MIGRATIONS
American Indian Art & Crafts
Write to: Migrations or Black Mesa Weavers
P.O. Box 95204, Newton, MA 02495
or email : carol@blackmesaweavers.org to place an order, or for more information. Or call toll-free 1-866-4-CHURRO (866-424-8776) Boston/Eastern (daylight) Standard Time 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Migrations™ deals in new and old American Indian and Inuit (Eskimo) art and crafts, and in other antiques and collectibles from the indigenous arts of the Americas.
New work is purchased at fair trade prices directly from the makers or from indigenous cooperatives and enterprises.
Help make possible Grandma Thomas's Dream -- A CommunityYouth Center in Chinle, Arizona, Navajo Nation --
Buy Heirlooms for the Future:
Superb Dine' (Navajo) Sterling Silver and Semiprecious Stones Jewelry by Orville Tsinnie, Donated for Sale at a 50% tax deduction for each item
Necklace & earring sets by Bessie Henry & Andrew Henry, Dine' (Navajo) artists
A wide variety of old and new American Indian & Inuit art:
| Weavings | Baskets | Jewelry |
| Pottery | Traditional Acoma Pottery | Other Native American & Inuit art |
| Miscellaneous | Contact Us | Ordering Information |
See necklace & earring sets by Bessie Henry & silverwork by Andrew Henry, Dine' (Navajo) artists
Items for Sale
Weavings
Pottery
Jewelry
Baskets
Other
Native American & Inuit art
Miscellaneous
Nonprofit Enterprise--Fair Trade from the Source™
Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land™ Welcome Page
Black Mesa Navajo Weavings for Sale
Black Mesa Navajo-Churro Wool, Handspun Churro Yarn, and Mini-Mill- spun Churro Weft and Warp Yarns for Sale
HerbsWerk™ by Marykatherine, Dine' (Navajo) herbalist, Big Mountain, Arizona
We are pleased to announce the publication of an important and beautiful new book:
A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon Country
"New Release! A refreshing look at 38 'modern pioneers' in the Four Corners region who have found ways to make a living while enriching their communities, economies and lands." The first story in Section Two, Ranching, is "Sheep Is Life: Dine' Be'iina and the Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land," by Gary Paul Nabhan, pages 52-55. Available in hardcover and softcover from Renewing the Countryside, Minneapolis, MN.A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon Country
Produced by The Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University in partnership with the Museum of Northern Arizona and Renewing the Countryside, Inc.
We are honored to have recently received this beautiful, handpainted bowl from the Center for Sustainable Environments, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona
Write to: Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land
P.O. Box 96205
Newton, MA 02495
or email : carol@migrations.com to place an order, or for more information. Or call toll-free 866-4-CHURRO (866-424-8776) Boston / east coast time 10 am. to 7 p.m.
On June 28-29, 2002, we held our first big wool buy at Hardrock on Black Mesa in Arizona. Photos and a story have been posted on our Wool Buy page
"Ashkii's Journey" is available through Salina Bookshelf in Flagstaff, AZ, along with other of her fine works.
"Some people say, 'the poor U'wa. We have to help them,' but the fight is not for the poor U'wa, it is for life," he said.
(Robert Cobario, U'wa leader, speaking about his people's resistance to oil drilling by California-based Occidental Petroleum Corportation on their ancestral homeland in the rainforest of Colombia, Washington Times, Friday, July 7, 2000.)
"MONARCH MASSACRE"
"Millions of monarch butterflies in Mexico are reported to have been killed by pesticides as they began their annual migration to the north. Environmentalists alleged that 22 million of the orange and black butterflies were deliberately sprayed by loggers in an effort to regain the protected forests where the monarchs seek warmer temperatures during the winter months. The butterflies have arrived in the forests of Mexico's central Michoacan state in early November for at least 10,000 years. They leave at the end of March to make the 3,000 mile return trip north to lay their eggs. Homero Aridjis, head of the environmental lobby Group of 100, said, 'Now we don't know how many butterflies will come back this autumn'" (--The Boston Globe, Tuesday, March 20, 2001, on the vernal equinox).
"The Butterfly"
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone. . . .
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished to
kiss the world good-bye.
For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto.
But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live in here,
in the ghetto.
--Pavel Friedman 4.6.1942
_________________________________________________________________________________
This poem is preserved in typewritten copy on thin copy paper in the collection of poetry by the poet, which was donated to the State Jewish Museum during its documentation campaign. Pavel Friedman was born on January 7, 1921, in Prague and deported to Terezin on April 26, 1942. He died in Auschwitz on September 29, 1944.
__________________
I Never Saw Another Butterfly
I never saw another butterfly. Children's Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944. Edited by Hana Volavkova; revised and expanded by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. New York: Schocken Books, Inc., 1993.
Site of the Sundance at Big Mountain, after being bulldozed
by the Hopi Tribal Council police, Friday, August 18, 2001.
Bulldozing Big MountainThe tread like a tank,
the broken tree,
the crushed home.The butterflies have fled,
as they flee
every ghetto.But where life sings
they will be,
and the mountain lives.(© August 19, 2001 Carol Snyder Halberstadt)
"Some people say, 'the poor U'wa. We have to help them,' but the fight is not for the poor U'wa, it is for life..."
NEW DINE' [NAVAJO] WEAVINGS FROM BLACK MESA
A NONPROFIT ENTERPRISE
FAIR TRADE FROM THE SOURCE™
HAY RUNS FEED SHEEP THROUGH WINTER
These and many more...
1974--2005--DINE' (NAVAJO PEOPLE) STRUGGLE FOR CULTURAL SURVIVAL ON BLACK MESA
Black Mesa, a 5,000-square mile region in northeastern Arizona, is sacred to both the Dine' (Navajo) and Hopi people. In 1974, the U.S. Congress passed a law dividing this region, which had been shared by the Dine' and Hopi for hundreds of years, into Hopi Partitioned Land (HPL) and Navajo Partitioned Land (NPL). About 17,000 Dine' and 100 Hopi found themselves on the "wrong" side of the fence that partitioned the region between the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe. The subsequent relocation by the government of about 14,000 Dine' from their ancestral homes has been called the Second Long Walk. In 1996, Congress passed another law, an Accommodation Agreement, to make it possible for the remaining approximately 2,000 Dine' to continue to live on Hopi Partitioned Land (HPL). Since February 2000--the date set for the final expulsion of all nonsigners of this 1996 Accommodation Agreement--there have been some positive changes and hopeful developments:--There have been no expulsions of nonsigners, and the Department of Justice has indicated that it has no intention of beginning any further eviction proceedings.
--The grassroots coalitions of Dine' and Hopi activists (the Hopi-founded Black Mesa Trust), along with the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) as well as the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe, and including Peabody Coal, have all agreed that continued use of the N-Aquifer (the only source of drinking water for the entire region) to move coal from Black Mesa to the Mohave Generating Plant in Laughlin, Nevada, should cease. Alternative ways to move the coal are actively being sought. It is my hope that--in this arid and often drought-stricken region--this will not mean the use of other water resources such as Lake Powell or the Colorado River.
Other positive developments include the possible shutdown of the Mohave plant itself by 2005.
--The 2,000 or more Dine' still living in their ancestral homes on Black Mesa are working toward self-empowerment, renewed community ties, a stronger economy, and the healing of the traumas of relocation.
To the Dine' and Hopi both, Black Mesa is sacred. In this 5,400 square-mile region, they had been living side by side for several hundred years and basically at peace until it was discovered in the 1950s that Black Mesa contained the largest low-sulfur coal deposit in the United States. Since then, with the false pretense of a "Navajo-Hopi land dispute," there was unrelenting pressure under the guise of "law" to strip them of their homes, their rights, and their religious freedom. Black Mesa is still being stripmined by Peabody Coal, and the irreplaceable drinking water aquifer under the mesa--the only source of water for both the Hopi and Dine'--is still being drained by a slurry line to transport the coal 274 miles to the Mohave Generating plant in Nevada. The water table is still dropping... and there are recent reports of possibly irreversible damage in the form of sinkholes that may indicate the irreversible collapse of parts of the aquifer. There are also recent good developments and signs of change for the better and your continued support is crucial in keeping this process going.
Nine thousand Dine' people endured the Long Walk in 1864, forced from their homes by the U.S. government to imprisonment in an internment camp 300 miles to the east; only about three thousand returned to their homeland in 1868. The Cherokee, Choctaw, and Seminole nations walked a Trail of Tears in 1838 when forcibly removed from their homeland. Tens of thousands of indigenous people have died in forced "relocations" and environmental desecration that drove them from their homes.
Black Mesa Weavers for Live and Land is working with the Dine' people living on Black Mesa toward continued cooperation with the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe to ensure their cultural and economic survival through sustainable development and the healing of fractured communities on both HPL and NPL.
There is still time to save the ecosystem and help the people who live in this land to live in peace. We are starting to see the fruits of everyone's labors and there is genuine hope for the future.
"Washington seems to be very immature. They believe in lies. They have no pity and cannot see us. We go around wiping our tears because of what they do. Because they do not see us..." (Dine' elder speaking about government policy forcing her from her home, in the documentary film "Broken Rainbow," which won an Academy Award for best documentary feature in 1985; a film by Maria Florio and Victoria Mudd.
Dine' home destroyed on Black Mesa. The freeze on home repairs and new construction, in effect since 1974, was lifted only in 1996, with the passing of the Accommodation Agreement.
For 25 years (1974-1996), people were not allowed to repair their homes. Here are two hogans, which are both daily dwelling places and sacred spaces, with plastic on their roofs, June 1999.
Black Mesa
In the month of clear days
and falling leaves
far from Black Mesa
I watch the sun coming down on trees
and am safe.Where grandmothers are afraid
there is no peace.
I am warm
and cold covers them.
Their songs are not heard.They will gather the earth to themselves
like a garment
and its strength will clothe them
though it wears away.Sh'ma--
the mother is singing
the smallest seedling speaks
the sun is setting--
Hear.The word "Shi'ma" means "Mother" in Dine' bizhaad (Navajo) and "hear" or "listen" in Hebrew.
(©10/23//98 Carol Snyder Halberstadt)
Five of a Dine' delegation to the United Nations in 1998, visiting the National Museum of the American Indian, New York City, November 1998.
Nonprofit fair trade sale of weavings, handspun Churro yarns, mini-mill Churro yarns, jewelry, and more, by
