It’s time to go back. For nearly three decades we have been sharing your goodwill and generosity with resistors of forced relocation in the Big Mountain-Black Mesa-Sand Springs regions deep in the heart of the Dine’ (Navajo) Nation.
The age of coal is coming to an end. They remain. The people who fought for the right to live on the land creator gave them are victorious in the struggle, at great cost. Clean water, air, and land have all been compromised. People have lost homes and years of life to the coal and uranium mining, processing and transporting of these resources. All across the reservation and beyond indigenous people have paid an even higher cost than the rest of us in the era of climate disruption caused by fossil fuel consumption.
The saga of the people as they stand against corporate power and massive degradation of sacred land as some of the first climate activists on earth and our story of using music and the power of community connection to support them has been well documented and woven into a compelling story by Shelley Muniz in the new book When The Creator Moves Me.
Shelley has been embedded with the band for several years, touring and making the journey to the reservation. The book tells the story of our involvement with the Dine’ Resisters woven in with history and stories from the land. It’s been getting some great reviews.
As we raise funds for this year’s journey we are offering a copy of When The Creator Moves Me to everyone who contributes $50 or more to this year’s Beauty Way Tour and Thanks Giving journey. You will find the donate button on the Beauty Way page of clandyken.com
There is still so much to learn from those who walk the Beauty Way with language, songs, ceremonies and traditions that come from a connection to the land. Your gifts help us bring food, firewood, warm clothes, dog food, and other supplies to those who remain. It keeps our connection alive and reminds them they are not alone. In our small way, we continue to support and honor them.
With all the people have given to hold on, our costs to show this support are relatively minor but expensive in the moment. To get a cord of wood out to these remote locations is $250 and we need at least 20 cords – $5000,100 bags of dog food at $30 per 50# bag cost $3000, we spend over $10,000 on food and supplies. Add transportation the whole thing comes up to around $25-30,000. This year we also want to start supporting reservation schools with no strings attached cash grants of up to $1000.
You can also contribute by coming to the shows and helping us build the energy for the journey to the land. If you are up for the ultimate Thanks Giving experience you can join the caravan. However you choose to be a part of this great exchange we are grateful and proud to be your representatives in delivering your support.
Praise For When The Creator Moves Me
“Reading with a effortless literary ease that is like listening to an extended conversation, “When the Creator Moves Me: A Story about Music, Resistance, and Creative Activism” is impressively informative, thought-provoking, emotionally evocative, and a valued contribution to the growing body of literature with respect to 20th Century Native American History. A deftly written and detailed account from first page to last, “When the Creator Moves Me” is an extraordinary, erudite, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal reading lists, as well as community and academic library collections.”
-Midwest Book Review
“After finishing this stunning book (When the Creator Moves Me), I contacted Shelley Muniz to let her know that saying I enjoyed it would do it no justice. I have been moved by its creators, to borrow a phrase.
Shelley is an extraordinary writer, storyteller – wait until you read the beauty of her stories within the story of this book – and historian, and it’s been my privilege to have gotten to know her better. It shouldn’t surprise you to know that she is also a dyed-in-the-wool activist now involved in building the sustenance of a local Resiliency Village through which to improve the quality of life in her local community.
It was quirky reading her book because I have wondered what it would be like to go on the Beauty Way tour, having known of it, and the work of its chief protagonist, Mark Dyken, for some years. (We met when he and another traveler, Catherine Lambie, attended a workshop I conducted on grant proposal writing many years back.)
With this book, I am getting to know in absentia, with a certain measure of longing, and a back-and-forth between admiration for courage in abundance among the travelers and those they visit, and a sadness beyond rage at the circumstances that necessitate gritted teeth in some of what I read. For example, Mark Dyken’s words:
“It’s hard to imagine what it might be like to face the end of your culture and way of life. To know that the government of this country, formed to protect the rights of all of its citizens, has betrayed you over and over, all for the benefit of profit. To watch the plants, animals, water, and the land itself disappear as the traditional Dineh dwindle in number. It has gotten to the point where the simple act of planting corn has become a major act of resistance against great odds. One of the Grandmothers, a friend of ours, often says, ‘the sheep are my children. The horses are our relatives too.’ This kind of logic, the simplicity, and basic truths – it’s hard to deny that we feel a calling, or that there is a connection for us. The land is everything. Water is life, You hear that over and over out there.”
I must confess to being one of a growing lot of us who is persuaded that we have ceded our capacity to control much of what the natural world has in store for us. This allows me to suggest time and again that best we can muster under the circumstances is a reasonable way to respond to what’s in the works. Nothing I have seen better embodies this than the actions around and of the annual Beauty Way Tour. It exemplifies what those of us in a mutual support group often refer to as doing the next right thing. You owe it to your heart to read this book.”
-Harvey Chess
“In the tradition of Jack Kerouac and Tom Wolfe and other great road trip chroniclers, Muniz embeds herself with a traveling band on a bus tour, to capture the intimate details of a unique cross-cultural experience. This adventure transcends “life-for-its-own-sake,” beatnik and hippie predecessors with highly purposed altruism, the band’s annual Beauty Way Supply Run to bring support to aging Navajo/Dineh resisters in the Black Mesa region of northeastern Arizona. The journey is full of antics and music, its destination a parched natural world you can taste and feel; along the way encountering the shame of history and culminating in the hope of activism. When the Dyken boys, a literal “band of brothers” from Wisconsin, migrate to northern California at the end of the nineteen-seventies, they form a folk-rock group playing Whole Earth festivals and protest events, meeting up with hippie icons such as Wavy Gravy. By the early nineties, now calling themselves Clan Dyken, their path leads to Big Mountain, where corporate interests and government action have partitioned the heart of the Navajo reservation to the Hopi. Navajo traditionalists, mostly elders, refuse to leave their ancestral homeland, despite decades of progressive harassment and ever-diminishing resources, particularly water. Muniz walks you across the desert highlands, through sand and sage, inside the hogans, to the looms of the grandmothers. You appreciate the art of Native weaving, the strength of ancient self-sufficiency, and witness the friendship and respect formed between the resisters and Clan Dyken over the past twenty-five years. Muniz’s vivid writing is interleaved with black and white photographs of cracked hands, weathered faces, hard lives, and celebration. A beautiful read!”
— Constance Corcoran, Librarian
“This book ultimately is about the possibilities when you bring together creativity and social justice. It’s a much-needed book in our times. Beautifully written and filled with gorgeous photos.”
— Dr. Kate Evans, author of Call It Wonder
“It’s often hard, in this day and age, to feel as if any of the world’s problems are within our ability to change and it is easy to fall into apathy or despair. This book is the story of how to change the world with love, music, and a willing listening heart. To quote the author “I have to believe we can make it better.”. Hopeful and heartbreaking at the same time When the Creator Moves Me is a beautiful history of people connecting and helping each other and the land. A must-read for anyone who is trying to better this world and feeling outnumbered.
–Lara Ford, instructor, Columbia College
“This book tells the tale of two brothers growing up in middle America, raising their families and becoming aware of the many challenging social, political and environmental injustices facing humans today. They form a band choosing music as their tool to bring folks together, educate them and motivate them to join the cause. The heart of the book centers on a group of the Dine’ (Navajo) people of Northern Arizona who have been resisting forced relocation from their ancestral homeland for nearly forty years. Mark and Bear travel to Big Mountain where they encounter environmental degradation, social injustice, and political corruption. The beautiful Dine’ people especially the grandmothers and their determined efforts to remain on the land where they were born inspires a decades-long effort of benefit concerts, food and supply runs, and wonderful friendships that continue today. You will enjoy the stories of travels to the rez as well as the adventures and friends made along the way. You will fall in love with the Grandmothers and their determination to Walk the Beauty Way against all odds. I highly recommend this educational and inspiring book.”
— Andrew Franklin
“Shelley Muniz, Mark Dyken, and Bear Dyken will touch hearts as they describe life, as they observe it, on a Navajo reservation, from basic human living conditions to environmental destruction. The authors portray the story of Big Mountain, Arizona, as well as the story of the Dyken brothers, whose passion for the environment and human rights led them to the reservation years ago. This compelling and disturbing documentation will make you both laugh and cry, but mostly make you angry as you learn of the injustice and struggles still being endured by the Navajo today. By the time you turn the last page, you’ll want to jump on the Silver Eagle bus, along with Mark, Bear, Shelley and the rest, joining them on the Beauty Way Tour, as they continue their effort to bring food and supplies to the elders of Big Mountain. When the Creator Moves Me is a powerful read that will bring consciousness and compassion to a people who have been neglected far too long.”
–Carol Dali
“Anyone who cares about humanity and Mother Earth needs to own this book. The story is riveting and very well written. I recommend it highly.”
–Jon Baumgartner