^^^ (Mountain Song)

^^^ Mountain Song is the third chapter in this series of video/film installation work exploring Diné/Navajo sacred mountains. Structured in four verses, the film explores indigenous knowledge, mystery, resource exploitation (uranium), and post-colonial reflections on community life. Conversations I recorded with elders, friends, and community members are set against the backdrop of a personal journey to a sacred Diné/Navajo mountain, Dibé Nitsaa, in southern Colorado, eventually ending at a mountain outside my backyard where I once lived in Phoenix, Arizona. Concurrently throughout the film, the radio chatter of the first humans landing on the Moon in 1969 (Apollo Mission) can be heard. The intersection of moon landing audio with aerial views of tribal territories echoes memories of our shared histories, while also complicating the experience of the perpetual outsider with my own subjective indigeneity.

 ^^ (Resource)

The second chapter in the series follows the journey of a yellow stone, perhaps from Dook’o’osliid, later named the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, a location that is sacred to the Diné people. The stone moves from a lab to a shop, and finally to a ritual ceremony. These contexts—scientific, aesthetic, consumerist, and spiritual—contribute to the stone’s changing meaning and significance. Yellow is the color associated with the mountain and the cardinal direction west. It’s also the mountain held by sunbeams in Navajo mythology, where abalone shell was placed by first man. It’s the place where the sunsets with yellow clouds, mail rain, and many animals reside. While the experiences with the stone change based on the people who interact with it, the imagery of the mountain range reminds us of it’s where this resource came from.

^^(Resource), 2014. Multi-channel video with sound, 6:44 min.

^ (Looking For Tsosido)

^ (Looking For Tsosido), is the first chapter in a series of videos and installations exploring the four outlying sacred mountains for Navajo People. ^ (Looking For Tsosido) also became a three-channel video exploring the narratives of journey and discovery as it relates to my father, whose nickname was Tsosido when he was a child; the translation of the name has never been revealed to me from any living family member from my Navajo or Laguna Pueblo family.  Therefore, the meaning of “Tsosido” is unknown to me, a perpetual mystery, functioning as an evolving polymorphous mythology containing the frameworks for building a new personal aesthetic.