Kachina Dancers on the Sunrise

I just got back from visiting Pinon yesterday on the Navajo reservation with Phyllis and Jessa for a variety of workshops. We got to hear about some of the various projects that were being run out of the community space we visited.

Phyllis and Jessa demonstrated how to make pinon salve out of Pinon sap, olive oil, and beeswax. Pinon salve is a great topical treatment for skin wounds/dry skin and works as an antiseptic. In addition to this demo, we went out with the kids to gather lichen on a plant walk to make dye for wool.

Inside of the hooghan we visited, the women were busy preparing wool for weaving into blankets and other materials. Inside our wooden shelter hung 6 or so looms which the women were using to pass on the craft of weaving to younger Navajo girls. The blankets being made were beautifully colored and the patterns were incredible. It seems to be a patient, slow-rhythmed craft.

The Navajo men at Pinon primarily work out in the fields just outside the hooghan. We were given a quick tour of the community projects they are working on there such as a layered, permaculture field system that has been designed to make the most of a nearby watershed. There were several fields of different elevations that made use of stone walls, hand-dug ravines, and gravity to channel and direct water into the fields to make sure they are well irrigated to grow corn. It was amazing to learn that all of the buildings and technology employed out at Pinon all came directly from the local environment.

It was also fascinating to observe the harmony of this community from the division of their work to efficiency with which they were able to use resources from the earth to afford a sustainable lifestyle. Everyone and everything seemed to be in accord with each other and the surrounding environment. Furthermore, it was heartening to realize that life in this ancient way is not only still possible, but still thrives as a sustainable and meaningful way to exist off the land in our contemporary world.

Aside from that excursion, I have continued to work as a botanical illustrator and have completed several new drawings for Phyllis' book. Images of this will also be posted shortly.

I have also been steadily working as a volunteer at Taala Hooghan and have given several demos on screen-printing which were well attended. Next week I will be working there to help hand print some 3-color posters for the store to sell in an effort to help raise money to pay rent and keep the space open to the community. A few weeks ago I facilitated a discussion on race and class issues in America after we showed the dvd 'CRIPS AND BLOODS: Made in America'. Each month, the infoshop shows a film and then hosts community discussion. I mentioned that I had this film on race relations and there was a large group that wanted to view it. The discussion was very interesting as I was able to learn more about specific concerns related to those raised in the movie here in Flagstaff, though framed in a different context obviously.

Lastly, tomorrow I am heading back up to the Hopi reservation to observe the Hopi Kachina dances. I have been invited to go up at dawn for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of watching the Kachina Dancers come out of their Kiva at sunrise in full regalia to begin their ceremonies. Apparently they have been praying and preparing for days. I unfortunately do not have any more specific information about this ceremony, but I am sure I will have much more to write home about after experiencing tomorrow.

* I have returned from the Kachina dances now and can provide more information. The Kachinas are spiritual beings that the Hopi believe to reside in the Holy San Francisco Peaks (the peaks of course are called something else entirely different in Hopi). These spirits check in on the way the people are living and are considered to be responsible for influencing the conditions of mother earth. In an effort to please the Kachinas and demonstrate a village's balanced life in the right direction, Hopi men perform elaborate ceremonies dressed as Kachina Dancers. Part of this ceremony entails praying for days on end in underground Kivas, which is something like a holy place of sanctuary for meditation. Yesterday, these dancers came out at sunrise (5.30 am) dressed in ornate garb. They wore clay masks that were vibrantly painted turquoise, yellow, and red with large eagle feathers and corn blossoms extending from the top. These masks covered each dancer's entire head. The dancers came out shirtless but wore a tunic of some sort around their waste with a fox hide hanging out of the back in a way that resembled a tail. Their bodies were painted with a paste that looked like mud(perhaps to prevent sunburn in the immense heat of direct sunlight in July) and were painted in intricate patterns and shapes that marked their bodies. Around the tunic and around their necks, the dancers were decorated with various plants that looked like pine fronds. They also carried rattles and wore turtle shells on the back of their right calves which clicked in unison with their dance patterns. All day the dancers repeat a pattern of coming in and out of the kivas to dance, pray, and chant before the village. The Kachina dancers also presented copious offerings to the village such as fruit, corn, and other produce to indicate their role, mother earth's role, in supplying food and nurturing Hopi existence. This event was literally life-changing, and I have never seen anything like it. The dancers really appeared to me as spiritual creatures rather than humans and the feelings of this dream-like realization are impossible to transcribe into words.

Compared to my initial expectations, my CBR project has changed significantly given the unexpected manner in which opportunities became manifest upon my arrival in Arizona. My contacts have proven themselves to be extremely fruitful and excellent sources of guidance for finding my path out here. I think working with AERA has been the perfect niche for my research, my personal search, and community work. Phyllis and Jessa have opened up many doors for me here regarding local culture, native culture, and most importantly, ways to get involved and contribute to ongoing community efforts here as an artist. Before coming out I harbored some anxieties as to whether or not my presence would even be accepted or taken seriously; however, such uncertainties were quickly put right to rest, and I have truly had a meaningful, productive, and vastly informative journey with some beautiful, beautiful people while living here. I am so inspired that I feel like it has drastically impacted my lifestyle as a whole, and I look forward to following new paths once I get back to North Carolina. This summer seems to be the birthing of a new chapter of myself that allows me to feel more deeply connected to other individuals, communities, and environments. I have found an ideal solution for how to deal with concerns of isolation and selfish modes of thinking in America's contemporary art world as the pathways for being an artist that I have discovered here have more to do with respecting others and living to help others rather than seeking to excel only as an individual. I have been humbled, expanded, thrilled, and cared for while working out here and I feel that I have definitely grown as a person, artist, and social worker. I am so thankful to have had this experience and look forward to sharing some of what I have gathered with others once I get back to NC.

The most rewarding aspect of working with my community partners is that I feel accepted and appreciated as a part of intricate and balanced world of intersecting communities here in NE Arizona. I have made intimate friendships with many beautiful people and with native ways of approaching the world and as a result, I have truly cherished all of my interactions and feel like this trip has been exceptionally formative.


I haven't quite found the words for it yet, but all my various projects here seem to be revolving around some central issue or focus, and perhaps it's as simple as an inclination to live as natives do despite being raised in a 'non-native world'. What I mean is that I have busied myself with the exploration of not only how to preserve native ways of life and their human right to exist but also have explored what it means for myself to take an active part in the contemporary native way despite the fact that the social world I have been raised to live in appears much different, often antagonistic. In fact, defining the word NATIVE for myself seems to be the heart and pulse of the issue. So often in modern society, people still tend to overlook indigenous lifestyles, dismissing them as some defunct tale of some past life that once existed here on Earth; however, my summer has proved such a myth ill-founded and entirely naive as I have seen and felt how native culture continues to adapt, blossom and adhere to the rhythms of life as instructed by mother earth and all her various keepers. My point is this: native north american culture is far from dead though our high school textbooks teach us otherwise, and while many of the issues facing various native communities here still present horrifying realities of ecocide, racism, displacement and cultural intolerance, it is most important that we all begin to realize that natives and their respective ways of life are still here, they still thrive, and that there is a chance, for those willing, to completely revolutionize our relationships between what is native and what is not. I think the whole challenge of living in the hodgepodge of social landscapes that is America and finding a way to make it work is being able to simply listen to other perspectives that may at first seem strange and alien. Part of why that is so difficult for many of us is that we have been deceived into thinking that to be American is the natural way, the right way and, furthermore, that to to be anything else is foreign and undesirable or at least unneeded. This method of thinking seems to ironically imply a sense of native purpose, that to be American is to take part in a naturally ordained right that ought to be spread as far and as wide as possible. As a result, many of us often close off our ears and shun others before even giving them a chance to enter our hearts. As history has clearly illustrated, this manner of thinking/living becomes lethally dangerous for all those that fall outside of the narrow definition of the one right way to live. My last point to make in this reflection is that while changing our ways and perspectives as humans is direly crucial in order to prevent the certain destruction and ecological collapse of the world for us and all other living things, sometimes a reversion may be in order to make progress rather than chasing the idea of continual growth and production until we crash into walls we've made ourselves. By reversion I mean a return to older, wiser ways of being, especially when you have so much expert knowledge about how to achieve more balanced, meaningful lives growing and thriving across the entire globe in the form of native populations and other alternative lifestyles.