In The Shadow of Sun Mountain (Tava Kaavi)
“The key to the creative type is that he is separated out of the common pool of shared meanings. There is something in his life experience that makes him take in the world as a problem; as a result, he has to make personal sense out of it.”
― Ernest Becker, from the Denial of Death
Most Americans live their day-to-day lives without ever thinking about the history of their country. Words like genocide, land dispossession, forced migration, and colonization are rarely in the minds of average Americans. It’s the opposite for me. I think about these things almost every day.
I live in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. It’s beautiful here. The landscape is breathtaking. It’s the closest thing to a perfect place I’ve ever been. However, it has a very sordid and sad history.
With this work, I want to share both the beauty and the tragedy of this place I call home. Through these photographs, I want to esteem the Ute people both past and present. I hope to engage the viewer long enough to put this history and the people into their consciousness.
I’ve approached this work from a place of deference, wonder, sadness, and loss. I’m torn about where I live and what I know. I often think about what happened here and question why it did. It confuses me and creates inner conflict for me; like a type of cognitive dissonance. I struggle with living on this land, and yet I’m in awe every day of how sublime and beautiful it is.
What do I do with this terrible history? My answer is to embrace it, study it, wrestle with it and transform it into a weapon for the human spirit; one that will enlarge my sense of responsibility and strengthen my moral resolve.
This project has also served as a cathartic release for me. That’s why the work was made. While the work is metaphorical, it acts as a catalyst in resolving my relationship with the land, its history, and the people that lived here.
At dawn, Tava-Kaavi (Sun Mountain) is the first Colorado mountain to catch the sun’s rays. The mountain is over 14,000 (4.300m) feet above sea level. The Ute believes it’s where Mother Earth meets Father Sky.
Before it was America’s Mountain, “Pikes Peak” (its colonized name), it stood at the center of the Tabeguache (tab-a-watch) band of the Nuche/Ute tribe’s geography and identity. They were the “People of the Sun Mountain,” placed there by Sunif (the wolf) to grow and flourish amid the foothills of the majestic peak.
The Tabeguache tribe was the largest of the ten nomadic bands of the Ute. They followed the herds of wild animals throughout their lands, harvesting the elk, deer, and buffalo at specific places at certain times of the year. This lifestyle mandated that they move their camp every three or four weeks. They constructed a medicine wheel at the heart of each new camp, linking them to Mother Earth like an umbilical cord. The big rock outcroppings were called, “the bones of Mother Earth”. And the huge red rock formations were considered “grandfathers.”
I live in one of the areas where the Tabeguache tribe lived during the summer months. My photographs are about honoring the people, the plants they used, the rocks, and the trees they dwelt among and used to survive and thrive for many centuries.
The work is made with the 19th-century wet and dry collodion photographic processes in the Whole Plate format (6.5” x 8.5”). I used a period lens circa 1870 for the work. From the glass negatives, I’ve made prints that are Palladium Platinum prints, Rawlins Oil prints, and Kallitype prints. All contact printing processes from the late 19th century and the early 20th century. It was very important for me to use period processes and period gear for these images. The processes and optics have a way of transporting the viewer to that time period (1850 - 1900).
I called this body of work, “In the Shadow of Sun Mountain” because the photographs are all made with the great mountain watching over. It's constant and nothing escapes its presence. The Ute honored and respected this land and all of the life on it, never taking more than they needed. The fauna, flora, and landscape represent all that they loved. It provided the shelter, food, and medicine they survived on. Their life here was balanced and good.
Ben Mitchell, guest curator of "Edward S. Curtis: The North American Indian" said "...history is a very powerful force, because history, when you’re immersed in it, isn’t just looking at the past, history constantly informs the present you’re living in — or it better, if we’re paying attention...history also points us to our future that we’re going to share. We learn from history how to live in our present, and how to plan to live in our future.”
I can’t change the past. No one can. But my hope is that the viewers of this work will remember these terrible events in history and wrestle with them. I want to put a “pebble in their shoe” and have them think about the past, the present, and the future. I hope to inspire, motivate and create compassion and empathy for the people and the land.