March 11, 2010
Festivals
MNA’s four annual festivals highlight the region’s cultures and encourage the creative exchange of stories and ideas. Music, art, and presentations fill the weekend-long celebrations. New year-round monthly Insight Presentations, sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, create a forum for dialogue and provide a deeper look into the living cultures of the Colorado Plateau.
20th Annual Zuni Festival of Arts and Culture
Saturday, May 29 and Sunday, May 30
Spiritual Landscape and Storytelling
The A:shiwi or Zuni people, an integral part of the Colorado Plateau and the sacred landscape of the San Francisco Peaks, will share Zuni language, lifeways, and traditional music and dances. Prepare to be amazed and inspired by weavers, inlay jewelers, fetish carvers, and painters. See exotic stone, shell, and antler formed into animal fetish carvings. Learn about the shaping, forming, and painting of traditional Zuni pottery. Enjoy the Olla Maidens who dance with Zuni pots balanced on their heads and the Nawetsa Family Dancers who perform traditional Zuni dances. This event is created in partnership with the A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center in Zuni, New Mexico.
77th Annual Hopi Festival of Arts and Culture
Saturday, July 3 and Sunday, July 4
The Oldest Hopi Show in the World
A Fourth of July tradition since the 1930s, the Hopi Festival is the world’s premier gathering of Hopi artists and scholars. More than 55 booths brim with Hopi fine arts and crafts. Visitors gain insight from carvers, painters, jewelers, potters, quilters, and basket and textile weavers against a backdrop of cultural presentations, storytelling, music, and dancing. Take a taste of Hopi bread or piki baked in outside ovens. Watch Hopi pottery being shaped, painted, and traditionally fired. Walk the Museum’s Rio de Flag Nature Trail with a Hopi medicine woman. And take part in discussions about the Hopi values of humility, cooperation, respect, balance, and earth stewardship.
61st Annual Navajo Festival of Arts and Culture
Saturday, August 7 and Sunday, August 8
Expressions of Beauty and Place
More than 65 of the finest Diné artists display and demonstrate their work during this colorful and exciting weekend. Enjoy hoop and traditional dancing, a retrospective fashion show, and ancient and modern Native music. Artists demonstrate jewelry, painting, beading, pottery, and weaving techniques. Customs and ways families are using to keep traditions strong are discussed by cultural experts. Explore the tribe’s intricate language with a Navajo linguist, and come to understand many ancient legends and traditions. Hike with a Navajo ethnobotanist and learn the Native uses of local plant life.
7th Annual Celebraciones de la Gente
Saturday, October 23 and Sunday, October 24
A Lively Celebration of the Day of the Dead
The Museum comes to life for Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, an ancient Mesoamerican holiday held throughout Mexico, Latin America, and the Southwest. Transforming grief into celebration, this ritual pays homage to the lives of lost loved ones by inviting them back to enjoy their favorite music and foods, and to honor their contributions in life. More than a dozen Flagstaff families bring ofrendas (altars), from their homes to share in a courtyard exhibit. At the nighttime Members’ Preview, the courtyard and the ofrendas are illuminated by luminarias and candles. Learn about the Day of the Dead traditions and the meanings behind the objects on the ofrendas. This event is created in partnership with Nuestras Raices, an organization of Flagstaff Hispanic pioneers.
Insight Presentations
Cesar Says, a Play about Cesar Chavez
Saturday, March 20, 2 p.m.
by Zarco Guererro
Multitalented playwright, actor, and mask maker Zarco Guerrero portrays the life and times of Cesar Chavez through his unique masked characters and their reverent, yet humorous, style of storytelling. Commissioned by the Cesar Chavez Education Foundation, this family-oriented play’s premier was on December 10, 2009. In Cesar Says, Zarco Guerrero gives Chavez’s life and accomplishments historical perspective in a delightful and engaging way.
Journey of the Sacred Clown: A Tribute to Michael Kabotie
Saturday, April 10, 2 p.m.
with Ed Kabotie
Michael Kabotie, esteemed artist, philosopher, and friend of MNA, passed away unexpectedly last year (September 3, 1942–October 23, 2009). Ed Kabotie, Kabotie’s son from the Santa Clara Pueblo and the Hopi village of Shungopavi, is an artist, musician, bilingual educator, and storyteller. Ed Kaboties’s presentation, entitled “Journey of the Sacred Clown a tribute to Michael Kabotie,” is a thoughtful and humorous presentation that will focus on the work of his father in the context of both Jungian philosophy and Hopi clowning. This Insight Presentation is in conjunction with the exhibit Walking in Harmony: The Life and Work of Lomaywyeswa, Michael Kabotie.
Navajo Rug Weaving, Dying, History and Buying
Saturday, June 12, 12 p.m.
with Dr. Jennifer McLerran
Dr. McLerran’s former curator at MNA and professor of art history and museum studies at Northern Arizona University, will share her knowledge of the tradition and art of Navajo rug weaving. Her most recent publications include A New Deal for Native Art: Indian Arts and Federal Policy 1933–1943, a study of Native American arts during the New Deal era, and Weaving Is Life: Navajo Weavings from the Edwin L. and Ruth E. Kennedy Southwest Native American Collection.
This Insight Presentation is in conjunction with the 4th Semi-Annual Navajo Rug Auction.
Havasupai Ceremonial Dances
Saturday, September 18, 2 p.m.
with James Uqualla and Havasupai Dancers
The Havasupai people, Havsuw ‘Baaja or people of the blue green water, live in the beauty of Havasu Canyon. Orator James Uqualla and Havasupai dancers will share the Havasupai people’s efforts to preserve their land, and their determination to preserve their ancient cultural heritage and language through traditional dancing and ceremonial storytelling.
A Celebration of Poetry and Language
Saturday, November 13, 2 p.m.
with Dr. Laura Tohe and Amada Blanco
Poet, writer, and librettist, Laura Tohe will read from her most recent work and will be joined by photographer and writer Amanda Blanco, who will read a sampling of Latin American poets in this celebration of poetry and language. Tohe has been published in the journals Ploughshares, New Letters, Red Ink, World Literature Today and many others. Dr. Tohe grew up near the Chuska Mountains on the eastern border of the Diné homeland and currently lives in Mesa, Arizona. She is an associate professor in the English Department at Arizona State University.
Zuni Emergence and Migration History
Saturday, December 11, 2 p.m.
Zunis believe they emerged from Mother Earth within the Grand Canyon and migrated across the Colorado Plateau to Halona Idiwana’a or the Middle Place of the World, home of the Zuni for at least the last 1300 years. A:shiwi A:wan Museum and Heritage Center Technician Curtis Quam, joined by A:shiwi A:wan director Jim Enote, will present “Zuni Emergence and Migration History,” beginning in the Grand Canyon, to European contact at the ancestral A:shiwi village of Hawikku, post contact history, arrival of the Americans, and finally to the influence of ethnographers, anthropologists, and archaeologists on the A:shiwi way of life. Accompanying images for this talk are from the A:shiwi A:wan exhibit Hawikku: Echoes from Our Past.
Images are available upon request.