Sometimes all it takes is a little help from your friends, which Duane Koyawena proved when he asked his artist friends to help him paint the walls at the Behavioral Health Unit at Flagstaff Medical Center.
But ‘Canyon Dreams’ does delve into the realities kids faced during the 2017-2018 basketball season and explores why Chinle, a town of about 4,500, packs the Wildcats gymnasium full of fans and family, who sometimes travel vast distances across the reservation to watch the games.
With a raw, gritty voice, sometimes almost a whisper, sometimes more of a challenging tone, Benally in the music on this album examines the struggle to protect indigenous sacred lands, to tear down colonial systems, to fight for justice against injustice and to move people to action.
The testimony of families, if they choose, happens at all of MMDR work group meetings as a reminder that the issues the group is tackling are real ones, with real impacts on families and communities across the Navajo Nation.
“I wrote about subject matter that had a profound impact on my life,” Abasta said. “The message was basically to provide an unfiltered and contemporary view of Navajo life.
As Navajo Generating Station burned the last of its coal and officially closed Nov. 18, Navajo grassroots groups issued a call for the Navajo Nation to return to honoring Diné Fundamental Law and values in energy policy decisions.
Ryan Singer, artist, said the idea behind Tuba City Spaceport, a painting that shows Tuba City Trading Post in a ‘Star Wars’ universe, was about parallel universes connecting and interacting — a theme of a new exhibit at the Museum of Northern Arizona.
Klee Benally, a local activist, stood alone in front of the Flagstaff City Council and a crowd of people who had come to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day Oct. 14 in the city of Flagstaff council chambers.
Genevieve Bennally, a systems engineer for Raytheon, is the speaker at the upcoming Coconino Community College ED talk Oct. 18 — she will share her successes and challenges as a Native woman pursuing a career in engineering.
With the impending closure of Navajo Generating Station in December, an Arizona congressman introduced legislation last month to provide economic resources to those affected by the closure of the power plant and the associated coal mine.
