Next location: westbound eastbound
As sunset approaches Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, we’re standing on the rim of the flat-bottomed basket that supports an array of magnificent buttes. We experience what Teju Cole calls: “…the poignant commonality of our eyes. The world individually mesmerizes us toward reiteration. Our coincident gazes overlay the same sites over and over and over again, as though we were caught up in a slow-motion religious fervor. Through the affordances of terrain, we are alleviated of the burden of originality without always being aware that we are being unoriginal. Take a photo here, the site whispers. It’s yours, but not yours alone.”1
Westerners marvel at the magnificent buttes, but maybe we should focus on the basket of a landscape that supports them.
Here we see a gnomon pointing east against a technicolor sky. We watched a couple getting married. Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is as pretty as a film set. In fact John Ford made many films here, to the enduring delight of busloads of tourists from China, Denmark and points in between. For many, the landscape triggers memories of films seen long ago.
Yet now we need to review those memories and reconsider the messages contained in those movies. The Red Nation, a Native activist group, wants a lesson to be drawn: “In western films, such as John Ford’s ‘The Searchers,’ …settler vigilantism is depicted as a form of self-defense…. Native genocide… is shown as an act of revenge for killing a white squatter and taking his daughter…. The ‘cowboy as Indian killer’ also upholds the myth of rugged individualism….”2
We need a new framework for admiring this grand landscape: Teju Cole reminds us that the view is not ours alone. A more interesting question might be: what does this place mean for the Diné?
Footnotes
1 Teju Cole, “Take a Photo Here.” New York Times 27 Jun 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/27/magazine/take-a-photo-here.html
2Nick Estes, Melanie K. Yazzie, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, and David Correia, Red Nation Rising – From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation. (Oakland CA: PM Press, 2021), p 39.