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An important new collection of Native American writers essaying the cultural significance of Utah's Bears Ears landscape will be launched with two Utah readings this week.
The interviews, essays and poems in "Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for Bears Ears," published by Utah's nonprofit Torrey House Press, represent a wide range of voices and thought, says editor Jacqueline Keeler.
"This is the place where our memory lives," Keller said in describing the more than 100,000 culturally significant archaeological sites in the Bears Ears region in a Kickstarter video promoting the book.
"Edge of Morning's" publication comes in the same week in which U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke released a preliminary report recommending reduced acreage for the Bears Ears National Monument.
Yet beyond talk of size and acreage, the book has bigger ambitious. The publisher hopes "Edge of Morning" will spark conversations across political boundaries, and also across county and state lines. "What I really wanted to do with this book is to provide a platform for Native voices and to give non-native America another way of experiencing why Bears Ears is sacred landscape," said Kirsten Johanna Allen, publisher of Torrey House.
"Edge of Morning" includes works from members of different tribes, as well as different levels of expertise. Keller sought writings from archaeologists, scholars and grass-roots activists, and from poets as well as prose writers.
"Often Native poets really speak to me in a way that no one else can," Keller says. She attributes this to a difference in how Native American writers use language, rooted in the concept of traveling, "this notion of the world being a place you traverse to gain harmony," the editor said.
Before publication, the collection received a boost last summer when 260 people contributed to a crowd-funding campaign, raising $19,000 toward production costs. Now the Utah publishing house has partnered with Patagonia to sell "Edge of Morning" in the outdoor recreation company's Utah and California stores.
In addition to seeking readers in the outdoor recreation industry, Allen says advance copies were used as a springboard for Repertory Dance Theatre's new work about Bears Ears landscapes. "It's a tremendous success to have this book inspire other artists," Allen said.
Keeler hopes the book will help reframe questions about the value of land, beyond the American colonial model anchored in making a profit. Instead, the editor points to the creation stories handed down by her own Diné or Navajo people, who believe they were urged into this world from a previous world. And after they arrived, they were given healing songs to encourage them to live in harmony.
"Although Bears Ears is the first unified effort of several different Indigenous nations to create a national monument and demonstrates an unusual degree of collaboration among Indigenous communities and leadership, it will not be the last," Keller wrote in her essay in "Edge of Morning."
The book isn't headline-grabbing in the way of a celebrity memoir, but the publisher believes it will have a long shelf life. "I think this is a book that is going to grow legs one event, one conversation, at a time," she said. "It's not the kind of book that is going to make a splash on the best-seller list. But these are important words and they are beautiful words."
facebook.com/ellen.weist —
Dawning of 'Edge of Morning'
Sovereignty scholar and Utah activist Moroni Benally will lead discussions about the issues collected in "Edge of Morning: Native Voices Speak for Bears Ears," with a panel that includes editor Jacqueline Keeler (Diné/ Yankton Dakota) and contributors Kimball Bighorse (Diné /Cayuga) and Regina Lopez-Whiteskunk (Ute Mountain Ute). The panels are presented by Booked on 25th, Ogden Union Station, Golden Braid Books and Torrey House Press, with funding from Utah Humanities.
When • Saturday, June 24, 5:30 p.m.
Where • Ogden Union Station, 2501 Wall Ave., Ogden
When • Sunday, June 25, 5 p.m.
Where • Golden Braid Books, 151 S. 500 East, Salt Lake City
Tickets • Free —
Sacred is sacred
Sacred is sacred our ways from
the creator: our prayers our dances our songs
since the beginning of time we never surrender, our spirits are strong,
don't ask us what makes it sacred
believe our people believe the creator
our answer will always be Sacred is Sacred
remember the ancestors their spirits are strong.
Wayland Gray (Muscogee), from "Edge of Morning"