With messages against snow making written upon our faces, we stare out from alleys and street corners of Flagstaff.
Like Maori warriors, we speak our ancestors’ prayers across our skin. When audible words no longer carry weight and pleas cast into the coming storm dissipate, we volunteered our faces to carry our messages. You have seen us, our mugs wheat-pasted and enlarged in black-and-white expressions of our intent as you navigate the streets of this town.
My good friend and fellow artist/visionary, Chip Thomas, is the driving force behind the photo murals, Jetsonorama, the medium for our continuing message. A very labor intensive and tactile process, Chip has mastered the art form. Evidence of his presence is on the water tanks, jewelry vending shacks and old trading post ruins that dot the reservation. Chip has spent most of the last decades on the Navajo Nation community of Tsa’ Bi Kin (formerly Inscription House) as a medical doctor and is my mother’s physician. I value that. Chip is from the land and the people whose voice he juxtaposes in his unique art. In his most recent art, strong faces of elders, not limited to natives, speak their prayers and mantras for the peaks like tattoos. I hope you find them and form the words silently in your hearts as you gaze into the noble window of their souls. Otherwise mute, there on the walls, they carry volume in their expressions. I am honored to be one of those faces. The faces on Mt. Rushmore carry a very different message. Theirs is the stare of conquest, of Manifest Destiny and an altar we can refer to as “the great white fathers”—a monumental manmade “altar” stripped down to its commercial effects.
The messages in Flagstaff are clear upon the wheat-pasted faces: “Whatever we do to the mountains, we do to ourselves.” “Consider the peaks sacred to Natives and non-natives.” “Faces are beautiful, tread upon mine lightly, respect the peaks.” “Keep it Real.” “Long after you depart, I am the earth, the air, the water, I am the peaks. I will remain.” There are more. Council meetings, negotiations and pleas for sacredness have fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes, and thus the faces have appeared. I see the mission of the large portraits as a vehicle to spread the message … again and again. I see in this a ceremony, the ancient healing mandalas of the Dineh and Tibetan cultures. The images are not meant to be permanent in their physical forms. Yet, they are meant to communicate prayers and petitions to the great spirits. The rest is up to our own compassion. I just hope our faces soften hearts, open the ears and eyes to really see what is going on. In this manner, my mother’s physician is also the medicine man of old. I do my sand paintings on Etch A Sketch these days.
After initial reservation, I decided to be part this facing of the truth. Yes, a tired and old message and rallying cry you have heard time and again. But we are, and always will be, here. I mean the hearts that carry a sense of sacred values of humanity. I speak beyond colors and tribal heritages. We do not expect changes of any sort, we just want to give the peaks a chance. The irony of St. Francis, whose name only was applied to this mountain we call DO Ko’ oos liid, is undeniable. The patron saint of all the beautiful creatures that call the mountain home and sanctuary must be spinning in his tomb.
What I really want the skiing community to understand is that this protest is not in any way, shape or form about the sport of skiing. It is simply the use of reclaimed and tainted water on our altar. The talk of using potable water is another desecration in this arid region. It is about the use of snowmaking in this manner that we are protesting with our faces, with our voices, with our signs. It is simply asking for a little consideration. We are all just passing through. We are all guests to our Mother, the Earth.
Read our faces please.
