Artists, dancers, musicians, activities, and food from Navajoland—or Diné Bikéyah as the Navajo say—arrive in Flagstaff on Saturday and Sunday, August 7 and 8 for the 55th Annual Navajo Marketplace at the Museum of Northern Arizona.
Opening ceremonies for the marketplace start 9 a.m. Saturday and include a traditional Navajo prayer, Code Talkers, Honor Guard ceremonies, and Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley. Navajo Code Talkers, Dr. Samuel Billson from Window Rock and Samuel Tso from Lukachuka, honor veterans of World War II and exemplify the unequaled bravery and patriotism of the Navajo people. Both Billson and Tso are available throughout the marketplace to meet the public and sign copies of two books, Navajo Weapon and Warriors, Navajo Code Talkers.
“I’m impressed with the artwork quality we are seeing for judged categories,” says Bob Lomadafkie, MNA’s Heritage Program Manager. “We’ve brought back Heritage Program’s featured artists format this year and are pleased to have Navajo painter Shonto Begay at the Museum. His colorful work brings traditional art with a contemporary flair to the weekend.”
Shonto Begay is one of this era’s most important Native American painters and book
illustrators. Begay’s fertile creativity births paintings with wonder, sadness, and truth about the everyday life of being Shonto and everyday life on the Navajo reservation.
“I am very mindful that painting has saved my life many times over. Through the very act of creating I’ve been able to dilute and even heal a lot of my own personal tragedies,” he says.
Begay will sign his books and have numerous large-scale paintings ranging from the edgy to mystical at the marketplace, including his famous “White Shell Woman,” a depiction of the Navajo mythological being who is mother to the Hero Twins. Begay’s presentation, “Releasing the Light,” draws from his experiences as a writer, storyteller, and painter to share stories about his process of creativity. (see attached sidebar)
More than 50 artists representing today’s 250,000 Diné bring traditional and contemporary arts to the marketplace. Their fine arts skills in painting, textiles, basketry, silverwork, pottery, and folk art are passed lovingly from generation to generation on the Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the U. S.
The Navajo Nation lies between four sacred mountains—Mount Blanca in Colorado to the east, Mount Taylor in New Mexico to the south, the San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, Arizona in the west, and Mt. Hesperus in Colorado to the north.
Returning this year are Casper and the Mighty 602 Band, combining Native roots with positive reggae music. Casper Lomayesva, a young Diné/Hopi singer, and this band have risen to popularity throughout the Southwest and opened out-of-state for concert headline reggae bands such as Burning Spear and The Wailers. The Mighty 602 Band easily juxtaposes traditional beliefs with modern expression, letting people know of the Native American struggle.
New this year, Larry King from the Water, Mexican, and Red House Clans presents a humorous reflection of the culture in Navajo and English, walking the audience along a path of history while highlighting the resilience of the Navajo language in the Twenty-First Century. In addition, the cultural significance of cradleboards and the objects on them is discussed by Tammy Begay and Ralph Jim, who run a cradleboard family business in Round Rock, Arizona.
See dancing by The Little Bitterwater Hoop Dancers, accompanied by the Antelope Trail Singers, and numerous art demonstrations. Rug making will be highlighted by Marilou Schultz and the Bighorse family. Rose Bighorse says, “My mother, Maybelle Bighorse, will be working on a traditional loom. She is known for her detailed and tight storm patterns.”
The Traditional Navajo Woman in Contemporary Times is discussed by Liz Williams and ethnobotany tours along the Rio de Flag are guided by Diné educator and ethnobotanist Theresa Boone-Schuler. Schuler gathered her skill from her father, a noted herbalist who urged her to pass on the knowledge of traditional healing plants by teaching about identification and usage.
The Museum of Northern Arizona sits at the base of the San Francisco Peaks, the highest mountains in Arizona. It is located three miles north of Flagstaff’s historic downtown, on scenic Highway 180. An originator of American Indian marketplaces, MNA’s Heritage Program presents the best of the diverse cultures of the Colorado Plateau in a celebration of marketplaces. Since 1930, audiences of all ages—families, children, connoisseurs, and collectors—have enjoyed fine Native American and Hispanic arts and performances. For more information, call 928/774-5213 or visit www.musnaz.org.
MNA’s Heritage Program marketplaces are generously supported by major donors: Arizona Commission on the Arts/National Endowment for the Arts and Flagstaff Cultural Partners/City of Flagstaff. Sponsors include NEBS, the Radisson Woodlands Hotel, Sunny 97 FM, and KAFF/The Mountain.
SHONTO BEGAY—STORYTELLER OF WONDER, SADNESS, AND TRUTH
The 55th Annual Navajo Marketplace’s featured artist is a prolific painter who uses stories and visions from his life on the Navajo Reservation near Monument Valley and uses his art as his own personal therapy. Through his work, Shonto Begay (the word shonto in Navajo describes the sparkles a ray of light makes as it hits the water) allows us to experience the breathtaking glory and the harsh realities generations have experienced on the reservation.
“I paint images and subject matters to bring about closures in my own life’s experiences that left me a bit bewildered. Each piece begins with a feeling, a yearning to bring into the light aspects of the psyche that need my attention….I face down my fears and embrace my passion fully there before a blank canvas, and coax into my world a little bit more order and peace. We have a journey to make, dust must be raised, and pain endured,” says Begay.
From the Navajo Bitterwater and Salt Clans, he is the fifth child born to a Navajo medicine man and a weaver and sheephearder. His journey from the reservation to the Institute of American Indian Arts, then the California College of Arts and Crafts, and finally completing a Native Artist Fellowships at the Smithsonian Institute in both New York and Washington, D.C. has taken his art from his early interest in drawing to today’s statements about modern reservation life.
From first light upon the mesa to images of the streets of Manhattan, his impressionistic brushstrokes depict moments in time that pay homage to his memories or state his concerns about the environment or encroaching development.
Whether an individual work startles or amazes, all of Begay’s paintings call forth or provoke a response from the viewer. Some of his paintings are the dramas within, some are the dramas he experiences around him. “Northeast of Chinle” shows a landscape of trash along the roadside in a nation that cherishes the land. “In Witness to Changes” expresses the painter’s indelible memories of boyhood faces from boarding school, “more traumatized than they realize,” as they sit without power, in witness to the changes in their lives. In “Helpless” we peer into what looks like a crash pad after the party. While painting these images is an effort by the artist to heal those situations, they evoke the roughness and everyday facts of life on the rez.
There are other Begay paintings, however, that celebrate the beauty within and around him. His mother cooks over a woodstove in “My Mother’s Kitchen,” “Morning Blessing” depicts a woman making a corn pollen offering at sunrise, and his new series of butterfly paintings are metaphors for the changes in his life at this time. Begay adds, “From my grief and jubilations, painting is externalizing for me—a blow hole through which all goes. The power has always been in the storytelling.”