Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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The question I had about telling the true stories was crystallized on an early site visit in 1999 to the Ullman Learning Center. Some of the issues I was grappling with at the time were: What rights and responsibilities do I have to paint stories that are not my own? What images and histories could best represent a reflection of the past that also distill the contemporary experience?

As construction began in the Ullman Learning Center, I visited with a Yaqui construction worker who was installing the giant timber beams that are now located near the center of the gallery. He was from the town of Guadalupe near Tempe, Arizona. He confirmed my own misconceptions of tribal identity having mistaken him for a Latino. He jokingly said, “Everyone thinks we are Mexican, but we are Yoemen.” Our brief encounter struck a chord and I recognized this moment of cultural confusion was a starting point for the mural, and a way for me to understand the struggles and histories of the Yoemen people. The Yoemen had migrated north from their homeland in Sonora to areas near Sells, Tucson, and Guadalupe, close to Tempe, Arizona. Their story of Diaspora is one of the longest in indigenous struggle in the West, and is well documented and discussed in Raat’s chapter, “Slaying the Deer Slayers in Mexico: The Yaqui Experience.”