Artist Statement – Venaya Yazzie Woman of Water: Baa

"Woman of Water: Ba'" 
Original Photography by Venaya Yazzie 2015
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Artist Statement – Venaya Yazzie

Woman of Water: Baa

In Diné (Navajo) epistemology the children are traditionally taught that when we are first conceived in the organic world of our desert matriarchs, we are water. In the trade of stories of contemporary Diné we understand how we grew in the cirlce of the womb and were molded into human form, we conceive that we are water. When we leave our matriarchs womb we are water. When we take our first breath we are water. As modern desert dwellers, as Diné we express, ‘tó éí iíná.’ Water is life.

On August 4, 2015 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “accidently” released heavy-metal laden contaminated water from the abandoned Gold King Mine into the flow of the Animas River in southwestern Colorado. The warning to the people and communities down river was not given until the next day.  In southwestern Colorado, later to the state of New Mexico a formal acknowledgement of the river contamination was finally admitted four days later by the EPA when the federal entity began a series of public meetings throughout the communities affected.

As an Indigenous citizen of the area and a member of the eastern Navajo Nation in New Mexico I watched in distress because the Animas River and San Juan rivers play an extremely pivotal role in contemporary Diné people’s lives. At the two rivers, the Diné have 'converged' for prayer, ceremony and celebration for time immemorial - the waters of these two rivers is embedded in the DNA code of the Indigenous people of this community. I am a desert ancestor of the waters that flow through a beautiful desert valley on the northwestern area of the Diné lands, or as you may now it, the Navajo Nation. It was instilled in me that my Indigenous matrilineal clans are derived from the sacred element of water. I was raised in the San Juan Valley in northwestern New Mexico, my family history includes story about the Animas and San Juan rivers that have come to be named by those who colonized the area as such, but many histories before they arrived to the area, the river community was called Tó by the Diné. The river was named a 'sacred' place or site and to this day the river is a place of spiritual power, but it is only known to those who understand and recognize it for the true purpose of it. Respect for desert water is the Beautyway.

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