MEETING SUNNY
Excerpt from an introductory essay intended to contextualize a collection of my photographs and “Yoolthgai Awee: Beadwhite Baby Girl,” a Diné origin story shared by Sunny Dooley. A version of this essay and related photographs were first published in Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of the Greater Southwest, Volume 2. Produced by the University of New Mexcio, Chamisa is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that showcases cultural production in the Southwest.
Tourists at the Grand Canyon. By KRIS DAVIDSON.
The only movement in the otherwise still vista is a helicopter whirring faintly in the distance, an inconsequential gnat caught in a time warp. The sun sparkles on the river below as it languidly shimmers around a towering mesa. Geologists still debate the exact timing, but the consensus is that an ancient river began carving a canyon here some 60-70 million years ago — although in a different direction — patiently sluicing through layer after layer of rock. At the same time, the land around it was being uplifted. Traces of earlier humans, going back some 10,000 years, have been found throughout what we now call the Colorado Plateau. The Grand Canyon is a place where ancient waters have shaped canyons, where the words of ancient people have shaped cultures. Here one is reminded: America is a very old land, and she has been known by many names. I have come here in search of the oldest story in America.
Native people around the world have long known that stories are medicine, a healing form of meditation. The characters in the stories are often elemental, older than anything in remembered human history — Father Sun, Mother Earth, animals, rivers, rainbows, and stars. Like the warmth of a campfire at dusk, these stories are imbued with a cadence that is as familiar as it is mysterious. Unwavering in simple wisdom, these stories are free of frills and complicated literary devices. Having flowed across countless generations, these stories are free of individual ownership, belonging to all Diné people across time.
A theme that arises repeatedly in my ongoing work of excavating American stories can be distilled down to one word: belong. Does this story belong to you? To me? To all of us who would call ourselves American, but perhaps conditionally, depending on the make-up of heritage, the specific percentages of one’s hyphenated identity? The idea of belonging — the threat of it, the desire for it — wends its way through every truly American story ever told. In her brief history under the name America, this country has wrestled with every form and manifestation of belonging: how to belong to a new land (often, while still longing for distant ones left behind); how to stake a claim of ownership of a newly discovered land; how to belong to a stolen land; how to belong to oneself; how to belong to others, either by brute force, subtle coercion, or open-hearted, willing choice.
On my first trip to Navajo Nation, at the end of February in 2019, I made my way to Monument Valley ahead of a snowstorm. I arrived at the hotel right after dusk, in the midst of densely swirling snow. Fading light obscured the land. The next morning, I pulled back the curtains in my hotel room and saw an otherworldly scene — majestic mesas and the valley floor covered in a blanket of snow, a surreal landscape rendered in muted reds, whites, and at least ten shades of blue. My rental car didn’t have 4 wheel-drive or snow tires, so I spent the next several days wandering this tableau, embarking on short forays knee deep in snow. I ate meals alone in a glass-walled dining room, watching the subdued transitions between winter sunrises, days, and sunsets. One night, the cloud cover parted, revealing thousands of stars. Like a magnificent, silent choir, they grew brighter with the deepening night — a soundless crescendo of heavenly light from the depths of space. The oldest story of the Americas did not reveal itself, but the stage it had played out on did. In hindsight, I recognize the experience now as a gentle reconditioning of my hurried pace and my overly specific questions for this ancient land.
Monument Valley Timescape. Photo collage by KRIS DAVIDSON.
***
“Would you say that you hold history? That you hold stories?” I asked.
The morning sun had just moved past the horizon, rays of gold streaming across the red land. Cutting through the trees, the light rays flickered through the car window, enveloping Sunny in a staccato halo. She is showing me parts of her native land. Sunny drives fast, but speaks with steady consideration. After a moment, she says, “No. I take care of them. I oil them. I think of it as taking care of a horse, taking care of your livestock, or taking care of your house. You know? You take care of the stories.”
Sunny Dooley, a Navajo storyteller, instinctively peppers her speech with Navajo words. “Diné,” she reminds me. “We’re the Diné People. Navajo is what the Spaniards called us.” It is a lilting language to my ear, gliding smoothly with crisp peaks and swooping curves, like thin, rounded lines. I find myself aching to know the language as she speaks, wondering how the act of translation might surrender or transform nuance, or maybe even create entirely new meanings. When the Navajo code talkers did their work in WWII, they drafted entities from the natural world on top of the flinty concepts of war — a tank arriving in two minutes would involve a ‘turtle’ and couple of ‘little hours.’ Submarines arriving in October would use “iron fish” and a “small wind.”
“We don’t have swear words. We don’t have words that are bad, words that condemn,” Sunny tells me later, as we stand at the base of the White House ruins in Canyon de Chelly. Her words ricochet faintly off the steep canyon walls, “In Diné culture we have a word which means holistic. And then we have a word which means ruined. These concepts live together at the same time, in every single instance.”
After several days of discussing the art of storytelling, Sunny invited me to her hogan where she would formally tell me a story in the Diné tradition, a story for America. She walked me through the earthen structure, made by hand, leaving the door open, facing to the east, with a view of her brother’s horses grazing in the distance. She begins, prefacing her story, “We really do value one another. The name that we give to each other is Earth Surface Divine people. We pray that we remember our stories, and our chants, and our songs. I was blessed with elders, grandparents, parents — family that loved to tell stories to me. In our way, we say, if you are really loved, you’re nurtured in story.”
Woman at a pow wow at the Navajo Nation Fair in Window Rock, Arizona in 2019. By KRIS DAVIDSON.
YOOLTHGAI AWEE
BEADWHITE BABY GIRL
Shared by Sunny Dooley
From the vast infinite domain of supernovas, filled with planets, stars, and stardust, a kindness imbued tenderness of masculine spiral came to partner with a strong, change sustaining wisdom of enduring light of Earth Dawn.
In between sacred exhales of early morning light and edged darkness – life breath was bestowed upon Yoolthgai Awee/Beadwhite Baby Girl. Laid upon blankets of white Spring cloud vapors, wrapped in blue Summer lushness and abalone Fall essence, bundled in black jet Winter vapors of the milky way;
This Yoolthgai Awee/Beadwhite Baby Girl was nursed on dewdrops and nurtured on the pollen of every growth found between Father Sky and Mother Earth.
She was cradled on top of the silver-green spruce ringed sacred mountain of Chol’ii; where Divine Universe ordered an alignment of her a’weetsal/cradle board;
On that left pine plank carved from the tallest, most up right and strongest living pine tree was the mirrored image of that vast infinite domain of the eternal Universe.
On that right pine plank carved from the tallest, most up right and strongest living pine tree was the mirrored image of that strong sustaining Earth wisdom.
This Yoolthgai Awee/Beadwhite Baby Girl with every single stand of her hair attached to a star, could make stars shimmer in unison with her coos and sighs; she could make the rivers sing in chorus with her laughter;
She was enriched with fragrant soils filled with micro and macro seeds of growth and every part of Earth, of Water, of Air and of Fire;
Her voice carried the evolution of what was, what is and what will be.
Strapped onto the sides of her cradle-board/awee’tsall was masculine vertical lightning striking and on the right-side, feminine horizontal rumbling lightning;fastening the lightning together was zigzagged sun-rays of intelligence, a sense of knowing and grace;
With a pine tree foot board of protective turquoise to stand on;
Resting and dreaming on a shorten pine tree plank pillow of white shell, she exuded intelligence; With the sweet songs taken from the birds atop each of the sacred mountains, She was soothed by the sweet lullabies of the thirteen New Moons.
Rainbow arched and fastened itself to both sides of this baby carrier, bringing ke’e – kindness, generosity, hospitality, care, and love.
This Rainbow anchored this Yoolthgai Awee/Beadwhite Baby Girl to all of the Universe and to all of the Earth Planet and they called her Shi Yazi/My child!
The two nurturers atop that sacred mountain, Talking All Back into Order and Dwelling In All That is Divine, veiled her with all the iridescent crystals and blessed her with the divine skill to Create! This Yoolthgai Awee/Beadwhite Baby Girl
Now, Look -
At the tips of your toes and the tips of your hands, your navel and the swirl crown of your head, you embody all of this!
You are created in this most divine image and you carry every potential to change the Universe.