are Native.

Gerald Dawavendewa: They're all Indigenous, and they come from all different tribes or nations around the country. And so that's what I used to do. And it's a challenge when you want to do it as your full-time employment, because you have to pay a fee sometimes half a year in advance. So, it's like you're throwing all this money in the air, but you're not going to see a return for six months. And then, of course, you have to build up your inventory in art. You got to book your hotel. You got to make sure your car is in good shape. You load in all your items and everything, and you drive there and make sure you get fed. And then you sit at your booth, and when you sit there, you have this imaginary money level saying, okay, it cost me $600 to enter the show. The hotel cost me this much, I spent this much for gas, I ate this much food. I have to make this much money just to break even. And then once I reach that, then it's profit. And then when the show is over, you go home and you start the whole thing over again, and you have to sign up and pay these fees, like I said, months in advance.

Gerald Dawavendewa: And then you go home, you rebuild your inventory, you start drawing more or carving or whatever you do, and then you go to the next show. And sometimes then you go to the Hopi show in Flagstaff. And then one year, I went to the Cherokee show in Tulsa. I have friends and family who'll go to shows on the East Coast. They'll go to shows up in Alaska, they'll go to shows in California and Washington state, and they'll be driving all over the place, and a lot of them drive because you can't haul a lot of that stuff on an airplane. So, it's a life. I had a cousin, he did stone carving, which was very heavy. He later switched to jewelry, which was a lot easier to carry. But one of the funny things for me when he was doing stone carving is he priced all his artwork based on how tall it was. So, if he had a carving that was eleven inches tall, it was $1,100, and if it was eight inches tall, it was $800. But he eventually switched to jewelry. But it's a full-time thing.

Gerald Dawavendewa: And if you're not at the show, you're at home working all the time, trying to get that inventory up. And if you're lucky, you get collectors who love your work and only your work, and so they constantly buy just yours. And there have been Hopi potters who show up at the art shows, and you open up at 09:00a.m., and they're done by 9:30. They've sold everything they've had because their work is so popular. I have a cousin who does very elaborate Katsina dolls, and he carves them in one piece. He doesn't add anything to it. Everything on there, the feathers hanging out and the jewelry hanging from the neck or the rattles. Everything is carved from one single piece of wood, and he attaches nothing to it. And his work goes for 10, $15,000. And he has collectors who are willing to pay that price because of the quality of the work he does. And now he's able to just stay home and carve, because now he has collectors who just order from him and say, I want this. And so, he doesn't have to go to the shows anymore. He just stays home and carves.

Gerald Dawavendewa: So, he's one of those who is a successful one, but for a lot of us it's a constant grind and it gets tiring after a while. Eventually for me, I was fortunate enough that I was able to find a way where I reproduced a lot of my art as prints and other items and then I wholesale them to various museums and gift shops. Like the Hopi shop here carries some of my items and so I'm able to do that and stay home and not have to travel all over the place. It's a challenge. It's a rarely unique style of selling art that I don't think you see that a lot with a lot of other different artists who are not indigenous. With such a constant you're going here, here, here, coming back, it's a route, it's almost like circus kind of thing. So yes, it was a challenge.

Ranger Jonah: We have unfortunately reached that time about 15 minutes before the sun sets. So, I want to ask one last question, Gerald. If you were to give everybody who came here tonight one sort of central takeaway or one thing that you wanted them to remember about tonight, what would that be?

Gerald Dawavendewa: That's a good question. Well, as an artist, I guess I just want you to really look at individual native artists and really take the time to appreciate that or look at the art. We've been doing this for a long time. And my fellow artists who does the carvings. Don't be afraid to ask questions about the art and what he makes or its inspiration or even just appreciating and understanding it. Because a lot of this art is deeply rooted into our culture, and it represents a lot of things that are important to us and mean a great deal of what represents us as a cultural group and as a people. And we're very proud to create that and to show it to other people. And we hope that you enjoy it as well. So, thank you very much for taking your time to stop here and listen 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 eleven 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, we talk to the Hopi painter Gerald Dewavendewa. Gerald is a lifelong artist. In this episode, we discuss his beginnings of art on the Hopi reservation, some Hopi traditions and customs, and the cultural influence behind his work.

Episode 2

Noreen Simplicio Speaks

Transcript

Noreen Simplicio: It's all going to get taken away. Well, that hasn't happened. I'm still creating. So, Grandma, I'm sorry, but I think you were wrong at that.

Ranger Jonah: Hello, and welcome to Grand Canyon Speaks. My name is Ranger Jonah.

Ranger Melissa: And I'm Ranger Melissa.

Ranger Jonah: So, Melissa, could you tell us a little bit about this episode?

Ranger Melissa: Yeah. Our coworker Kelly interviewed Noreen Simplicio, who's a Zuni potter, on a very, very windy evening. What's great about Noreen's time with us here at the Canyon was seeing her love of sharing her pottery process with others, and especially the youth.

Ranger Jonah: Yeah. You know what, I would have never realized the role of manure in pottery without this interview.

Ranger Melissa: Yeah. Hopefully everyone will also learn that and enjoy this recording. So, without further ado, Noreen.

Noreen Simplicio: First of all, before I introduce myself, I wanted to thank the National Park Service, Kelli and Dan, for continuing the demonstration program, because the last time I was here was back in April of 2016. So that was the last time I was here. But so happy to be back here. And I'll talk more about that, but yes. My name is Noreen Simplicio. I'm from Zuni Pueblo. I've been a potter for about 40 years. And this place is very special to us, our tribe, and along with the other eleven affiliated tribes. Zuni history tells us that there's a place here, north from here, called Ribbon Falls. The way you say it in Zuni is Chimik'yana'kya Deya' is a place of emergence. Yeah. Very beautiful place. And that's why this place is very special to us, because this is the place where our ancestors emerged from the fourth underworld. So, I myself never really knew where we came from or why we settled in Zuni. But once we came out from this area, our people, well, there was a purpose for us coming out from the fourth underworld. Our purpose was Father Sun wanted somebody to be doing the offerings, a prayer stick, food, and just prayers, the offerings to give the people blessings.

Noreen Simplicio: So that's why we came out from the Earth. And once our people came out from the Earth, they went looking for the Zuni, which is now called the Middle Place. So, they made their journey towards the Zuni area. And of course, that story is pretty true, because along the area, coming here or going that way to Zuni, there's places of settlement that our people settled in. So the way they found the Middle Place was they used a water strider. The water strider spread out its legs, and it touched all the oceans in the world. And once it stood there like this, the middle of his heart is where the Middle place is. Now in Zuni. So, when I was growing up, I would ask Grandma, like, why are we here? Why did we settle here? And that's the story behind it. And I didn't know this until sometime between maybe 2017, when I was asked to work at a substance abuse program. I worked at a recovery program to teach the recoveries. I guess through my clay and through the work that I do it was therapy for the recovering people. So, once we worked with them about teaching about the Zuni culture, language, prayers, whatever, anything and everything about Zuni. We taught for, like, six weeks. Then we did a journey to Ribbon Falls, actually hiking down Bright Angel Trail and North Kaibab Trail. Like actually walking to this Ribbon Falls place. So, I had an opportunity to do it twice, and I'm glad I did. And I survived. Yes.

Ranger Kelli: Do you want to tell everybody where Zuni is and how far it is from here?

Noreen Simplicio: Okay, if any of you know where Gallup, New Mexico is, anybody know where Gallup, New Mexico is? Okay. We're like, what southwest? Like 40 miles southwest of there. So, we live on a reservation. I don't quite know how big our reservation is. Maybe 10,000, maybe more. But that's where I'm from, and that's where actually I learned my craft. I wish I could say a grandma taught me or a grandpa taught my work, what I do now. But I've been a potter for 40 years, and I learned at the high school, but I didn't learn from a Zuni person. I learned from another pueblo, an Acoma person, that was my instructor. So, I took the classes in high school, and from there I just kind of developed and perfected my techniques as I went through my years. But I consider myself a traditional contemporary potter. I use traditional techniques. Contemporary techniques. It wasn't until this past July there was another Hopi person, Bobby Silas, that was teaching a traditional class at our college in Zuni. So, I said, well, I need to take this class, because what he was going to teach was the old techniques.

Noreen Simplicio: So, I took the class, and when I first showed up in the classroom, everybody was like, what are you doing here? You're already a master. And then I said, well, I need to learn. It's always good to learn other people's way of teaching and learning different techniques. So, one of the requirements...I mastered everything. I mastered the building; I mastered the designing. The hardest thing for me was using yucca, the plant. Because that's what our ancestors used a long time ago. They use yucca brushes to paint their pots. That's why I brought this pot with me, because this is my first pot that has been done the old, old, styled way. So, I struggled a lot using the yucca, but I managed to master it.

Ranger Kelli: How long did it take you to do that?

Noreen Simplicio: It took a while because it took me a long time to actually get the feel, the feel of the yucca, because for like 35, 40 years, I've always been using paintbrushes, never yucca, because I could never do it when I was younger. So, it was my destiny. It was my like; I need to perfect this. So, I did. That's why I brought this pot with me.

Ranger Kelli: That's beautiful. And I know there are so many people who are coming today to your table, and they wanted to know what different of your pieces represent, especially the frogs. Oh, my gosh. The kids love your work. And were drawn to your frog pottery.

Noreen Simplicio: Yeah. And I brought one with me. After the session is over, you can come take a look. But everything, all the pigments that I use, I go up in the mountains and dig my own clays. Well, I actually don't do the digging. I have my boyfriend, and I bring a lot of men with me because the place where I dig the clays is pretty rugged. You have to go down in the bottom of the mountain there and dig it and then hike it back up. So, it's a workout. So, they help me collect my clays, but they're natural pigments. One of the things that was taught to me by my instructor was always respect the Earth, because the clay is very valuable. And before I actually start digging, there's always prayer involved. There's always offerings of cornmeal and food before you actually start digging. And you're digging when the clay comes out, plentiful because you literally have to dig to get to the clay. So, it's coming out plentiful and then after a while, it kind of stops coming out. That kind of tells you that's all you can have for now.

Noreen Simplicio: When I teach, like youth or children, whatever, I try to instill this in them, that the clay is very valuable, and if you treat it right and if you create from your heart; [Zuni phrase] I would say in Zuni. If you create from your heart, you'll develop or create beautiful things. So that's one of the important things that I like to talk about, especially to the young people, that when I teach, we have to respect the Earth, the clays and each other. This is what I share with the youth because I think it's important.

Ranger Kelli: When you get the clay, do you pick it out during different seasons, or do you just do it whenever?

Noreen Simplicio: Well, I can say: don't go digging clay when the snakes are out.

Noreen Simplicio: So usually in the summertime, we don't really do it. I wanted to go up there before it got really hot and before the snakes came out. So, I would probably have to go make a trip maybe sometime late August, September, when the snakes go back in because it's very rocky and they live in those rock areas. I am kind of scared of snakes.

Ranger Kelli: I second that. And I'm a park ranger out here. Definitely, because I know it was really great to hear about some of the- do you want to tell us about the frogs? Noreen Simplicio: Yeah, the frogs. The frogs. Like, I was telling Kelli the other day that I don't really know where some of my ideas come from. It just happens. Like, when I'm creating something, I don't have a plan. I don't have anything sketched out. It just happens. And I think that's the gifts that I have. I remember when I was a young girl, about maybe five or six, I remember always playing with mud. I used to make, like, little mud pots all the time. So, when I went to high school and I found out there was a class, pottery class, of course I took it, and I stayed in it all throughout my high school years, and I perfected it, and I was just a natural at it. And then after I graduated, I met up with another Acoma woman that was a potter, and she taught me marketing, and she said, you need to do this. So, I did, and I've been making pots ever since. And the frog pots, like I said, I don't know where I got my idea for the frog pots, but I do them in many different ways. If you're Zuni, you belong to some sort of clan. I'm not a frog, but I love doing frogs, so I'm a badger and an eagle, so I should be doing badgers and eagles, but I don't know how to make those, so I don't do them.

Noreen Simplicio: But frog's representation is what I would say in Zuni, [Zuni phrase]. This means a prayer for rain or water. Whenever there's water, there's life. So, I think that's why I do frogs a lot. And one of the other things that I want to really say is that within the 40 years, I mean, I've been everywhere. Well, not everywhere, but I've been at most museums and places where they have markets. I sell out my frogs. People come to my table. I always get a smile. I always make people happy with my frogs. So, I said, if I had collected $1 within the 40 years, I would be living high and mighty.

Ranger Kelli: Yeah, and that's exactly what I've been seeing the past few days that you've been here. And of course, when I went up to your table, I was like… the frogs are so beautiful. The kids were drawn to it. But you've been doing this for 40 years. I think that's a long time. Do you get tired of doing it?

Noreen Simplicio: No, because my whole life as a potter, there's never a day that I don't create. If I don't create, I don't feel good.

Ranger Kelli: Do you have other hobbies besides pottery?

Noreen Simplicio: Well, I should, but I work too much. But I like hiking. I like exercising, taking care of me. I know those are, like, crazy hobbies, but that's what I love, teaching. I love teaching my art. I love sharing my art. As a matter of fact, there's a program in Zuni. It's a youth program they've been up and running for a while now, and it's called the Zuni Youth Enrichment Program. So, I do summer camps and I teach children. I've taught in the high school. I even came here in, I think, a later part of April, to teach. Debbie, my friend, she teaches at the Grand Canyon High School, and I was invited by Debbie and the staff there to come out to the Grand Canyon High School to teach for a week. It was a blast. I mean I hadn't taught for a while, but we had such a great time. We had a showing on Friday night with what the kids created. So, it was a beautiful event, and I was really honored to be here to teach only because, like I said, the Grand Canyon is a very special place for Zuni people. And my boyfriend just said, this is our second home.

Ranger Kelli: Being here at Grand Canyon, I know you teach the Grand Canyon Kid's school, which is really important for indigenous youth to reconnect to the culture here, but also be proud of who they are. How long have you been working with the kids? Like kids in Zuni?

Noreen Simplicio: Well, actually, when my son was fourth grade in the elementary school, that's where I first got my first pottery teaching job, because the teacher asked me to. It was kind of like a parent talent day or something. So, I went in and took my clay and had the kids play with it and make things out of it. So that was actually my first but don't ask me how long ago that was because I don't remember. But anyway, so ever since then, when I wanted to go into the school, my grandma would always say, why are you teaching other kids? Why are you sharing your talent? I know that sounds so negative, but whatever talent you have, our elders always say that if you share your talent and you teach somebody, it's all going to get taken away. Well, that hasn't happened. I'm still creating. So, grandma, I'm sorry, but I think you were wrong at that.

Ranger Kelli: And what is your favorite part of making the pottery?

Noreen Simplicio: I think my frogs.

Ranger Kelli: The frogs?

Noreen Simplicio: Yeah. Because I do a pot that looks similar to this one. The frogs are peeking over, and then I also have another roll of frogs, kind of like pulling them out of the pot. And that kind of goes with the emergence story, because in the emergence story, our people lived in the fourth underworld, and they had to go through different layers to get to the top of the earth. And the way the history goes, they used different types of trees to get to the top. So, it's kind of like the Jack and the Beanstalk story. So, I think our tribe is the one that created that story. That's what I want to believe anyway.

Ranger Kelli: Yeah. And then have any of the kids that you taught, are you mentors to them today?

Noreen Simplicio: Well, I've not really made connections with them after teaching, but I always have an open door. Like, I give them my number, and I said, if you ever need anything, you need material, you need resources, you need how to do this and that, I'm always there. Ranger Kelli: Yeah. Today I did see some kids who just went up to her table, and she just gave them clay and taught them how to start making clay. And I think she's really great with our youth in this area. She's a great teacher.

Noreen Simplicio: Yeah. I love to teach anybody that wants to learn. So, I do sometimes open my studio at home and offer some workshops. Maybe if you ever want to come to Zuni and stay in Zuni and learn from me for a couple of days, you're more than welcome to do that. Ranger Kelli: And that's a lot of the questions I get from visitors. They want to visit a lot of the tribes out in Zuni, but I'm not Zuni, so is there a place where they can go to learn more about the Zuni tribe or people in that area? Noreen Simplicio: Well, we do have a visitor center, and then they have, like, tour guides, paid tour guides in Zuni, and then we have a bed and breakfast place there. Or you can come to me, and I'll take you to our mountain.

Ranger Kelli: When you were growing up, you told me that a lot of the connection here at Grand Canyon, it didn't really connect till later on.

Noreen Simplicio: Yes.

Ranger Kelli: And is some of the work from Grand Canyon in your pottery? I know you said the frog is one of them.

Noreen Simplicio: Well, not really, but just only the frog pot that I was talking about. But I think I can create things that are connected to this place.

Ranger Kelli: And these are deer, right?

Noreen Simplicio: Yeah.

Ranger Kelli: Earlier you told me about the opening of the mouth. Can you tell me about that again?

Noreen Simplicio: Yes. I always try to somewhere on the pot. The arrow that's leading to his heart is called the breath of life. So, every time I paint my deer, somewhere on the pot I leave the mouth open so that there's breath coming in and breath going out and having life. The symbol right here, where the line that goes around the pot that doesn't connect, that's a lifeline. Your lifeline, my lifeline, everybody's lifeline, or even the lifeline of the pot. So, when you create something with clay, you bring it to life.

Ranger Kelli: Wow. It's beautiful. Yeah. And I can just leave the floor open for any questions that you all might have. Does anybody have any questions?

Audience Member: The only time I've ever seen pottery made is with clay on a wheel. Right. Do you use a wheel to form your pottery?

Noreen Simplicio: No, this is what I use. I use my hands.

Audience Member: So, you're able to work the clay to the right thickness and the right density and also make it like, symmetrical, perfectly round or whatever?

Noreen Simplicio: 40 years it took me to make it. Well, when it comes to my work, I like to be perfect, but sometimes the clay has a mind of its own. If you have a plan in mind that you want a certain shape or a certain style, sometimes it won't happen. So, you just got to go with the flow and accept it. And especially if you worked on a piece and it breaks in the firing, it hits you right in the heart. But you know what? You don't stop there. You keep trying. And one of the other things that I wanted to say was that I have a story about my nephew. I saw he had a lot of talent, right? So, I kept influencing him. I said, hey, you really know how to do this really well. You should really advance yourself and start maybe doing some things in relief and things like that.

Noreen Simplicio: But he was young. And he was the type where I think I was forcing him to do it because I saw the talent. So, every time he came over to work on it, he was working on this large piece one time, he would come over and work on it, but his attitude was not good. He was either angry or something was going on with him. So, I would say, go home, get out of here, go home, come back tomorrow or something. And then he kept doing that. He'd done a large owl that he was working on, like for months. But I knew because of his attitude and the way his behavior was while he was creating that the owl wasn't going to make it through. So, when he finally finished it, I fired it. And guess what? I was so afraid because all my pieces are currently now being fired in a kiln. But with taking this class from Bobby, I learned how to do outdoor firing. So, this class when I took it, it just rejuvenated me. I can't wait to start doing everything, like the old way.

Ranger Kelli: And how does the outdoor firing look?

Noreen Simplicio: You practically build your own kiln using manure, but a very stinky process. Very stinky process.

Ranger Kelli: What type of manure?

Noreen Simplicio: You can use cow manure, sheep manure. You could use wood, but it's pretty awesome when you build your own pit, so I can't wait to try it. But I also need to do it somewhere other than my home because there's lots of neighbors around. I'm going to get the police called on me.

Audience Member: Did the owl break? Noreen Simplicio: Yes, the owl broke. One of the eyes popped off, one of the ears popped off.

Audience Member: Was he okay?

Noreen Simplicio: No, he cried. We all cried because the whole family was, like, so into it. We couldn't wait to see it, but that's what happened. But I knew. I knew it was going to happen because of his attitude. So, it's very important that your attitude is really good. Not sad, but always happy because whatever you're feeling when you're creating the energy is going into the piece. So, when the owl broke, of course, we sent it to the pottery hospital on top of a shelf, which stayed there for like two, three years. And then I kept telling him, I said, you need to do it from your heart. And he kept saying, what do you mean? So, the owl taught him a lesson and he finally got it, but he didn't create for like two, three years. And then I said, come back when you're ready, then we'll go through surgery. So, we fixed it and then somebody from Zuni bought it for their collection. But it made it, it was like good as new.

Audience Member: As a layperson, can you help me understand the difference between a yucca brush and a regular brush?

Noreen Simplicio: Okay, so all this time, since I've been a potter for like 35, 40 plus years, I've always used brushes because I could never use yucca. Brushes have a wooden handle and bristles. Yucca brushes are just little fibers and the stem of the yucca. So, it's a little bit harder to control and a little bit harder to maneuver the bristles. So, like, you're talking arthritis there.

Ranger Kelli: And do you go through a lot of yucca brushes?

Noreen Simplicio: Well, to finish this one, I probably went through four. You can make them in different sizes. You know how the yucca, the stem of the yucca is green, you scrape that off. Once you scrape off the green part, then you get your fibers.

Audience Member: You mentioned earlier you walk from like the Bright Angel Trailhead to the Ribbon Falls. So how long does it take?

Noreen Simplicio: It was my understanding it was like 25 miles round trip.

Ranger Kelli: Yeah. So, on the Bright Angel trail, it's longer switchbacks than South Kaibab trail. And Bright Angel trail is about, like, 9 miles down to Phantom Ranch. And then you also have to go up elevation on the North Kaibab Trail and then that's another like 7 miles. So, it is a pretty long hike, and it is one of the hardest hikes here at Grand Canyon especially because it's hotter in the canyon right now. But, also, she told me that she was carrying a 50-pound bag while hiking to Ribbon Falls.

Noreen Simplicio: I was determined to get there because I needed to see the place and see where we actually come from. And once we came down from Bright Angel Trail all the way down to Bright Angel Camp, we spent the night there. Then we went into Ribbon Falls the next morning and then we planted our prayer sticks there. Well, the men folk did. Planted our prayer sticks and played around there and then headed back to the camp. Next morning, we came back up. So, it was a very grueling hike, but I'm so glad that I did it, because it was just a spiritual journey for me. So, one thing I want to say about the Grand Canyon area is that because of the eleven affiliated tribes, this is my own personal thoughts. Because of the Ribbon Falls being such a very sacred place for many of the native Pueblo tribes, I feel that it should not be open to the public. Because a lot of times when non-natives go there, they damage the landscape. There's a teaching or a saying that the Elders always talk about. When you travel into the forest, into the woods area, these are homes to the bugs, the plants, the trees. So, we have a big thing about trashing the earth, which is not a very pleasant sight. So that's just my feeling on, like, it shouldn't be open to the public. It should only be open to Natives because we do our spiritual offerings there. So that's just my only thoughts on that.

Ranger Kelli: It's really hard to kind of make that connection with the native people in these areas, because spiritually, it's still alive. Like she said, there's animals there's living species that live in these areas, and because it is a living landscape, it's also spiritually alive. We're not physically here, but our connection is still there with it. So very important thing that you did say there because we're struggling as native people today to save our sacred sites, and Ribbon Falls is a very highly visited area with our visitors. So, I really appreciate that.

Noreen Simplicio: So just to be respectful, when you do visit places of sacredness or places where you want to go visit, just please be respectful of the land and the landscapes and the animals. Even like the little ladybugs. Because there were some kids today that was playing with the ladybugs, and the mom told them, go put it over there by the tree. So just things like that are very important to us Natives because we pray to the land, and we use the flesh of the land to create our pieces. So just please be respectful.

Audience Member: How many colors have you had? Or can you use?

Noreen Simplicio: Okay, so there's brown, which is the dark brown hematite stone, and the brown hematite stone is mixed with some sort of plant, like the wild spinach plant. You pick the plant, you take the leaves off, you boil the leaves, and when the spinach is done, you can eat it and save the juice and boil it down till it almost gets like a molasses type. Really sticky stuff. And you dry that, and you grind it down on a rock with the hematite stone and the spinach. So, the spinach is kind of like the glue for the paint, but you have to get the mixture right. If you add too much of the spinach, or if you get too much of the hematite when you actually do your designing, it'll peel off. Or you won't know until you fire the piece. And then the other colors are, of course, the white, the peach color, and the red. So those are all the basic colors. I do also do some other pieces. I do a lot of things. I do pottery, I do what's called sublimation, which are images that are done on the computer, printed out on cups, pillows, whatever. I do clay, jewelry. What else do we do? David and I incorporate some pieces. He's a silversmith, and I do the pottery part and we set them in silver.

Ranger Kelli: And I know you said something earlier before you came here. You're like, I'm going to put the pottery on my head. Do you do for those types of dances?

Noreen Simplicio: Oh, yes. There's a group of women in Zuni that are called the Olla maidens. Anybody heard of the Olla maidens? Yes, they're very famous and it's a group of women that go around and entertain. They carry the pot on their heads like this, actually balancing them, and they dance to music. And when I get back home, I need to do a couple because the group is going to, I believe, New York to do a performance, so I need to create some pots for them.

Audience Member: Could you tell us what other plants or something you use to make the different colors? Noreen Simplicio: The only other plants that I know of that well, not different colors, but to add to the hematite brownstone to make it sticky. So, there's the bee weed, the wild spinach and the mustard plant, I think. Yeah, but I've only experimented with the spinach plant. I've not tried the others yet.

Ranger Kelli: Looks like we are right at sunset. So, I just have one last question for Noreen. As people who are visiting these sacred areas and based on what you told us tonight, what would you like us to take away from what you talked about this evening? Noreen Simplicio: Well, just educating the public on really respecting the native lands. Respect our culture, respect who we are as native people. Let's all be friends and let's all get along.

Ranger Kelli: Yeah. Well, let's give it up for Noreen. And if you all want to see her in action tomorrow, she is going to be demonstrating at the Watchtower from nine to four o'clock.

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 eleven 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, we talk to the traditional Zuni potter Noreen Simplicio. A strong advocate for youth empowerment, Noreen discusses the Zuni connection to Grand Canyon, her story of learning traditional pottery, and the value of respecting the landscape.

Episode 3

Janet Yazzie Speaks

Transcript

Janet Yazzie”: So I was, okay, I'll do this. I think I can do this. And I kept hearing from my family, you can do this. You're really good at it. I was like, okay, fine. Okay. I'll do it. I'll do it. But then I just I had to believe in myself first to become an artist and to embrace this gift that I was blessed with.

Ranger Melissa: Welcome to Grand Canyon Speaks! My name is Ranger Melissa.

Ranger Jonah: And I'm Ranger Jonah.

Ranger Melissa: Hey, who did we interview today in this episode?

Ranger Jonah: Yeah, in this episode, we talked to Janet Yazzie. It was a really unique program in person. We had to initially cancel because of lightning, but by the time the program came around, the weather cleared, a big rainbow came out, and it was just a beautiful evening.

Ranger Melissa: Yeah. We actually moved under a shade structure by the parking lot to get away from that extra rain that was just ending. And we had a great time talking with Janet. It was good to hear about her life and how she only recently labeled herself as a full-time artist after taking some really big leaps.

Ranger Jonah: Yeah. Even though we were by the parking lot, and this was actually one of our first programs, I was really happy with our conversation. So, without further ado, Janet. Hello!

Janet Yazzie: Hi.

Ranger Jonah: Well, Janet, thank you so much for coming to the program today.

Janet Yazzie: Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Ranger Jonah: So, my first question is, where are you from?

Janet Yazzie: I am originally from the Navajo reservation called lower Greasewood. It is like 100 miles away from here, northeast, but I live in Flagstaff, Arizona, currently.

Ranger Jonah: A little bit closer. Very nice! And so, you are an artist. And how did you start your career? Could you kind of tell the story of when you first decided that this was what you wanted to do?

Janet Yazzie: Okay, well, it took me a long time to get to where I'm at right now and to figure out that I wanted to be an artist. I did start as a child. I remember working on something in my class when I was in the third grade, and it was a bluebird and I entered it into a contest. From there on, I decided that I felt like I could draw but I didn't really take on that I could really draw. I doodled along the way with pencil, charcoal, not knowing that that was my medium yet, or I couldn't find what I was really interested in. I did woodwork, I did ceramic. I did a lot of craft art. And then somewhere along the way, I started working with acrylic. And acrylic seemed like it was a little bit hard to do at first.

Ranger Jonah: Sure.

Janet Yazzie: I did buy some canvas and paint, and I just kind of storaged it away and then didn't look at it for a long time because I went to school. You get busy with your life. Went to college, had various jobs. And then even when I was in high school, I took art class, and I found that it was pretty interesting, just art itself, and some of my art teachers, they would get us to do different projects. But then again, I didn't think, oh, art, should I do art? When you're a kid, you don't know that's the way you want to go, to be an artist. So, I just left it as that. Still had my canvas and my paint storage away, and then took some classes in college and then took an art class for an elective because it was, like, the easiest class to take. And I just kind of coast right through it because my teacher wasn't challenging enough for me. And she used to put, like, just still life items in front of us, and then she's just like, okay, you guys draw this. And yeah, I did it. And it was like, okay, what's next? So that wasn't challenging enough for me. And still, it didn't click, being an artist. But I did meet my husband in art class.

Ranger Jonah: Well, you should’ve known right then and there!

Janet Yazzie: Yeah, that wasn't what I was looking for at the time. And my art teacher paired us up, and we did a project together, and we became best friends. Since then, we've been inseparable. We got married. We had four kids. And then I got busy with this, you know. Well, that happened a bit later, but I did have my first job at the Heard Museum. And I used to be around all this amazing art, a bunch of different artists from all over the reservations around me. And it was kind of amazing just to be around all that art. And I thought, I could do that. I could do this. But I was like, no, I don't know. And then I had my family. I was busy. And still didn't figure that I could be an artist. And then somewhere I started doing commission, like, just painting. But I did it for my family, people that knew me. I did, like, little pieces, then I'll just gave them as gifts. And then I decided, okay, in 2019, I'm going to do a mural. So, I did a little mural for one of the churches that I go to, and it was pretty small, so I did that first. And then within that time period, the people that I knew there, they wanted me to illustrate a book for them. So, I was like, okay, this is a big step, illustrating a book.

Ranger Jonah: Certainly.

Janet Yazzie: Can I do this? It was kind of a scary thought at first. I was like, all right, I'll try it. And I did a sketch, and I did the painting, and they loved the cover. So, I illustrated my first book in 2020 during the pandemic, when it was just starting. And then I just kept painting, and I did murals, another mural. Then I did another mural, and then I started working on more pieces. So, the whole year of 2020, I was painting, and I was trying to figure out, okay, is this what I want to do? So, I was like, okay, I'll do this. I think I can do this. And I kept hearing from my family, you can do this. You're really good at it. I was like, okay, fine. Okay, I'll do it. I'll do it. But then I had to believe in myself first to become an artist and to embrace this gift that I was blessed with. So, I was like, all right, I'll paint something, and I'll see what it'll come out to be. It took me a long time to get to realize that all right, I should be an artist. It wasn't just like, instant. I had to really think about it.

Ranger Jonah: You had to build the confidence?

Janet Yazzie: Yeah, I did. I had to build the confidence. And then I had to figure out what art really meant to me before I really started painting. And then I was like, okay, I'll just go ahead and start painting. And then what year was it? Right when the pandemic was over, the Heritage Festival put up their first show in July of 2021. And I thought to myself, should I do this? I was so scared.

Ranger Jonah: And your friends and family, I'm sure, said, "Yes! Please!"

Janet Yazzie: Yes so, I had to submit images, and I filled out the application. I waited, and I was like okay, I can do this. All right, I'll just do it. So, I sent it and that same evening, they responded to me, and they said that you are accepted as an artist. So, I was like, okay.

Ranger Jonah: A very quick turnaround time.

Janet Yazzie: So that was a really big step for me. So then from there, I figured, okay, I can do this and be an artist. I had to really think about what I was about as an artist. I know people, when you ask them, what inspires you? What made you get into this? It took me a long time to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life and what I really wanted to be.

Ranger Jonah: Certainly. But it came together.

Janet Yazzie: It came together. Once I figured it out, all the opportunities and everything opened up.

Ranger Jonah: All the doors show up right when you're looking for them. Absolutely.

Janet Yazzie: It's been amazing. And I'm not done. I just got started!

Ranger Jonah: Yes, certainly. So, the first big projects, the mural, the book, those were really what launched you into your career. But you were just talking about inspiration. Was there someone in your life, perhaps when you were growing up that maybe encouraged you more, that you took a lot of inspiration for? I know that you have your grandmother in a lot of your art. How did your grandmother encourage you?

Janet Yazzie: Okay, so I grew up with my grandmother. I was the first-born child on my mom's side, and she used to drop me off with my grandma when I was little, so I spent a lot of time with her. And I remember we're did, like, planting. We did a whole cornfield. We did sunflowers, and she was a weaver. And there's just like, all these memories that I created with her, and she was really special to me. It was kind of like a language barrier, too, because I wasn't really super fluent in Navajo, and she passed away when I was a junior in high school. She used to always wear purple. All these little things that I paint in my artwork, like the cornfield, the sunflowers, and the sheep, these are all the memories that I keep of her, to keep her alive. And it's kind of nice, too, when I do these paintings, a lot of native women are just my Diné people. They'll come to me and they'll remember stuff that they used to do with their grandmas.

Ranger Jonah: Yeah. So, they take something for themselves.

Janet Yazzie: Yeah. And then sometimes when people come and look at my work and they'll start crying, they're like, oh, I miss my grandma. She used to always wear purple. These are the things we used to do. I like to capture that kind of stuff and kind of share it with everybody. That was very special.

Ranger Jonah: It makes the career all the more meaningful, right? Because your art really affects people.

Janet Yazzie: Yes, it does. Yes. So, I think just the colors themself, the work I put into it. Everything that I do in my work, it means something. Just people looking at it, inspired by the colors. I think my work has done its job by just them looking at it.

Ranger Jonah: Absolutely.

Janet Yazzie: Yeah.

Ranger Jonah: So, you kind of already mentioned the colors as some of the symbolism, perhaps, of personal significance, and then how it has a way of connecting with people. What are some of the other symbols that you like to use in your work?

Janet Yazzie: Let me see. I do windmills. I do the windmill. I grew up around the windmill, so hauling the water when I was young, we took many trips hauling water for my grandparents, and water didn't come easy because you have to use that for the livestock, for the crops, and just even washing clothes. So, the windmill plays a lot in my artwork, and I like to change the scenery as well and just kind of work it in my artwork.

Ranger Jonah: But it's a lot of scenery that you remember as a child, these memories that come back to you. Which brings up another question that I have. You talk about how these scenes are from various points in your life and how the colors are inspired by various things that you remember. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the process of actually creating a piece of work. When you are beginning perhaps an acrylic painting, for example, do you see all that in your head right when you begin? Or do you just say, I'm going to start with a lot of different types of orange, and then we're going to see where it goes from there.

Janet Yazzie: Usually when I start a piece, I already know what color it's going to be, and I already see it. So, I'll start with the background first, and I kind of play with it. And then once I like the background, well, I don't make it too dark. I make it light enough where the colors are light but bright. And then I put the main idea on there. And then when I have the main idea there, I'll go back to the sky and I start working on that, and I'll start detailing it and then comes out to something that I don't know what it's going to look like at the very end.

Ranger Jonah: Right.

Janet Yazzie: Sometimes I'll step back for a moment and I was like, oh, wait, I don't like that there. And I'll fix it, go back and forth. And then to me, a painting is never done because I can go back to it and add something or kind of detail it some more. But yeah, most of the time I already know what it's going to look like.

Ranger Jonah: Do you consider yourself a perfectionist when you start and then you're sort of completed? How do you know when you're done? Because I imagine there's always a feeling that maybe it can be tweaked just a little bit more.

Janet Yazzie: I try not to be a perfectionist.

Ranger Jonah: I'm sure that helps.

Janet Yazzie: I know when I did one of my like, my favorite piece. It was called the Arrow Head Cheíí. This one was a pain to do just because when you get the front texture of the scale, I wanted to make it look really sharp and colorful. That one was the one that I was wanting to be like perfection. But of course, you can't get perfection.

Ranger Jonah: Just depends on how you define it!

Janet Yazzie: I just wanted it to look really nice, and it came out beautifully when I was done. Yeah, I would have kept that one. It was really nice, though. Yes.

Ranger Jonah: And you talked a little bit about this, but windmills and the sky, I mean, you have a very distinct style. So how do you feel like your style may be unique compared to some of your contemporaries.

Janet Yazzie: I do a lot of night skies. I change up the colors. I got really good at it. From my first piece when I did the night sky in 2020, I compared it from then to now. It is completely different. I look at my work from a while back to now, and I can just see all the practice that I've done in my blending up until now. Oh my gosh. I didn't realize my technique has changed so much, and just the way that I look at the sky, and I really pay attention to it. I always pay attention to my surroundings. When you're taking a walk, you take a look at the sky, and a cloud isn't just white. There are other colors in it. So many different colors. So people will just paint, like, a white. It's not white. I think the cloud was kind of hard for me to do at the beginning. Now it's not I can get it and just make it a little bit different, the way I want. That's the same as the night sky. So, who knows, maybe I'll get a little bit better as the years go by. I'm not perfect yet. I'm still practicing as I go along.

Ranger Jonah: Doing the night sky, is there a direction? Perhaps you see your style going. Is there something that you've wanted to tap into that you haven't had the time or focus to get to yet?

Janet Yazzie: Yes, I have this huge canvas. It's really large.

Ranger Jonah: Going back to the murals

Janet Yazzie: I don't know how big it will be. I'm not sure what the size is. This canvas was donated to me. I'm going to put a huge night sky, and then I'm going to put all our Navajo Nation monuments on it. So, this thing is going to be big. I just haven't had the time to do it, but I already know what it's going to look like. So, in the future, I will do that.

Ranger Jonah: That's very exciting. We'll have to keep tuned. So, of course, being an artist who sells their work, you have to go to shows. So, what are some of the shows you go to and how did you get started with them.

Janet Yazzie: Okay, so my first show was the Heritage Festival in Flagstaff. That was my very first show. And it was amazing because I got to meet a bunch of artists. From there on, I did a bunch of local shows in Flagstaff. I did, like, the art walks. I've gone to various little shows here and there just to be comfortable with doing shows. But the bigger shows that I wanted to do as an artist was the Heard Museum and do the SWAIA, the Santa Fe Indian Market. Well, I got into the SWAIA last year, and then this year, I did the Heard Museum in March.

Ranger Jonah: And you worked at the Heard Museum?

Janet Yazzie: Yes, I used to work at the Heard Museum.

Ranger Jonah: So, it all comes back.

Janet Yazzie: It was a great experience, and it was unbelievable just to be around all these amazing artists, and I just couldn't believe I was within all these amazing artists.

Ranger Jonah: Absolutely. And I'm sure you learn all sorts of tips and tricks and people help give advice. Was that really important to your development in the last few years or so?

Janet Yazzie: Yes. So, I'm part of an organization called Art of the People as well. And they're a bunch of male artists, and they're more like my mentors. And they kind of give me tips on everything. What a good size canvas is to take with you, for example. If you go on the road, they'll tell you, don't take huge 30 x 40 canvases because you have to lug this thing around in your vehicle. They're like, okay, Janet, take something that's a good size to pack because you have to wrap them. So little stuff like that I learned. Good tips from the yeah, I learned that too.

Ranger Jonah: Do you have a favorite show that you've been to or one that was really a moment of just, wow, I cannot believe I'm here. I didn't ever think that I'd get here.

Janet Yazzie: I think the SWAIA was the one for me.

Ranger Jonah: And SWAIA is?

Ranger Jonah: Santa Fe Indian Market. Yes. In Santa Fe, New Mexico. Yes. And then I made the 100 Centennial for that one.

Ranger Jonah: Oh, wow.

Janet Yazzie: Yeah.

Ranger Jonah: What a perfect year.

Janet Yazzie: I know, that was cool. That was cool. It was kind of funny because me and my sister visited the SWAIA in 2018. I had no idea they had the SWAIA for Native artists. Yeah, I had no idea as an artist. I had no idea. But we went just to go as visitors, and I saw all these amazing artists. My sister says to me, you should do this. I'm like, I don't know. And then when I started painting, I applied, and then I got accepted. I was like, what? This is crazy. Yeah, so I was just honored to be there. And then I was on the magazine, too. I was like, wow.

Ranger Jonah: Have you seen your own work? It makes sense! So, what are some of the other hobbies that you enjoy doing outside of art?

Janet Yazzie: Let me see. What do I do? I do a lot. I spend time with my family. They all ride dirt bikes. They all ride dirt bikes. So that's what we used to do before I started doing this.

Ranger Jonah: And that is street biking or motorized biking.

Janet Yazzie: Dirt bikes. Yeah, they compete. We do Arizona Nationals, California Nationals. And my kids, that's all they grew up on. And that's what I used to do, too, when they were little, and we'd ride mountain bikes. So that's like the other part of me. That's my family. So, while they're racing and going to Farmington for a race, I'm over here doing art shows, and I'm by myself. So, I had to learn to unpack, put my panels up and just learn to be by myself and do this. Because my husband's like, 100% supportive. He's like, "Honey, go out and do your art. This is what you can do." I was like, okay, I'll do it.

Ranger Jonah: And you've done it.

Janet Yazzie: Yeah. And I used to be their pit crew all the time. Gassing them up and doing whatever they need. But now that my husband's retired, he does that for my kids now.

Ranger Jonah: Yeah, right on. And you go to art shows.

Janet Yazzie: Yes, I do art shows now.

Ranger Jonah: Very nice. Well, so one of I don't know if we could call this a show, but one thing that you've done is come to the Grand Canyon and be a part of our cultural demonstration program. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the program and whether you've enjoyed it?

Janet Yazzie: Yes. I've only heard of this place, the cultural demonstration from other artists, and they would talk about it. Saying it was amazing. I'm like what? How in the world can I be a part of this? I don't understand. And then my friend Jonah, he says, Janet, you need to go online. And I was oh, okay. There's this guy. He does it, Dan. He's all I was like, who?

Ranger Jonah: Ranger Dan!

Janet Yazzie: So, I didn't know you were a ranger. I was like, okay. And then I got busy, and just lo and behold, winter market came at the museum, and then these people show up my booth, and I was talking to everybody else, and Dan introduced himself, and we were talking, and then he started talking about the program. I was like, what? I heard about that program. I was like, yes, I will do it just the way some of the artists talked about the program. And I was like, yeah, I definitely want to try it, because this will be the first for me and to get my work out there, show people what I can do, share my colors, what I'm about, and showing people that I'm a Navajo woman coming from the Navajo reservation, and just the life experience that I went through.

Janet Yazzie: I want to share with people what I come from, what I see, the colors I see. I want to share all my background; I want them to know that this is my perspective as a woman. So that's what my work was about.

Ranger Jonah: Absolutely. And we're all very grateful that you came and shared your perspective. Has there been any visitor interactions or interactions with visitors that were particularly like: wow, that was really cool!

Janet Yazzie: Yeah, I met people from all over the world these couple days. People from Germany, a lot of people from New Hampshire, Chicago. Yeah, and they bought my work. They wanted to share this stuff. And then I give them the story of what my art is about, and they're just blown away. And then I talk about my clans. My clans are that I am Kinłichíi’nii, Mą’ii Deeshgiizhinii, Tséńjíkiní, and Tł’ízíłání. So that is my mom's clan, my dad's clan, my grandparent’s clan, and then my father's parents clan. So that's how I identify myself as a Navajo woman. So, when we introduce ourselves, that's how we introduce ourselves, by our clans. And I kind of told them about how our clan system works because it goes by our bloodlines, and some of the people are like, whoa, what? You have to remember all those four clans. Yes, you do. Yes. And it's kind of crazy because when you first introduce yourself and you're a single woman, you can't just go and meet that person, say, oh, yeah. We have to introduce ourselves and see if any of those four clans match. If one of them is the same, you cannot date this person. Yeah, it's just like, one of the rules. So, it's just like a blood rule. Bloodstream kind of thing.

Ranger Jonah: An easy topic to bring up in art class, I am sure!

Janet Yazzie: You know what? That's kind of funny, because when I met my husband, we're, like, talking, and then instantly we're like, what's your clan?

Ranger Jonah: It works. It's a good pickup line.

Janet Yazzie: But my experience here at the Grand Canyon has been amazing. I mean, just the view itself, holy cow! I mean, who knew I was going to be in the Watchtower painting? And just the experience of people coming over, wanting to know who I am, interested in what I do, from all over the world. Yeah, it's great. It's great.

Ranger Jonah: Absolutely.

Janet Yazzie: I definitely enjoyed being here.

Ranger Jonah: And I understand that you have recently started marking your work with the Red House logo, so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the significance of that.

Janet Yazzie: Okay. So, when I first started off, I didn't think about it. When I first did my artwork. But as I started painting, I decided, you know what? I need some kind of logo for myself. And then I created the Red House art. So Red House is Kinłichíi’nii in Navajo, and that's my mom's clan, and that's identified as me. I'm a red house. I'm a Kinłichíi’nii. And so, I made a logo, and I designed it as my own. And then right above the logo, I put my Janet M. Yazzie. So, every time when I complete a canvas, I stamp my canvas in the back of it, and then any of my prints, too, I stamp, and I sign it. So, if you own any of my work, it has my special stamp on it. Very cool to show that it is mine.

Ranger Jonah: Well, I have saved my last question to be the very hardest question that I'm going to ask tonight. So, what is your favorite food?

Audience Member: The people want to know!

Janet Yazzie: Oh, my favorite food. Gosh, I have so many. I like potatoes and Spam.

Ranger Jonah: A dark horse! Did not expect that one.

Janet Yazzie: With hot tortillas, but I try not to make it too much. Yeah.

Ranger Jonah: Well, thank you so much for doing this program. I would love to turn to our audience now and ask if there's anybody in the audience who has a question that they would like to ask Janet.

Janet Yazzie: Sure.

Audience Member: Apologies, I came late. So, if this was already asked, I'm sorry. You spoke a little bit about how with that large canvas you were making, you already know what it's going to look like.

Janet Yazzie: Yes.

Audience Member: I'm curious, when you're painting, how close does your kind of initial vision of what your painting is going to be come out in terms of what the end result is? Is it close or does it deviate quite a bit from what you imagine?

Janet Yazzie: It kind of changes in between. Maybe like when I'm maybe in the middle processing, because sometimes I know when I look at something, I don't want it dark just because it's a night sky. Because I know this canvas that I'm going to be doing, it's going to be a night sky. I prefer it to be a little bit brighter. I'm thinking maybe it could be a little bit green. I'm going to throw some purple in there. So somewhere in between, I will change that. But I think maybe later when I start it, I might add something else to it, too. Yeah, who knows? But just like the basic idea, just thinking about it. I kind of already have an idea, but then when I go into it, it changes, but it comes out beautifully at the end.

Ranger Jonah: Yes.

Audience Member: Oh, I have two questions. Do you use oil paints, and do you use the reference photos?

Janet Yazzie: I use acrylic.

Audience Member: Oil paints are really hard.

Janet Yazzie: Yeah, I find acrylic a little bit easier to work with. You just use a lot of water. And what was the other question?

Audience Member: Oh, about reference photos?

Janet Yazzie: Oh, so, I do both. I can look at something. I mean, I don't have a photogenic memory, but if there's something that I remember or something that I see and I want to do something like a really nice, really nice tree or the sky, I'll take a picture and I'll put it away. And then if I have something in mind that I'm going to put together, maybe I'll use that or maybe I won't. But there's this one I'm working on. It's a hogan. That one was just kind of like a memory thing. So, I can do both. I can do both. It just depends on how I'm feeling that day. I don't know. And sometimes I can work, like, on four canvases. One of them could be an image that I saved, and then one of them is a memory. I think with doing those kinds of exercises I can do both. Yeah.

Ranger Jonah: Does anybody have any more questions for our artist?

Audience Member: Yes, I have two. How many paintings do you usually paint like a month? And then do any of your kids do art? Are they going to follow in your footsteps?

Janet Yazzie: Okay, so right now, currently, I am working on six canvases. They're all different sizes. I love to do tiny art, so I do like those little three x three canvases that come with the little easels. I can finish those- in an hour sometimes. Sometimes I'll start something, and I'll just put it aside. And I hate to use this word, and I tell my kids not to use this word- bored. But if I don't want to do one anymore, I'll move it aside and then I start on something else. But I use different colors, and I have different color palettes sometimes for certain canvases. But yeah, right now I'm working on six, and it varies depending on how big they are. Maybe I can finish one in three weeks. I can finish one in two weeks. I can finish one in a week. There's just one I did two weeks ago at the Coconino Community College. There was a canvas that I worked on. It was like 24 x 30, and I did a night sky. I started on Thursday. It took me a week to finish because that's all I do. All I do is paint twenty-four seven, and I can stand there for hours and just paint. But I was doing like a fundraiser thing for this, so it was like a must do to finish. If there is a deadline, I will finish it. So it just all depends on the situation. I have a show coming the end of June. I will be ready for that because I need bigger canvases, so I'm going to get more out. And I push myself, but I don't want to push myself to where I'm not going to like it anymore because I start cramping in my hands. So, yeah, it just all varies. But most of the time I can do like two weeks, a week, a month, and if I want it to look really good, I just kind of take my time on it. And then my son, the youngest one, he is actually painting right now. He paints, but he's kind of into anime. But I do encourage him. My daughter, she paints too, but she's into crocheting. Yeah, she's into crocheting right now. So, I hope they do follow my footsteps. And I have parents that come up to me and want me to be the mentor for their kids. And it's totally fine. It's like, sure, yeah. I do hope they follow my footsteps.

Audience Member: Do you name your paintings?

Janet Yazzie: Yes, I do.

Audience Member: What's that process involve?

Janet Yazzie: So, there's one that I did. It's called Homeward Bound. It's a 24 x 30 3D gallery wrap canvas. And I used a lot of pink and orange and yellow in this because the clouds are massive. And that one I call Homework Bound because the sheep are coming towards you. And that's like a sunset. And that was, like, my favorite because that's when the sheep come home. And that was like, one of my favorite images because my mom raises sheep and it's just like the clouds themself were my favorite. And I didn't really use any black in this painting. I used like really dark brown with dark purple to make my darkness on there, but oh my gosh, that one is my favorite. So, if you ever look at my Instagram or Facebook that's on there.

Ranger Jonah: Yes. Could we get the Instagram and the Facebook?

Janet Yazzie: It's janmyzzi_artwall, and it's both on Instagram and Facebook.

Ranger Jonah: Well, Janet, you will be in the watchtower tomorrow from nine to four. So, if anybody would like to see her work, she will be displaying that between nine and four. I was wondering if you had one final takeaway, maybe one thing that if you'd like people to know, this would be it.

Janet Yazzie: What do I say?

Ranger Jonah: No pressure. Just being recorded.

Janet Yazzie: I would just like to say thank you so much for loving my art. People that have come in the past are still coming to look at my work. You have no idea how much it means to me that people really enjoy my colors. It means a lot. And I didn't know I was going to be here as an artist. I think it took a lot of courage and I had to really look at myself and figure that this is what I want it to do with my life and I'm glad I'm sharing it. So, thank you for having me be here. This is definitely an honor and always my first at everything. I'm very grateful just to be here.

Ranger Jonah: Yes, well, I think we could all use a little bit of courage in our lives no matter what we are doing. And with that, thank you so much for being part of Grand Canyon Speaks. Thank you, audience, for being here a part of Grand Canyon Speaks in such a unique setting.

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 eleven 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, we talk to Diné (Navajo) painter Janet Yazzie. We talk with Janet about how she developed the courage to be a full-time artist, the inspirations for her work, and her favorite parts about her job. Janet even did the art for this very podcast!

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