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Canyon de Chelly
...Percy Oliver spins a fascinating tale.Arizona: April, 1997
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In Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, a 700-year-old pueblo, crouching beneath its great curved ceiling of stone, stared impassively down on a straggle of pale tourists splashing clumsily through the shallow waters of the Snake River.
I was one of that straggle, my feet alternately numb with cold then shit-brown with horse dung, as I struggled after Percy Oliver, our Navajo guide.
I was trying to look in all directions at once — at the walls of the canyon, at the water rushing between my legs, at Percy, at my companions, at the new views that each corner revealed, at the path.
I was also attempting to control a couple of cameras and a back-pack full of lunch, whilst being attacked by mosquitoes.
I was having a great time.
Percy, he takes great pains to point out, is an Official Guide, a title necessitated by a growing number of interlopers more interested in making a profit than sharing knowledge and protecting the canyon's delicate environment.
Percy's not averse to gently chiding his fellow tribespeople — for digging up artefacts, for abandoning the fields on the canyon floor, for living on welfare. A large man, he's also smilingly self-deprecating — indicating his belly he explains that he's had to go on a diet, replacing meat with pasta
As the guardians of the canyon, the Navajo have an ambivalent attitude towards the ruins of other long-vanished peoples.
"We were always told not to touch them, not to disturb them," says Percy. "And that's what I've always done. I know of undiscovered sites, but I won't even tell my own people. The grandfathers taught us not to touch the ruins, but they'd been there, they'd dug up artefacts.
"And some so-called "guides" will take pottery and arrow heads out of their pockets to show the tourists. That's wrong. But the ruins don't mean anything to we Navajo, they weren't built by our people. We are here to protect the whole canyon, and we respect the ruins."
On our way down into the canyon, we'd clambered down a few yards of shallow ancient and precarious footholds.
Percy talks admiringly of the women who cut them in the rock cliffs where trails crossed the line of the canyon, using water to soften the rock. "The men were never here," he explains. "Women were tough then...perhaps they still are today," he laughs, sotto voce.
Women have played an important role in Percy's family. Percy's grandmother was an important landowner who earned the envy of another Navajo. In an attempt to seize some of her land, the rival had a shaman cast a spell on the woman, who, just three days later, died. Percy describes how his mother, then a little girl, saw the rival appear at the opening in the woman's hut roof, outlined against the night sky. Ironically the land acquired by ritual murder has never been cultivated since, by either families.
Percy's mother was also a respected matriarch who proportioned land and was at the centre of a huge informal family of casually-adopted children — children left to die by parents because they were the wrong gender.
As we stood in the silence of the canyon, Percy tells us how few families now tended the traditional fields that spread across the river sediments. "They don't want to live the solitary life any more," he says. "They'd rather cruise up and down in pick-up trucks and watch TV," he sighs.
CLICK ON IMAGE TO VIEW LARGER VERSION AND CAPTION
video clip 1 Lenore on the brink 4 Mb video clip 2 The photographer 3 Mb video clip 3 A view of the Canyon 2 Mb video clip 4 Ruins 4 Mb video clip 5 Rock pictures 1.5 Mb Note: These are digitized analog video clips in mpg format, so the quality is doubtful! Hollywood can breathe easy. However they are a first attempt and when broadband catches on, and we get a digital camcorder, the results will no doubt improve.
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