WEBVTT

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This new work I'm doing now
in collaboration with Stephen

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Strong are poems and prose
about the Canyon de Chelly

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up in northeastern Arizona.

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This canyon is still home
to many of the Diné people.

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They still live in the canyon.

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They grow crops.

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They have their animals there.

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They hold ceremonies there.

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It's also a big
tourist destination.

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So you can hire a guide to
drive you into the canyon.

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And you can see all
the sites down there

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and go to Spider Rock.

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You can go to North
rim or the South Rim.

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And you spend days in
that canyon looking

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at all the beauty there.

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So much beauty
there and not enough

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film to take all
those photographs.

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So people come from all over
the world to visit this canyon.

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There's a little community right
outside of Canyon de Chelly.

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It's called the Chinle.

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And there's a little restaurant
called The Junction Cafe.

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And walking there
in the summer, you

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can hear all these
different languages--

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German, Swiss, so you can hear
French, Japanese, and English.

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And they're on going on
this little restaurant.

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I was asked if I was interested
in writing this manuscript.

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And I immediately said yes,
because, even though I didn't

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grow up near that
canyon, I've always

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felt this strong magnetism to be
there and even to just stand up

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at the rim and
look down into it.

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I lived in the Midwest
for a number of years.

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And that was always
one of the places

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I wanted to go visit when I
came home to visit my family.

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So I was very happy
to do this work.

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And my collaborator, as
I said, is Stephen Strom.

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So we took a couple of
trips into the canyon,

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one in the summertime
and then one in the fall.

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Took our cameras, and
just dove in there,

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and stopped wherever
we wanted for as long

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as we wanted, and
just took photographs.

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And most of the photographs
I think are done now,

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and Steve will talk about
that a little bit later.

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And I spoke to
some of the guides

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that we took us in there.

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One woman, in particular, knew a
lot of stories about that area.

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And so she would
tell the Navajo.

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So some of the
things that I heard

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up here in this manuscript that
I've written, most of the work

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is done.

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And I'm not sure what
the name of it is,

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but it's probably something like
"Say It Deep Within the Rock."

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Our word for the Canyon de
Chelly is Tséyi', which means

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deep in the rock.

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It wasn't until
later an outsider

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named it Canyon de Chelly.

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So this is some
recent work from that.

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"The round belly of the Earth,
Western culture bill squares

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and rectangles.

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They lie in patterns across
the humid green of the Midwest

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that the jet I am
taking flies over.

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The German, Swedes, Danes,
and Eastern Europeans

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that flooded this country
brought with them the theory

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to tame the land, first,
by the force of themselves,

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opening the Earth and
dropping seeds into her.

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They realized the abundance
of the Earth and wanted more.

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Getting into the
mountain states,

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the shapes turn
into green circles

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that spin on the
surface of the Earth.

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From the sky, one wonders at
the perfect roundness of them,

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because from the ground,
the shapes are evident.

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Like the geometric
shapes of the Midwest,

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the circles mean
the land has been

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worked for what it can give.

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In the Southwest, the
terrain changes again.

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Now light colored fissures run
like roots on the dry mesas

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extending outward.

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Roads and highways wind around
the canyons and dry riverbeds.

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The Rio Grande River
flows southward.

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And on both sides, towns
have sprung up alongside it.

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The contrast here is how the
land yields only to itself,

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defying the manipulations of
Western men and his machines.

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The Indigenous peoples came
to this knowledge thousands

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of years ago.

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They took only what the
Earth would give them.

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In doing so, they showed their
gratitude by offering prayers

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so that the Earth would continue
to sustain our fragile lives.

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They made their homes
and ceremonial centers

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in a circle on the round
belly of the Earth."

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