This one is called "Gia's Song."
And Gia in Tewa means mother.
(SINGING) "Thung joo Kwa yaa na povi sah.
Thung joo Kwa yaa na povi sah.
Tsay ohi taa geh wo gi wa naa povi sah, pin povi,
pin povi do mu u da kun, ka nee na nun dun naa da si tah,
ka nee na nun dun naa da si tah.
(SPEAKING) On top of Black Mesa, there are flowers.
On top of Black Mesa, there are flowers.
Dew on yellow flowers.
Mountain flowers I see so far away.
It makes me cry.
She opened her eyes slowly as if to awaken from a trance cast
by a song transporting her to childhood.
Back to the flowers growing atop Black Mesa so far and yet
clearly brilliant.
Awake from the song, Gia focused on her daughter
anxiously awaiting to be taught this new song.
The old woman chose to take her time.
She had learned from experience attention
is better paid by children when there
is a little pause and mystery.
Soon enough, though, Gia spoke.
When I was a young girl, my family
would camp below Kwheng sa po during the farming months.
We spent most of our days following my grandmother
through rows of corn and playing in the streams below.
One day white men came in a wagon telling us
about a school for Indians run by the government.
We were told this school would educate and prepare us
for jobs in the white men's world.
None of us knew what any of it meant,
but these men spoke sweetly offering grandmother
a roll of baling wire for each child that went to school.
Before we knew what was happening,
we were sitting in the back of their wagon
on our way to government school away from our families
to another man's world.
Often we would cry out of loneliness,
but this song helped us to remember our home.
Gia thoughtfully straightened the pleats on her skirt
swallowing the last of her coffee.
Smiling, she continued, the government's [AUDIO OUT]
--and early '70s the United States Department of housing
urban development in agreement with the Santa Clara Pueblo
began constructing colonies of modular frame and stucco houses
along the open fields of the Santa Clara Pueblo reservation.
The architectural plans for this project
were designed in a government office somewhere in Texas.
Contractors were hired and building began,
and to this date continues.
(SINGING) Thung joo Kwa
yaa na povi sah.
Thung joo Kwa yaa na povi sah.
Tsay ohi--
(SPEAKING) Silenced in the middle of Gia's song,
shocked by the shattering, completely unsettling sight
of sixty, sixty new modular homes crowded
in a field across sacred land, cheaply framed and insulated.
One the same as the other.
One the same as the other, replacing juniper and chamisa
bushes that once shaded and fed rabbits, field mice, and other
[SPEAKING TEWA]
Below Black Mesa, my children and I witnessed a crime
not of passion or accident, but a thoughtlessness, greed,
and genocide neatly packaged in an affordable, comfortable
American dream.
Housing for a new generation of [SPEAKING TEWA] expected
to assume a new standard.
The bulldozer hummed in high gear
clearing a permanent path for progress,
perfectly exampled by the shiny new garage
doors placed every 10 feet, one right after the other.
Boxes designed in a government office
with standard quick order dimensions.
There was no mud.
No one even staggered sunbaked bricks,
no plaster-scraped knuckles on rough brown skin, no cluster
of children bathed in mud from helping uncles,
aunts, grandmas, and grandpas.
Boxes eliminating our sense of community
erasing just a little more of our self and place,
introducing instead concepts of ownership
through yard separations and chain linked fences.
In disbelief, with my sentiments exactly, Eliza my daughter
repeated the word wow over and over again.
Continuous shots from high powered construction staple guns
echoed, cutting through the valley, through insulation
deep into framed walls one house after the other.
My heart raced though my body unable to move,
I could feel the scream rising from my center
and exploding in a combination of rage, confusion,
and utter hopelessness, as we witness this criminal act once
again against [SPEAKING TEWA] against an essential element
of Pueblo living to coil with the Earth,
to build with mud these vessels we could live in and raise
our children.
[SPEAKING TEWA]
It is not our land to destroy.
How we found it we should leave it."
[APPLAUSE]
"There was one last wow from Eliza, one last shake
of her head in obvious disappointment
as she steered me back to the truck.
We drove finishing my mother's song.
(SINGING) Ka nee na
nun dun naa da si tah.
Ka nee na nun dun naa da si tah.
(SPEAKING) It is so far away, and I want to cry."
[APPLAUSE]