How a Group of Navajo Teenagers Promoted a Re-telling of Historical past
FORT SUMNER, NM — In June 1990, a busload of 17 teenagers from the Navajo Nation rolled as much as the Bosque Redondo Memorial at Fort Sumner Historic Web site, considered one of eight historic locations maintained by the New Mexico Division of Cultural Affairs. Not lengthy after they arrived, chaperone Evelyn Becenti contended with pushback from the scholars in regards to the go to. She remembers them asking, “What are we doing right here?’”
Becenti, recent from incomes her undergraduate instructing diploma, had taken a gig with Save the Youngsters to chaperone the teenagers on a visit to a Native youth convention in Oklahoma Metropolis. On the return journey, they stopped in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, trying to find a darkish however important chapter of their historical past.
The location is on the previous grounds of a United States army operation that imprisoned 9,500 Diné (Navajo) folks and 500 Ndé (Mescalero Apache) folks within the 1860s. Over 3,000 died on the desolate encampment and on pressured marches often known as the Lengthy Stroll to get there.
Becenti remembers her co-chaperone, Pauline Begay, prepping their college students for the expertise: “She mentioned, ‘We’re going to perceive ourselves and be extra pleased with being Navajo. Fort Sumner and the Lengthy Stroll, that is our historical past.’”
Inside a diminutive museum, tucked behind the gravesite of Western outlaw Billy the Child, was only one important point out of this story. An introductory wall placard mentioned the US Military’s choice to “cope with the hostile tribes” by putting them “on reservations below army guard.”
The rest of the 800-square-foot exhibition targeted on army figures like James H. Carleton and Equipment Carson, who mercilessly subjugated Indigenous peoples. Becenti says, “Right here we have been, attempting to grasp how the US seems at this as we speak, and it was all about these Western ‘heroes.’ Is that how our story is instructed?”
Petula Chester was a highschool freshman who’d seldom traveled exterior of Navajo Nation when she joined the journey. She had been impressed by assembly teenagers from different Native communities on the convention in Oklahoma, which made her expertise at Bosque Redondo really feel notably jarring.
“I bear in mind feeling nearly betrayed. The Lengthy Stroll is about our folks and the struggling that we went via,” says Chester. “It was sort of somber as we have been strolling via there, in search of our tales.”
Begay pulled out a pocket book and mentioned, “Lets simply go away our footprints right here and go dwelling, and don’t have anything to say about it?” Collectively, they composed a letter to depart on the website. It learn, partly:
“We the younger era of the Diné (Navajo) […] discover Fort Sumner’s Historic website discrimminating [sic] and never telling the true story behind what actually occurred to our ancestors in 1864-1868. […] We subsequently declare that the museum present and inform the true historical past of the Navajos and the US army.”
Thirty-one years, 11 months, and sooner or later after leaving the word on the Bosque Redondo historic website, Becenti arrived on the grand opening of Bosque Redondo: A Place of Struggling … A Place of Survival. The 6,500-square-foot everlasting exhibition is the fruits of an elaborate effort to reframe the location’s historical past. On the heart of the primary wall panel is the coed group’s letter, preserved below museum glass.
It’s a five-hour drive to Fort Sumner from Window Rock, Arizona, the place Manuelito “Manny” Wheeler Jr. is the director of the Navajo Nation Museum. The final leg of the journey immediately aligns with the route that Wheeler’s ancestors took to achieve Bosque Redondo, on treacherous walks of as much as 450 miles.
The location has gained a formidable new facility for the reason that college students’ go to, a towering construction by Diné architect David Sloan that includes the types of a Ndé tipi and a Diné hogan. Accomplished in 2005 and christened by Governor Invoice Richardson, it was celebrated because the success of the coed group’s written request.
When Wheeler signed on as a marketing consultant to remake the power’s exhibition in 2015, he didn’t see issues that means. “Right here was this spectacular new constructing, nevertheless it didn’t have a narrative on the within,” he mentioned on a podcast for the New Mexico Division of Cultural Affairs.
The exhibition that debuted with the constructing in 2005 was so dense that museum workers known as it a “historical past e book on the partitions.” It was the newest in a protracted line of curatorial missteps stretching again to 1973, when the location’s inaugural present was swiftly shut down for aptly however controversially calling Bosque Redondo an “American focus camp” — language that wouldn’t seem once more on the website till the 2022 exhibition.
“I’ve labored for main museums that signify Native folks however should not managed by Native folks,” says Wheeler. “Lots of instances they’ll ask consultants to inform them what they need to hear. The data that’s popping out isn’t at all times well-rounded or factual or a practical illustration of the folks.”
Wheeler aimed for a special dynamic with the present website supervisor Aaron Roth, a forensic archaeologist who arrived in 2015 and swiftly scrapped one more misguided scheme for an exhibition. That interpretive plan included animatronics of tribal leaders and dioramas representing life at Fort Sumner.
Roth was engaged on increasing the historic document of Bosque Redondo by gathering oral histories from each tribes. He says the story of the location felt alive and in movement, whereas the interpretive plan “positioned Indigenous folks in a time capsule.”
Roth secured ongoing annual funding from the New Mexico legislature to work on a brand new interpretive plan, and the Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities awarded the location a problem grant that might partly fund the present’s building. Together with Wheeler, Roth recruited Holly Houghton, a cultural consultant of the Mescalero Apache tribe, to information the venture. A Portland, Oregon, agency known as Historic Analysis Associates received a bid to design and construct the show. Morgen Younger, a senior historian at Historic Analysis Associates, led a workforce of 12 on the venture.
The present took form over 5 years, beginning in 2015 with a number of visits to Navajo Nation and Mescalero Apache Nation. The workforce proceeded tenderly: Some Diné and Ndé folks won’t focus on, not to mention go to. Named Bosque Redondo by the Spaniards, it’s a spot that the Diné named Hwéeldi, which roughly interprets to “a spot of struggling.”
As a part of the method, Roth invited members of each tribes again to the location for an unprecedented sequence of ceremonial dances. “We needed to study to have a dialog once more,” Roth says. “We held off deadlines and let issues occur organically.”
The exhibition commences with a dimly lit room the place the coed group’s letter is on distinguished show. Quotes from modern storytellers and floor-to-ceiling photographs of Indigenous peoples and sacred landscapes fill the partitions. Historic and modern objects are paired in show instances.
An infinite map periodically prompts with project-mapped animations that hint the routes of the Lengthy Stroll. A ceiling set up of 10,000 fiber optic bundles, referencing the quantity of people that have been trapped there, winds via the area and divulges pinpricks of daylight.
Roth and Younger had initially pitched a ceiling set up of suspended moccasins and a smoke hood on the present’s entrance for ceremonial smudging. Wheeler and Houghton steered each concepts in several instructions, fearful that such intimate experiences would possibly make Native guests really feel uncovered.
“About 30% of the location’s guests are Native,” says Wheeler. “We wanted to guarantee that our spirits and psyches have been protected. On the similar time, we needed to consider what would assist [non-Natives] really feel the emotion.”
The present’s central sweep begins with a curved hallway extending about 50 ft. Guests move between reproductions of a portray by Diné painter Shonto Begay that depicts the Lengthy Stroll, and a bit by an area artist exhibiting a platoon of US troopers marching in the direction of Fort Sumner.
Begay makes use of swirling brushstrokes that echo the rhythms of Navajo prayers. “I make use of these very consciously, particularly for items like this,” the artist says. “It’s a method of staying afloat mentally, spiritually.” An audio recording of footsteps fills the hallway, and an exterior door lets guests get some air in the event that they’re overwhelmed.
The hallway results in a big round room, referencing a Diné hogan and lit in a somber blue, that’s encircled with historic images of Bosque Redondo. Projections and recordings of quotes from Native storytellers and students activate show instances all through the room.
Close to the tip of the present, guests encounter one thing of a decision to the Bosque Redondo story. One wall chronicles the Ndé folks’s extremely strategic escape from Bosque Redondo in 1865. A display within the heart of the room permits guests to discover the 1868 treaty that established Navajo Nation and allowed the Diné to return dwelling. The doc is a outstanding acknowledgment of tribal sovereignty — with plenty of wrenching stipulations.
In a nod to the coed group’s letter, the final room invitations guests to provide suggestions and go away tales, which is able to inform updates to the present. The expertise continues on a webpage the place guests can submit tales or assist transcribe archival paperwork. The location can also be dwelling to sheep which might be granted to Diné and Ndé farmers and fiber artists.
In late Might 2022, over 600 folks attended the grand opening, which included a meal and ceremonial dances. One attendee was prime of thoughts for individuals who’d labored on the venture. Evelyn Becenti, the chaperone on the 1990 area journey, remembers feeling amazed on the letter’s affect — even when it took many years to coalesce.
“After I obtained to the museum, my eyes have been huge open and I used to be actually thrown again by the design, it was greater than I ever anticipated it to be,” says Becenti. “The folks, I may see their ideas of their eyes as they have been studying. The temper was all respectful, quiet, peaceable.”
