Venaya Yazzie

Migration Song, Flooding Narrative

A Photo Journey Trekking Matriarch’s Memory 

She is water. 

She 

is 

Tó’ haalí – 

‘water pouring.’ 

She is 

flowing. 

She surges through intersecting borders of my red and blue veins. She meets me at the foot of widening green sage. She is there where the blue of confluence molds itself around the curves of sandstone rocks. There- she recites her high desert female narrative: an Athabascan story of water. 

Flooding. 

Navigating the terrain of grief concerns the human spirit in search of a sense of wholeness again. Navigating the landscape of loss of a loved one, a matriarch, concerns the use of the mother language of the environment and her soft prayers. Navigating the life of absence of a matriarch concerns the trek, a constant search for assurance of familiar landscapes. 

She 

pours a mist of story over my dry of arroyo sands- 

she is

tó’ haalí 

pouring and flowing 

and flowing

and pouring – 

her voice 

tides 

and pools. 

Each

drop of her

story seeps

down 

into the

deep red clay 

washes near Huerfano. 

As a descendent of many brown-skinned matriarchs who walked the land, I find this present existence a perpetuation of their DNA. In 2020 I am one strand of millions of blood cell patterns crisscrossing the high-desert landscape. My black hair follows the ebb and flow of winds that sweep across the blue-green sage and shining, red sandstone mesas. 

This photo essay is her story, that has poured into my modern story. My story is also flowing into her past story of life, and family and loss and renewal and healing. 

I am Diné. I was birthed from a female being, whose own umbilical cord was connected to a woman entrenched in the rituals of migration-ways, one who existed near the nexus of h ó z h ó. This woman was my maternal great-grandmother, and she carried the hues of turquoise blue water drops in the gleam of her eyes. Her resilient hands, resonated with old, old, old narrative from the arctic north, stories she hand-stitched on a bluebird satchel that rested on her right hip. Stories of her future swayed with her, as she trekked south daydreaming about meeting her grandchildren. 

These photographs concern my recollections a childhood spent in the summer months at Dziłthnaodiłthe, Huerfano, New Mexico. Each capture confirms that land connection, when I walked without shoes on the brown land at a time when monsoon clouds existed in a constant motion above the family residence. I watched the land at a time when the clouds presented themselves, approaching and pouring down cool, blue water. As a child I witnessed the aftermath of the downpour of such rains, I walked without hesitance and gathered cold, brown mud in my hands and consumed the scent of damp, female earth between my incisors. Since that time of my early earth life, I know I carry such moments in the stands of my black hair. 

Memories of those reservation rain clouds perpetually wander in my skull. For it was such rain clouds that conjured the grayish-green frogs to gather near the sage landing and sing in unison for us. As my cousin sisters and cousin brothers played barefooted in the mass of brown mud water puddles, we unconsciously blessed the land of our great-grandparents. We consumed the dirt and adorned our heads with white yucca blooms and fresh green sage bundles. We were holy earth beings. In adulthood now, I realize how such simple childhood moments were a living example of the complex manifestations of our past ancestral ‘beautyway’ past. In my present life and modern experience, I know I have never again lived in such bliss or seen such beautiful blue rains. 

She is water. 

She 

is 

tó’ haalí – 

water flowing, flowing, flowing… 

In the chill of early 3am dawn my maternal grandmother passed on to the next world. I was present with her on February 4th - at her side, holding her right hand when her desert soul migrated on. Her being drew a soft white glow, it flowed like a river and radiated near her, it was the same energy of the days of my childhood at Dziłthnaodiłthe. Shimá, Jane Werito Yazzie was my source of nourishment when I thirsted. She was my river. Her love was like the water streams in the desert in monsoon season. Her hands were like the earth, they held me, molded me in the shadow of her asdzáá image. From my infancy, her dialogue flowed over me like the late evening downpours of female rain in eastern Dinétáh. Her life was my river continuously streaming into my desert path, the ebb and flow of 89 years of wisdom and resiliency, feeding my thirst for the female narrative and gender dialogue of past matriarchs who drew knowledge from the vast sky and female earth. 

She was ‘Shimá’ to me - a grandmother who was born to be my mother image, my protector, my best friend. Shimá took me into the soft voice of turquoise arms and warm home, rescuing me from the bordertown chaos of the 1970s. Shimá was my continuous river of agape affection, flowing and cleansing the muddy veins of my broken, soft heart. She was my rain. From her flowed adoration for me, a humble daughter of her own first-born daughter. I was her sacred moment of flood in high desert spring season. Shimá was my grand, overflowing river, my lifeline. 

I am existing now in the pre-destine narrative of Diné Asdzáá – a Navajo woman spirit embedded deep into the mesas and rabbitbrush of my soul. Aware that my communal dialogue, tangible actions, are all re-enacting the role of Ámá as a continuance of my k’é clan and mother tongue, shizaad. Today, among global chaos I exist in the perpetual pools of Iíná motion, established by the benevolent, but fierce matriarch of her, my blue river Jane Werito Yazzie. 

She is blue water pouring 

onto and over red, brown hands made of fine sandstone. Her voice, stable and rooted, formed by her desert tongue. Born for water, she is Diné being, my grandmother. She is me; I am her. 

She is water…  

Venaya Yazzie is a member of the eastern Diné nation in northwest New Mexio, she also carries Hopi from her father. She lives in the San Juan Valley with her family and was a caretaker for her late maternal grandmother Jane Werito Yazzie.

Yazzie is alumnus of the Institute of American Indian and Alaska Native Arts, Fort Lewis College, the University of New Mexico where she earned an M.A. in Education / Indian Education.  She is a member of the Navajo Cultural Museum Board, Northwest New Mexico Arts Council and has been a National Park AIR Program Artist-In-Residence at Mesa Verde, CO. She also worked in residence with Dancing Earth- SEEDS Project and the Bisti Writing Project in the Four Corners. 

Venaya as female multi-media artist focuses on the concept of, ‘Be Matriarch,’ in which Venaya strives to reclaim the true historical past of southwest Indigenous women and men and their existence in the natural and spiritual environment in Navajoland. Her writing, poetry and photography ensure that she works to reaffirm Indigenous identity, tribal tongue and ancestry; her efforts encompass the need to re-tell and thus re-establish the narrative and experiences of the 21st century Indigenous individual.

She was a keynote speaker for Restoring & Celebrating Family Wellness in Shiprock, NM for their Ádáhodílzin – Respect & Reverence for Self Youth Conference and the New Mexico Water Resources Research Institute. Venaya visits Navajo communities as a guest cultural speaker and educator and recently presented at the annual Sisters Circle Women’s Conference. She authors a blog titled, Indigenous Adornment.

For more information, or for the sale of artwork, please see: venaya-yazzie.square.site