Joel Elgin, Athraigh Studio.
Printmaking in the time of
COVID-19. Small Exhibitions: Who are the people COVID – 19 is Killing in Your
Neighborhood?
Navajo Nation Printmaking.
Sung to the tune of the Sesame
Street song…
Who are the people in Your
Neighborhood?
The people COVID – 19 is Killing Each Day.
Today,
in the first exhibit detailing Who are the people COVID – 19 is Killing in
Your Neighborhood?, Athraigh Studio brings you examples of the printmaking
of the Navajo Nation, the "Dineh" or "the People".
Over 87,000 people have died
from COVID - 19. Our government officials want us to see numbers but behind each
number is a person. In the U.S. people of color are at greater risk than
others. Among the most vulnerable are Native Americans.
Today, in the first
exhibit detailing Who are the people COVID – 19 is Killing in Your
Neighborhood?, Athraigh Studio brings you examples of the art of the Navajo
Nation, the "Dineh" or "the People".
The Navajo Nation people are
located in the in the Southwest Cultural Region incorporating the lower parts
of Utah and Colorado, all of Arizona and New Mexico, and the northern deserts
of Mexico.
As early as 9500 BC. the
first known inhabitants of the Southwest Region hunted mammoth and other game.
In 1864, "Kit"
Carson and the United States federal government enacted a plan of ethnic
cleansing and forced the relocation of the Navajo from their ancestral
homelands to Fort Summer, a 40-square-mile reservation in eastern New Mexico. Years
later the U.S.-Navajo Treaty of 1868 allowed the Navajo to return to only a
small portion of their original homeland.
We might not all have
known of the forced “Long Walk of the Navajo” but we are all very familiar with
traditional Navajo rugs:
Navajo, 19th Century
c. 1885-1890
tapestry weave: wool,
handspun and Germantown.
Today, the Navajo have
suffered at least 3,392 cases of COVID – 19 and 119 known deaths.
The Navajo Nation, the
largest of all U.S. Indian reservations, covers 27,413 sq. miles yet has only
twelve Health Service facilities to serve over 350,000 citizens. The facilities have only 28 ventilators.
The Federal government may
have changed its tactics since Kit Carson scorched the Navajo earth but they
certainly do not appear supportive of the Navajo. By breaking treaty promises and ignoring the
many issues initially created by the forced march the government has established
an ideal landing place for COVID – 19.
About thirty percent of
people do not have electricity. Poisoning of the water supply by US uranium
mines has contributed to over thirty-six percent of the reservation residents lack
of access to running water.
The reservation is a food
desert, with only 13 grocery stores, which means some people travel up to 150
miles to shop.
More than a third of the people
live without paved roads, cell phone service, landlines or safe housing.
Multiple Navajo generations
often live together, this is cultural but it’s also due to chronic housing
shortages, federal restrictions on construction, high unemployment and poverty
on the reservation.
After weeks of waiting President
of the Navajo Nation Jonathan Nez had to
take the federal government to court to receive the money promised through The
Cares Act.
We might not all have been
familiar with the conditions on the Navajo reservation that have risen from the
US federal governments long history of neglect and we might not all be familiar
with recent efforts to destroy the lives of the Navajo, such as Trump’s “Curtis
Bill” resolution which nullifies and shrinks former President Barack Obama’s December 2016
proclamation establishing Bears Ears as a 1.35 million-acre national monument
in San Juan County, Utah. by 85 percent.
But, Athraigh Studio would
like to help make you familiar with the art created by the people of the Navajo
Nation, the "Dineh" or "the People" by presenting a small
exhibition of current Navajo printmakers:
Melanie Yazzie
“He Died Before Coming
Home” 1994
monotype
David Paladin, (b. 1926, d. 1984)
“Mythmaker Stomping out Artist’s
Sense of Reality”, 1975
Litho
David Paladin, (b. 1926, d. 1984)
“Life, Dreaming Itself Into
Being” 1975
Litho
Michael McCabe
Mono with Chin Cole’
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