24 Frames and the Spaces Between

“Do not stop in Shiprock.”
Deputy Garlaza, of the Montezuma County Sheriff's Office, advises we drive through Shiprock without stopping; there's nothing there and it's simply not safe. We pull away from the gas station/casino and hurry past Shiprock, named for the red-rock monument shaped like a giant mainsail, on towards the safety of Santa Fe, nervously watching the gas needle steadily drop.
The drive is six-and-a-half-hours from Moab, Utah, to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Between the two is reservation land, littered with small towns appearing almost from nothing, sagging buildings and fences seeming to rise from the earth like strange geometrical weeds. The effect of Time, perhaps unnoticed on the ancient landscape, is more apparent on the towns. Here, in the shadows, are peoples burdened by the weight of their environment and their history, giants looming larger than any monument of red rock. Tradition will not sustain a livelihood or a people. The youth are restless; they work on their cars, an externalization of the desire to escape from the perceived stranglehold of ancestral territories. Some tune out with alcohol and drugs. Every mile is marked by a “Don't Drink and Drive” sign.
Perhaps we were overreacting; nothing we passed indicated a wasteland, just small towns struggling to get on. Some living here feel contempt. Some of it is justified, some stems from frustration alone. Many haven't given up. In my mind, I hear a tinge of parental care rather than defeat in the deputy's warning, as if to say “we're working on it, but not there yet”. Adaptation replaces listlessness.
The pride of the Ute, the Navajo and others is still there, sometimes buried. Men still wear long black braids. The ancient artistic motifs still hold a sense of mystery and power. The tradition is of survival People continue to persevere, the same spirit as those who first settled in this rough, arid land. They are carving out a living the best way they can, to provide for their families, to reach forward. Shiprock isn't the destination.
In Santa Fe, there's a weathered Navajo woman, wrapped in patterned blankets up to the chin against the early spring chill, minding her stall on the portico of the Palace of the Governors. She's selling the artisanal wares she's made, just as her mother and grandmother made, and countless generations before them. Something remains in her; whether courage or stubbornness, she continues to push on. And she's smiling.