Tag: #NavajoNation

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Joining Hands: Navajo Town Makes Sterile Gloves for New York First Responders

The old trading post at Church Rock, New Mexico, the town where I had my first post-college job.

When you have an interest that you pursue on Google, the Google gods remember, and sometimes they surprise you with related news items that pop up on your Google home page.

The Google gods know that I have an interest in a small town named Church Rock (population per 2010 census: 1,128). Church Rock lies in Navajo territory on the outskirts of Gallup, New Mexico.

Google probably doesn’t know (but maybe does) that my interest in Church Rock stems from my having taught in the town my first year out of college, but no matter. Google knew I would be intrigued by an article that came out in the Navajo Times this week. The article’s subject is a nitrile glove factory in Church Rock that is now manufacturing medical gloves and shipping them to health care facilities in the Navajo Nation and other US locales struggling to cope with COVID-19. The locales include my home state of New York. (See Navajo Times article on Navajo glove facility.)

Navajo workers make sterile gloves for the medical front lines in the fight against COVID-19 in Navajoland, New York State and other impacted regions. Photo by Donovan Quintero saved from Navajo Times.

Phase One of a joint venture between the Navajo Nation and a company called Rhino Health, LLC, is primed to make 60 million pairs of blue nitrile gloves a year. Per the Navajo Times piece by reporter Donovan Quintero, the Church Rock factory is now churning out 8,000 pairs of gloves an hour and running around the clock. They are striving to keep up with demand while dealing with a shortage of raw material. (Materials have to be shipped from South Korea, home of Rhino Health’s parent company.)

If gloves could talk: In the Beatles’ 1968 film Yellow Submarine, a blue glove (once a weapon on the side of evil) learns how to join hands in the fight against destruction.

When Phase Two is completed, adding significantly more manufacturing space, Church Rock will be generating 1.3 billion pairs of blue sterile gloves a year for medical use.

Because of the Navajo Times article, I Googled keywords “nitrile” and “Church Rock” and found that in 2018, about two years before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19, the Navajo Nation invested $19 million for Rhino Health LLC to build its Church Rock facility that will eventually employ 350 Navajo workers (the state of New Mexico kicked in another $3 million).

News about the Navajo-Rhino Health joint venture was reported in the Albuquerque Journal, and later in the Navajo-Hopi Observer, but never leaked beyond regional boundaries. In the event other media don’t report how Navajo workers in Church Rock are helping first responders face the battle against the virus by providing protective gloves, I feel compelled to leak it here.

The “Church Rock” that gives the town its name. When I first saw the rock formation when I arrived as a teacher, I thought it looked more like a hand than a church. And while America paid no attention when the town encountered devastation from a uranium mine accident forty years ago, Church Rock is now really lending a hand in the COVID-19 crisis. Photo from TripAdvisor credited to 44dave56.

You may not know this about the Navajo town of Church Rock, but in July 1979, a few months after the famous Three Mile Island nuclear incident, Church Rock suffered a devastating radioactive contamination event courtesy of the United Nuclear Mine Corporation.

In 1979, the dam holding back tailings at United Nuclear’s Church Rock mine ruptured, sending 1100 tons of solid radioactive waste and 94 million gallons of radioactive solution into the local water sources and beyond (as far away as 50 miles downstream).

The spill resulted in the largest release of radioactive material in US history (see US government reports, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Rock_uranium_mill_spill).

In the world at large, the Church Rock United Nuclear incident is second only to Chernobyl in terms of long-lasting devastation.

Today, if you ask the Google gods “What’s the worst nuclear disaster?” your search result will likely bring up a Business Insider article that describes the incidents in Chernobyl and Fukushima, the latter caused by the 2011 Tohuku earthquake and tsunami. The article says that Three Mile Island was not nearly as devastating as those two calamities (see: https://www.businessinsider.com/chernobyl-fukushima-three-mile-island-nuclear-disasters-2019-6).

Warning signs mark contaminated Church Rock areas. Photo saved from www.vice.com article “Church Rock, America’s Forgotten Nuclear Disaster, Is Still Poisoning Navajo Lands 40 Years Later.” Will Ford also wrote a followup story for The Washington Post in January of this year.

The Business Insider article doesn’t once mention what happened in Church Rock, New Mexico forty years ago. In Church Rock, the effects of the accident (effects that include kidney disease, cancer, fear of having children . . . ) are being felt to this day (see August 2019 VICE article on lasting impact of Church Rock mine disaster).

A central tenet of Navajo belief is the uniting principle of K’e, or kinship. It begins with caring for the immediate family, extends to the clan, and from there extends to the community as a whole. K’e, in essence, is the concept of how we are all related and thus responsible for each other.

In 1979, when it came to nuclear disasters creating a sense of community, a sense of K’e, the whole country fretted about the dangers facing Americans who lived near Three Mile Island. But what happened in Church Rock four months later didn’t penetrate the country’s consciousness at all. The national media barely mentioned the accident back in the day. It seemed that the people of Church Rock, who faced overwhelming devastation–dead livestock, contaminated water, early mortality–were outside the realm of Americans’ concern. Today, forty years later, the media is paying more attention. But while HBO’s Chernobyl won a slew of Emmy Awards, I haven’t read that there’s any series planned on what happened at Church Rock within our own nation’s borders.

A group of my 5th graders at Church Rock Elementary School, 1976, three years before the United Nuclear accident turned Church Rock into America’s Chernobyl.

In 2020, we are united in our knowledge that COVID-19 is affecting all of us, that the virus is shaping our immediate if not distant future. New York State may be the US epicenter of the virus, but we know that no region of the country is immune, especially not the Navajo Nation.

On the Navajo reservation, a territory of 27,425 square miles where about 40% of the population have to drive a great distance to get a supply of water, COVID-19 cases are spiking (see LA Times on Navajo COVID-19 crisis and NPR article on COVID-19 and Navajo Nation). Nonetheless, the people of Church Rock are working hard to ensure that the folks on the front lines as far away as New York State are safe.

I just thought you should know.

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Night Chant at the Opera: Healing Harmonies

Winter Dawn Ceremony Inside the Tepee by Virgil Nez. (Photo of the work on itmonline.org)

I am looking out at my snow covered yard in suburban upstate New York, remembering an event from over forty years ago that winks from the shadows, coaxing me out of the winter blues. Here it is:

Car Trouble En Route to a Night Chant

I was driving alone in pitch darkness of winter on the Navajo rez when suddenly the undercarriage of my Toyota sedan got hung up on the sand.

I’d been trying to make my way to a Navajo Night Chant ceremony taking place somewhere I now cannot name. I’d been following the sporadically placed signs that pointed the way to the ceremony with growing confidence, until that moment when my car succumbed to the relentless grip of soft earth. (For an eye-opening report on Navajo roadways, see Amy Linn’s piece The Navajo Nation’s horrendous roads keep killing people and holding students hostage, but nothing changes on centerforhealthjounalism.org).

A young woman alone in the desert that night, with a car that wouldn’t budge . . . What could I do? I sat on the cold desert ground certainly feeling vulnerable (though the reservation crime stats then were not as dire as they are now). But at the same time I was hopeful that someone would come along, and that the someone would reinforce my faith in humanity as so many Navajo people had done during my time on the rez.

I awaited rescue on a Navajo desert road in winter. Photo by Conner Baker on unsplash.com

It wasn’t long before I saw headlights in the distance . . . an approaching pickup likely headed to the same ceremony I still yearned to witness. I stood up and waved my arms. The headlights blinked, signaling me to step out of the way. Then the truck slowed to a crawl and pulled right up to touch the rear of my car. The driver motioned with his hands for me to get back behind the wheel. When I turned on the engine and shifted into neutral, the pickup gently pushed me out of the sand trap, freeing me up to continue on my way. I waved a thank you as the pickup passed me, and I followed my rescuer all the way to where the Night Chant was taking place.

I’d hoped to more strongly express my gratitude when we reached what I thought was our mutual destination, but the pickup sped forward and away into the night when we hit the parking area, its passengers having folks to meet, I supposed.

My rescuer and I never exchanged a word.

Grace, Fires and Chanting Warm the Night

With this rescuer who’d emerged from darkness only to suddenly disappear from view, I was beholden to spiritual forces even before I entered the Night Chant circle with a hogan at its zenith, the doings inside of it shrouded in mystery. I stepped into the realm of pinon scented air, warm fires, strong coffee, bubbling stew, and a gracious vibe that emanated from the folks who’d gathered to participate in the winter ceremony.

When the Yei Bi Cheii (Grandfather Gods) dancers emerged into the firelight and began to chant, I was sitting beside a family that had made room for me, again through wordless gesture. Like my gracious hosts, I was bundled up in blankets and, though struggling to stay warm, I was feeling perhaps as peaceful as I’d ever felt in my twenty odd years. At one point, I was lulled to sleep by the smoke and the cold. My hosts awakened me in time to join them in wishing the Grandfather Gods farewell at dawn.

Yei Bi Cheii chants recorded by ethnomusicologist Laura Boulton (b.1899, d. 1980)

A New Kind of Chanting

Flash forward to my senior self in winter, now yearning for bygone days while living in the land of my snowbelt roots. Like my late mother, I’m an opera fan. When I was a girl, my mom and I used to listen to opera broadcasts when we found ourselves at home together on a winter weekend afternoon. These days, I hit the Met from time to time if a New York City visit coincides with something I want to see, or I’ll sometimes go to a movie theatre to watch a Met broadcast “live in HD”.

So, as a semi opera buff with fondest memories of Navajoland, I was intrigued when I learned that, about ten years ago, a work called Enemy Slayer, billed as a Navajo oratorio, premiered in Phoenix as part of the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra’s 60th anniversary celebration.

The oratorio features a libretto by poet Laura Tohe, who was recently named poet laureate of the Navajo Nation (for more information about Ms. Tohe, see https://www.lauratohe.com/).

NAXOS CD Recording of Enemy Slayer: A Navajo Oratorio

The story of Enemy Slayer concerns a soldier haunted by events of war who is guided into healing by the chanting of ancient Navajo prayer. (Note: The actual Navajo ceremony for returning warriors, the Enemy Way, is a warmer weather event that involves feasting and dancing and other community activity to bring a spiritually wounded warrior back into balance.)

I ordered the oratorio Enemy Slayer once I learned it was obtainable on CD, and I anticipated that in listening, I might be drawn back into that memory of getting unstuck by grace and chanting on a desert night in the middle of winter so long ago.

I was in for a bit of disappointment. I had expected to hear an oratorio in the Navajo language, but Laura Tohe composed the libretto in English, with only a smattering of Navajo sprinkled here and there. The text, filled with Navajo prayer refrains (e.g., “Child of dawn/Child of daylight/Child of evening twilight/Child of darkness”), portrays the trauma and confusion of the universal soldier: “I’m in a world of pain/I’m hard core/I seek and destroy the enemy/This is my war horse/I charge the enemy/I am the hometown hero!/I am a child of war/I am lost . . . “

Navajo warriors from another time: Photo courtesy of the Navajo Times

Tohe’s text was translated into Navajo by Jennifer Wheele, but you have to go online to see the translation ( see https://www.naxos.com/sharedfiles/PDF/8.559604_sungtext.pdf# for full libretto in English and Navajo).

Will the oratorio one day be performed in Navajo? I wish it could be so, but who knows? When Enemy Slayer was performed in Phoenix, photographs of Navajoland by Deborah O’Grady were projected for the audience to provide the sense of place as the chorus sang in the concert hall.

Tohe told me that a Navajo woman in the audience remarked that “the performance was like a ceremony, with the conductor as the medicine man, the baritone singer as the patient and the chorus as the extended family singing for the patient.” Tohe had also asked that the women chorus members be seated on one side and the men on the other side of the stage “per seating in the hogan during a ceremony.”

Laura Tohe, named Navajo Nation Poet Laureate in 2015. Photo courtesy Arizona Highways (arizonahighways.com)

Laura Tohe’s latest project is Nahasdzaan (Mother Earth) in the Glittering World, a cutting edge dance oratorio with music composed by Thierry Pécou, choreography by Luc Petton. The premiere performance (sung in English with French subtitles) last year at Normandy’s Opera de Rouen received overwhelming praise from the international press. The work will be performed in Grenoble, France on April 17 this year (4/17/20 UPDATE: due to COVID-19, the premiere is delayed until 2021. Here’s a glimpse on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI8pkLWO7o4).

In an interview on Pécou’s website (Ensemble Variances) Tohe summed up her hope for the work, which presents the Navajo creation story via music and dance, and with live animals performing onstage: “Like any artist,” said Tohe, “my hope is that the audience will appreciate the work as a hybrid that takes a Navajo story and classical music as a way to create a statement about healing.”

Ceremonial fare: Mutton Stew and Fry Bread to be accompanied by cups of strong coffee

I began this piece by conveying a memory of being physically and spiritually transported on the rez when no words were spoken at all. And I’ve landed here, with this wish regarding  the performance of a new Laura Tohe opera: that coffee and stew be served during intermission.

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A Senior Citizen Returns to Navajoland

The author in her youth, sitting in the shade in Canyon de Chelly, Navajoland
Me, age 20 something, resting in the shade in Canyon de Chelly, Navajoland, 1980

After graduating from Vassar College in 1975 with a degree in Sociology, I moved to a village on the Navajo Nation outside of Gallup, New Mexico to teach at an elementary school. After leaving the village, I moved around New Mexico and Arizona, always remaining within day-trip distance from Navajoland and its sacred spaces, for several years more.

During my itinerant time in the Southwest, I was an editor at a regional press, a contributor to a curriculum project led by Gloria Emerson for Navajo Nation elementary schools, and an employee of a marginally dubious publishing brainchild of Forrest Fenn (of recent “Fenn Treasure” fame).

I reluctantly but abruptly left the region in 1982 to head back East. But Navajoland, and the Navajo people who’ve called it home for over 1000 years, have remained my muses to this day. I’ve written about the region (published a “Santa Fe” novel back in the day), but in my elder years, I find myself focussing on Navajoland and its people, who first inspired me to take pen to paper.

Nearing the age of 65 in the spring of 2018,  I travelled to Navajoland to reconnect with old Navajo friends and old feelings about what I have come to understand is as this Jewish American girl’s Jerusalem. It is in this parched yet glorious part of the United States where I am touched by an eternal landscape that breathes its ancient power, where I am touched by the Navajo people who  continue to live up to its challenge and strive to reflect its holiness.

Petroglyphs on a sunlit rock in Canyon de Chelly, Navajoland
The rocks tell their stories

A confession:  I am a privileged visitor who can bask in the sacred spaces of Navajoland,  physically and psychically, at my pleasure.  But Diné, the Navajo people, struggle to maintain balance, harmony, and beauty, the Navajo ideal of sa’ah naaghai bik’eh hozho (long life happiness) in their parched homeland.

The Navajo are plagued with diseases relatively new to them, like cancer and diabetes, from their uranium mining past and the drastic lifestyle changes of today. There is little for their livestock to eat, little opportunity to see beyond a day to day struggle. 

I write now in prayer and love and hope that the beautiful and indeed holy Navajo people can dwell in sa’ah naaghai bik’eh hozho far into the future.

The author on horseback today, in Monument Valley, Navajoland
In Monument Valley, 2018, reconnecting . . .

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Cortez, CO: A Town Blossoms with No Trees on Main Street

Main Street in Cortez, CO
Cortez, CO, where food and company make up for missing trees

We were sitting on worn leather benches at Gustavos, the best Mexican restaurant in Cortez, Colorado. Sonja Horoshko–artist, activist and journalist–was explaining why the Cortez city council was cutting down the trees along the sidewalks of the town’s two blocks of business district on Main Street.

“One tree caused stress on a building as the roots grew under the sidewalk, so the city cuts down all the trees on the block. But there has to be another solution besides cutting down the trees, right?” she said, nearly pleading, over dinner.

Later, while Sonja and my friend and Sonja’s partner, Ed Singer–artist and activist and onetime Navajo political figure–feasted with us on Gustavo’s great dishes, the conversation turned to the topic of a wind farm that had once been in development in Gray Mountain near Cameron on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.

About ten years ago, when Ed was president of the Cameron Chapter (governing body of his home community), he had gone into head-to-head battle with Joseph Kennedy II. A wind farm project approved by the community that had elected Ed Singer to lead them was well on its way to fruition. But then young Joe Kennedy, armed with a big check from which Ed’s people in Cameron would gain a pittance, landed in Window Rock (the Navajo Nation capital) to work a separate deal with the Navajo central government.

I’d read the articles that covered the ensuing scandal, which was ugly, and which revealed Kennedy as something of a spoiled brat. Kennedy, who’d played up to Joe Shirley (President of the Navajo Nation at the time),  flew to Cameron in his private plane. He fed the Cameron community helpings of stew and fry bread. Then, in the course of trying to convince the gathered audience that his Citizen’s Energy Corporation was better than the company they themselves had chosen to build their wind farm, Kennedy degenerated into chastising his listeners for questioning his good will.

That was back in 2008. The wind farm project was stymied by the dispute. As of now, there is still no wind farm in Gray Mountain.

Ed Singer moved to Cortez, where he now lives with Sonja and paints.

Bare and bleak on the surface, Cortez, gateway to Mesa Verde, hosts artists like Ed and Sonja, who gather in restaurants that serve great food suggesting that something delicious is happening behind closed doors of a town that can be missed in the blink of an eye. One restaurant, Once Upon a Sandwich, does double duty as Ed Singer’s gallery. The owner opened for us early so we could have a showing before we hit the road.

The works that sparkle from the restaurant walls are filled with humor, vibrancy and metaphor. Ed’s latest work, not yet shown, has turned a bit angrier in step with the mood in the country overall.

Painting of Navajo cowboy by Navajo artist Ed Singer
“French Postcard” by Ed Singer at Once Upon a Sandwich in Cortez, CO

Ed and Sonja hosted us for Easter dinner, which was delightfully informal, with folks coming and going, a small, cheerful home filled to the brim with animated conversation and laughter. An archaeologist from Zuni Pueblo, a contractor and overall right hand to one and all from Princeton, New Jersey, Sonja and Ed, and all of us, had many tales to tell.

Main Street in Cortez may be losing its trees, but, weeks away from the start of tourist season, the pulse at its core is alive and well.

The author and Navajo artist Ed Singer
Saying goodbye to Ed Singer and Cortez