Bronitsky and Associates Blog

I just got back from Chinle, Arizona, to join in the celebrations for Bo Teller, one of the Chinle Valley Singers, who has just graduated with an AA degree and is now moving on for more studies at Northern Arizona University.  We really hadn’t seen each other since the tour of Dubai in 2007 so it was a great pleasure to get together again and catch up on everybody’s news. 

Bo and icing, 5-25-09B

She’s toured with the Singers to Italy, England, Latvia and Dubai so it’s no surprise to me that her major field of study at NAU will be interdisciplinary studies with a concentration on international diplomacy.  Bravo! It was especially touching when the Singers sang to Elizabeth Davis, their mother and grandmother, who founded the group and taught everyone her songs.  I toured her with the group to Estonia and Manila and have so many wonderful memories of her–including prying her away from the casino in Manila!  And now she’s elderly and frail and still very much loved.  Sigh. 

Chinle Valley Singers, singing for their mother 5-25-09

I also visited Canyon de Chelley National Monument, the loveliest place on earth I know.  I’ve been there many times before, in every season, but this was the first time I’ve seen the Canyon in the rain.  For about twenty minutes, this arid desert canyon became the Land of 10,000 Waterfalls.  It was like seeing it for the first time.  What a wonderful experience!

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Canyon de Chelley in the rain, 5-25-09

Canyon de Chelley in the rain, 5-25-09, by White House Ruin

Around about 1994, I had what in retrospect I consider an incredible stroke of good luck.  I met the Chinle Valley Singers, a traditional Navajo music and dance group, based in northeastern Arizona.  You can read more about them elsewhere on this website–here I’d like to talk about how we met and what they’ve meant to me.Just when I was starting out, and wondering how I would find groups that would want want to work with me and vice versa, someone told me of a Navajo group that had been in a movie and who were very good.  I tracked them down and met Linda Davis, the leader of the group, in Chinle, Arizona.  The meeting went well and we decided to give it a try.  

In 1995, I toured them to Estonia, our first tour.  We had to be at the Albuquerque airport at 6 am to catch our flight, and the group lived about 4-5 hours west of Albuquerque.  Well, I was there at 6–they were there at 5:30.  I knew this was going to be good. The tour went so well that afterwards the group made me promise that they would be the only traditional Navajo dance group I would work with, and I promised them they would always be the first traditional American Indian dance group I would recommend.  I’ve kept both promised and never regretted it.

It was a challenge in some ways–when I was first starting out with them, someone told me I’d never be able to do anything with them, as they weren’t a powwow group and they were mostly women.  Since then, they’ve toured overseas 7 times–Estonia, Latvia, the Philippines, Italy, England, the Netherlands, and Dubai.  That simple statement really says everything, doesn’t it.

I loved their talent, their music, their flexibility and their strength in themselves.  Early on, I got a letter from a venue in Europe (that’s when people still sent letters), saying they liked the group but the venue wanted something more “lively”.  The Singers and I all knew what that meant–powwow.  And Linda said something I’ve always cherished.  After I read the letter to her, she look at me and said, They want feathers and (pulling her glasses down on her nose for emphasis) we don’t DO feathers!  How could I not admire that integrity!  It translated well into the strength of their performances.

The group was invited to perform for the President of Latvia–and composed a song in Navajo about Latvia.  The group was asked to bless an international conference and festival in Manila.  They replied they would–on their terms.  No photography, no recording, no applause.  Or no Chinle Valley Singers.  And they got what they wanted.

Over the years, we’ve shared a lot and become friends–divorces, deaths in the family, illness of family members–and become friends.  Part of the friendship has been their wonderful (and wicked) sense of humor.  If any of you out there reading this have the chance to meet them, just ask them about Dilkon.  ’Nuff said!

They had a song and dance in honor of their mother and grandmother, Elizabeth Davis, who founded the group, and whom I was fortunate enough to tour with the group to Estonia and Manila.  I was the only white guy there and it was a memory I’ll always cherish, standing there at the beginning talking with some of the Singers when another member of the group rushed up and said, “you’ve got to go to the microphone–Linda’s talking about you!”  She had been talking in Navajo, which I don’t speak, alas, and I had assumed she was telling the crowd about her mother.  Turned out she was talking about me.  The group began to sing and one of them invited me to step dance with her around the gym, just the two of us.  What an honor, what a privilege–what fun.

One of them just graduated from junior college and I’ve been invited to the festivities this coming weekend.  They’re butchering a sheep Saturday and feeding the crowd on Sunday.  I’ve been invited and I’m sure it will be great music, great fun, great memories.

The Chinle Valley Singers–what a lucky break for me.

Click any picture below to open a larger version:

 
At the Mall of the Emirates

 
Dovetta Davis–grinding corn

 
Greeting American ambassador to the UAE Martin Quinn

 
Dee Deswood and Saeed Naboodah

I’m often asked how I got to where I am now, working with Indigenous people around the world in the performing arts (traditional AND contemporary) and festival development.  I grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a state with an American Indian population of about 10%, one of the highest percentages in the US.  I knew Indian people growing up, went to school with them, worked with them.  

By the time I was 12, I knew I wanted to study about American Indians past and present–I wanted to be an archeologist.  I wanted to be an archeologist so much that when I was in college at the University of New Mexico and had to choose a minor (my major was anthropology, of course!), I couldn’t think of anything that interested me nearly as much as anthropology and American Indian studies, so I chose English as my minor, figuring I would have a head start, since I already spoke the language. 

Then I went to graduate school at the University of Arizona, again in anthropology.  The focus of the department was on the totality of the human experience so I studied all of the traditional four fields of anthropology–archeology, cultural anthropology, physical anthropology and linguistics.  I focused on the archeology of the Southwest and Mexico but gained valuable experience in classes in other aspects of anthropology (a special thanks to Keith Basso in that regard) and in work projects (a shout out to Bill Rathje and the Tucson Garbage Project!).  

And PhD in hand in 1977, off I went. I taught at several colleges and universities as an archeologist and anthropologist, usually teaching courses in the all the basic fields and introduction to American Indian studies.  I was on my way to tenure, a tweed jacket, and ivy–all the traditional accouterments of the professoriate.  

And then two things happened which started me on the road to where I am now. In 1984-85, I served as a Senior Fulbright Professor at the Johan Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt in what was then West Germany, at the Institut für Historische Ethnologie.  It was the year that changed my life.  My teaching area was American Indians, and I lectured all over Europe and Israel on a broad range of American Indian and archeological topics.  In a sense, I saw the demand side of the equation of my future, and had a wonderful year. 

Then in 1987-88, I was a professor in the Cultural Studies Department at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe (www.iaia.edu), the only American Indian-controlled institution of education in the arts in the United States.  I was amazed by the breadth of its offerings and the talent of its students–here I saw what could be termed the supply side of the equation of my future. 

In all of these academic wanderings (at one point, I moved six times in nine years), I didn’t get tenure.  I faced a choice–I could be an adjunct gypsy academic, teaching a course here and a course there, no hope of a future, living on my knees.  Or I could move on.  So about 1994, I decided to plunge full-time into what I had been doing on a small scale for a few years.  It took a while to figure out what to call it but I finally settled on the term, international cultural marketing. I didn’t want to just tour powwow groups, although I had sung with the Red Thunder Singers at UNM as an undergraduate and still the enjoy the music very much.  I wanted to show the world the incredible depth and breadth of what American Indians were actually doing.  

I decided early on that my work would be based on two principles.  One was a business principle, which I called “one-stop shopping”–whatever a venue would want, I would either know who did it or could quickly find out.   The second principle was more of a philosophical one.  I wasn’t Indian and never pretended to be one–I was happy being what I am.  In my business, Native people would choose the message, whether that message was a traditional Navajo music group, a Navajo language writer, or an Australian Aboriginal rock band–and I’ve worked with all of these.  My job would NOT be to tinker with the message, adding a feather here, a feather there.  My job would be to CRANK UP THE VOLUME!

And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since, whether getting a Navajo writer published in Ireland in Navajo, English and Irish, touring a dance group from Zuni Pueblo to Mongolia, touring Mariachi Imperial to Armenia, and most recently, bringing Indigenous theater companies from Canada, the US, Australia and New Zealand onstage in London.

In retrospect, there was one other key turn in the road to where I am now–the Chinle Valley Singers.  But I’ll tell you about that in the next post.   

Click on any picture to see a larger version:

Mariachi Imperial and Susan Bridenstine (Public Affairs Officer, US Embassy, Armenia) on the steps of the Armenia Marriott Hotel

Mariachi Imperial on the steps of the town hall, Dzoraget, Armenia

Mariachi music at Susan’s home

Judy Gonzales at Susan Bridenstine’s home

A Mariachi conga line in Yerevan

Amsterdam was a delight, as always.  I stayed with an old friend–we first met on an archeological dig in New Mexico in 1968!  We’ve shared many of each other’s ups and downs over the years so it was a pleasure to share some down time after the rather frantic pace of my visit to London.

I met with the Director of the National Dance Theater of the Netherlands–a fascinating man whose background is in traditional music, dance and costume.  As a result, we had much to talk about,  since I’m trained as an anthropologist and archeologist with focus on North American Indians, and the first group I toured (and still tour) was the Chinle Valley Singers, traditional Navajo music and dance.  He liked the modern dance fest idea–stay tuned!

All too soon, time to head off to Amsterdam.  I regret that I didn’t have the opportunity to see Salvage or Windmill Baby.  I had had the pleasure of meeting David Milroy, the author of Windmill Baby and founder of the Yirra Yaakin Noongar Theater, at the ORIGINS™ launch in 2007.  And then we took a 20-day tour of tribal colleges and public universities and tribal schools in the US Midwest–what a great experience that was!

I also had the pleasure of meeting Diane Glancy, the author of Salvage, during that memorable road trip as well, with much enjoyable and interesting conversation over dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Lawrence, Kansas.  I was delighted that her play Salvage was the first US play at ORIGINS™.

And then on to Amsterdam to visit an old friend and relax and kick back for a while.  I’ve been to Amsterdam several times and it is a city I always enjoy.

Only one meeting scheduled here–with the Director of the National Dance Theater of the Netherlands.  Among other things, I want to propose an international Indigenous modern dance festival–why not?!!  Imagine a single event where you could see Santee Smith and Kompani Nomad and Black Swan and Rosalie Jones and . . . and . . . and . . .   Once again, there will be plenty of talent to choose from!