Utah Navajo strings colorful beads, warm traditions

Posted on November 20, 2008 by comm5775

by KATHRYN JONES

  • See photos of Weasel Tail and his work by clicking his name, below. (Slideshow best viewed in full-screen mode.)

When he was a kid, Harold Garcia — better known as “Weasel Tail,” was never caught, not even once, with his hand in the cookie jar. He says he “kept watch” at the local store while his friends filled their pockets. When they got caught, his pockets remained empty and he was able to weasel his way out of the bad situation.

“Sure, I earned [my name] in the wrong way,” he says, “but it was [originally] given to me by my great-great grandfather. And that’s the most important thing.”

The name stuck.

Today, Weasel works in beadwork at the Native American Trading Post located at 3971 South Redwood Road in West Valley City. The business is owned by Dru and Leslie Drury, who have been friends with Weasel for 10 years.

In 2004, after 21 years in business, the store was moved to a more visible location, Leslie says. Weasel Tail has been working at the new location since then. She describes him with a sense of humor and admits that nobody knows how to bead like he does.

A Navajo and Tewa Pueblo American, Weasel says his bead skills began in pre-school where he strung “Froot Loops, Cheerios and little pieces of paper with holes in it.” Later, he graduated to moccasins as he watched his grandmother, Maria Martinez, assemble them.

“I already had my color co-ordination down,” he says. “Other people would put random colors together, me, I already had my colors separated because I saw my grandmother do the same thing.”

As Weasel grew, so did his craft.

“When I was in school, I’d beadwork the pens,” he says. “By the time that first week of school [was over] each one of my teachers in each one of my classes got a pen.”
The price of each?

Fifteen dollars.

Weasel Tail grew up in Utah, but his home life began in Ohkay Owingeh, a pueblo in New Mexico. Today, he lives in Salt Lake City and spends time in the winter putting together beaded purses, gloves, leggings for men and women, dresses, cradleboards, pipe bags and umbilical cord bags for those who seek out his work and those who sometimes stumble upon it.

“My sister introduced me to Weasel,” says Ardis Bryant, a frequent customer who makes her own jewelry. She not only purchases the mixings for her own creative endeavors; beads, string, and the like, Bryant says she swears by the crystals used in beadwork found at the trading post; they are unlike any she has found elsewhere.

“[Customers] find out there’s a lot more than teepees,” Weasel says. He speaks about the two most popular purchases at the trading post: baby moccasins and umbilical cord bags.

For those who are unfamiliar with the second purchase: The umbilical cord is saved for a reason, Weasel Tail says. The outward representation of what joined mother and child, yet connects mother and child spiritually in life and in death.

Tradition says that the cord is alive, Weasel says. “You will be taken care of because of that little cord.”

His 10 sisters have forbidden him to make cradleboards, however.

They get pregnant.

“So, what are you doing, bewitching us?” they tell him. “We’re all going to get a cradleboard and make it at your house.”

Weasel Tail admits he just likes to make them, and if he can’t do the job for his sisters, there are many customers who will appreciate them. “I’ve got the material,” he says. “Maybe someone else will want the cradleboard.” According to tradition, a cradleboard is not made unless a baby is expected.

Still, many other projects are ready for creation. Weasel’s mirror bag of an elk on a mountain is among his favorites.

“They had lots of different bags in [the 1800s],” he explains. Some were made to hold tools inside a teepee; others held porcupine quills, tobacco or umbilical cords.

When hand mirrors arrived with the trappers, Indians found a new use for the bags, Weasel says. They needed a way to protect the mirrors from getting broken so a new bag was born.

After that, Indian tribes wore mirrors on their clothing, Weasel says. Mirrors reversed bad thoughts. If someone was thinking or saying something negative it would naturally reflect back on them.

Negativity hasn’t always deflected from Weasel and his craft, however.

Even Weasel admits, “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched because something may not turn out the way you want it to, or somebody may fall through.”

He is speaking of business. Items he must re-bead because threads have loosened, orders that are made and not picked up; more expensive items that haven’t been purchased yet. Of the last he says, “I’ve learned not to rely on such. Some things I know will sell.”

But even if they don’t, Weasel is holding his head high.

“I see something here and know it will come to life,” he says, pointing to his head. “Whatever I see, whatever I put into it … it’s what I see up here. It’s my creation. Nobody’s going to take that from me.”

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A Utahn’s search for culture, history and education

Posted on November 18, 2008 by comm5775

by RITA TOTTEN

“If you don’t have a command of history you are vulnerable,” said Forrest Cuch, who has been the executive director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs since 1997. As director he works to enhance intergovernmental relationships throughout Utah. His experiences at the Division, coupled with his history as an educator, have made him successful. As a graduate of Westminster College he went on to teach social studies and become the education director of the Ute Tribe.

Growing up, Cuch was faced with trauma of an intellectual nature. While at home his parents told him about his culture and his people but at school he was taught that Native Americans didn’t contribute to civilization. Unsure of whom to believe, he had mixed feelings about school.

The contradictory information he received as a child is what drove him to challenge what kids are learning. Cuch believes that there is a need for reform and change and teachers should be taught to change social norms. “Cultural diversity makes the wonderful life we have today,” he said.

“The best way to teach is out of the heart,” he said. He believes that to provide great education to children, parents need to entrust their education with the right people. Cuch said it is important to find people who love children. Employing individuals who will nourish and foster children is essential. In addition, he believes paying teachers a decent salary is vital and suggests looking for new and alternative ways to teach and hook kids.

The biggest accomplishment and what he is most proud of is the empowerment training he helped develop. He trained more than 90 individuals from tribes and urban areas. The training focused on four main sections. The first was reteaching history. Cuch emphasized the importance of not believing everything one is taught; reteaching and relearning is key. Secondly, community develop was highlighted.

Physical and mental health were the last two components of the training. Before white settlers came to the Americas, Native Americans had never been exposed to alcohol and sugar, Cuch said. These elements were treated like toxins to their bodies and contributed to the setbacks that many Native Americans have faced.

The University of Utah is currently reviewing the program and Cuch hopes to receive more funding to continue his work. So far, the training has been held three different times: in 2002, 2003 and again in 2005. The main message he hopes people will take from the training is that education really is the key for success in business, personal and health aspects.

Bly Miller, a Park City resident and former teacher, is a member of the Iroquois tribe. Miller remembers the lessons her mother and grandmother taught her about the importance of knowing her culture and history. “They were always telling me about the struggles of our people and how no matter what they kept going. Knowing your history is vital because we are our history, our ancestors,” she said.

Miller has worked closely with the Iroquois tribe, educating its young on everything from tradition to basic life skills. She feels that her purpose in life is to teach and pass on what she has learned from her family. “If I can offer my knowledge to these children than I have done my part as a citizen of the world,” Miller said.

Cuch’s passion for education comes from the hardships he faced in school. While in high school he was exposed to the pain that came with the “white” version of history. Once he was in college he began to explore and learn the truth about his people and started his work with Native Americans. The result of this educational journey is the humanity he spreads through his work as a Ute and citizen. “History is not in the past,” he said, “it is now.”

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Tribal leader training in SLC provides growth, opportunity

Posted on November 18, 2008 by comm5775

by KATHRYN JONES

One man has high hopes for the education of Native American people, and 90 tribal leaders from across the U.S. have supported his life changing efforts.

His name is Forrest Cuch.

The program? Empowerment training.

And no, Cuch didn’t always see life the way he sees it now. As an enrolled member of the Ute Indian Tribe and executive director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs since 1997, he had to wade through years of his own fears and insecurities before he could help others tackle their own.

“We had a way of life that was good, but when I started hearing about Pilgrims the information was painful to me,” he says. “‘Oh, what about the Indians?'” he asked. “I didn’t feel good about school.”

Cuch admits he didn’t trust what he’d been taught by his parents and says he was confused about his heritage.

“Had the American Indians made no progress to society”? Did his people really kill those in wagon trains “without any provocation”? Were there historical inaccuracies that he should know about?

“I had to learn about my “own humanity,” he says, “my good side as well as my bad. My people enslaved [others]. I learned from that.”

Cuch also learned from a man named Mack Gift Ph.D., a non-Native American professor who taught him at Westminster College where he graduated in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science.

Twenty-nine years later, after Cuch had gained experience in Native American directing, planning and administration involving various endeavors, as well as becoming a department head and teacher in the social studies department at Wasatch Academy in Mt. Pleasant, Utah, Cuch and Gift came together once again.

The rest may even be history.

About 30 tribal leaders from across the country were invited to attend that first empowerment training in 2002 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in downtown Salt Lake City. Among other things, the experiential and lecture oriented training instructed Native American tribal leaders in history, community development, spirituality, government, business and physical and mental health.

The curriculum borrows from the Minnesota Model of “training and empowering disabled people under the National Governor’s Council for the Disabled program,” Cuch says. Passive/aggressive behavior as well as eye contact is a part of the agenda that helps to educate tribal leaders to improve their lives.

And the medium has proved a success.

Thirty tribal leaders were invited and spent one weekend a month for 10 months at the same location the following year. In 2005, 30 additional tribal leaders from various Native American tribes were selected, making a total of approximately 90 tribal leaders who would finish the program.

“There was no preaching,” Cuch says. The leaders were shown how to make a better life by contrast and by choice. Though education was given, it was up to the tribal leader to take it in and live it, he says.

“It was a respite for people, a respite for excellent learning,” Gift adds in a phone interview. “Each of the tribes learned to go beyond tribal identity. They found a commonality.”

Not surprisingly, with the training of tribal leaders came growth for others.

“Tribal leaders have shared it with other people,” Gift says.” It is a great program, but we are trying to get funding to go through it again.”

Currently, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Utah is evaluating Cuch’s program, which he said costs an average of $100,000 per training or about $3,300 per participant.

The research group was “pretty impressed with the program” Gift says. He has high hopes that, in time, the training will expand. Once it’s been established annually for Native American tribal leaders, Gift would like to involve as many Native Americans as possible.

“When we hear, ‘we’re ready to live now, we see clearly now,’ that makes us feel good,” Cuch says, speaking of the empowerment program his division provides. “We must use every medium possible, and it’s a very challenging thing to do. [But] the future hinges on the quality of education for all people.”

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Utah Division of Indian Affairs seeks more accurate history education

Posted on November 16, 2008 by comm5775

by ANNE ROPER

“History is a race between education and catastrophe,” said writer and historian H.G. Wells. 

Forrest Cuch, executive director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs, has been in the thick of that race for decades, and shows no signs of slowing his pace.

The importance of teaching accurate history is paramount for Cuch, an avid reader who can throw a book recommendation into any conversation.

He is dedicated to education and ensuring correct accounts of history be disseminated. A misinformed public can precipitate the disastrous result of repeating history’s mistakes, so Cuch’s work with the UDIA aims to prevent such a calamity.

“Democracy in this country hinges upon an educated public,” Cuch said.

Cuch’s biggest accomplishment in his career with the UDIA centered around educating the public, one small group at a time.  One hundred people took part in an empowerment training in the years 2002, 2003 and 2005. The training lasted 10 months and aimed to educate minorities in four sections: History, community developments and spirituality, physical health and mental health. 

The training, costing $90,000 to $100,000, became too expensive to continue. Cuch would like to do it again, if the money were available.

But the best place to start education is with children. Unfortunately, Cuch remembers his education to be inaccurate, even about his own people.

He recalls learning the history of his people in the K-12 system, then comparing it to his self-study after he graduated from high school. He found there were two histories, the one his teachers taught him and the one he had been taught by his parents.

“The teacher is an authority figure, so I thought my parents were lying,” Cuch said.

The path to the truth was not an easy one for Cuch.

“It did me trauma,” Cuch said. “Our people were here first. I had that understanding. All the information (taught in school) was painful to me.”

Nola Lodge, director of American Indian Teacher Education at the University of Utah and member of the Oneida Tribe of Wisconsin, says proper history has been neglected and in turn, everyone suffers.

“I think that in general, K-12 Indian history has been inadequate,” Lodge said. “There have been teachers who have tried to provide more information, but that is not the usual.”

This inadequate knowledge has damaged understanding between the American Indian people and their peers.

“At best we may get six to 10 pages in the early years of U.S. history, and then we disappear,” Lodge said. “Furthermore what is taught does not help anyone to understand us. We are depicted as slowing down progress, as savages and ignorant.”

But this lack of understanding from other cultures is coming from the same textbooks and teachers that are instructing American Indian students as well. They, too, suffer.

“For the American Indian, it is important for them to know the real history too.  Most Indians are taught in public schools whether on or near reservations, and they receive the same text and curriculum as non-Indians.” Lodge said.  “Consequently, there is a lack of knowledge and understanding by all.”

Teaching American Indian students in the same setting as their peers is a problematic situation, Cuch also believes.

“Our kids learn differently,” Cuch said. “The Indian world operates on feeling, this one works on intellect. There needs to be a balance.”

Lodge believes focusing on “federal Indian policy and subsequent events is crucial to understanding American Indian history” and is key for obtaining a fuller, more accurate U.S. history.

The big lesson to take from history, Cuch said, is humanity. Sometimes mistakes are made but shouldn’t necessarily be condemned.

Even after learning that American Indians were sometimes unfairly pegged as the “bad guys,” Cuch still resists playing the blame game. He also encourages white people to forgive their ancestors for the actions some took against the American Indians.

“It was just something that happened,” Cuch said. “But don’t blame yourselves entirely.”

Cuch continues to race against calamity with a love of history and education. But he has a trick to beat out his competition: He knows how to get the message out and into public knowledge.

“The best way to teach is out of love,” Cuch said. “Love is the best curriculum.”

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SLC graphic designer promotes Native American business development

Posted on November 16, 2008 by comm5775

by ALLISON JOHNSON

Cal Nez, founder of Cal Nez Design, is a man with a vision to revolutionize the Native American business industry in Utah. As the owner of one of the most successful graphic design companies in the state, he is well on his way to accomplishing this goal. 

Throughout his life, Nez has strived to define himself as a strong, independent Native American. Nez was raised by his grandparents on a Navajo reservation in Tocito, N.M. He enjoyed a very traditional upbringing, speaking only Navajo until he entered a Bureau of Indian Affairs Boarding School near Sanostee, N.M., at the age of 6. Nez recalls his years in boarding school as being a very difficult time. 

“I literally felt like I was in prison for six years,” he said. “I was mentally and emotionally abused and manipulated.” 

Despite going through such a hard experience, Nez is not angry. He believes the experience strengthened him and equipped him with the motivation he needed to succeed. This motivation carried him through junior high school and eventually led him to Salt Lake City.  

In Salt Lake City, Nez took part in the Indian Placement Program sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

“The Indian Placement Program was created [to give] Native American children opportunities for a better education,” said Brenda Kilpack, a Navajo who participated in the program as a child. “Children were placed with LDS families in urban areas during the school year so they could attend public school.” 

Some Native Americans who participated in the program did not have a positive experience because of cultural issues and homesickness. However, Kilpack says the experience really helped her growth and development as a child.

“I really learned a lot,” Kilpack said. “The program helped me to become an independent and well-rounded person.” 

Like Kilpack, Nez had a positive experience on the Indian Placement Program. Nez remembers well the day he left his home in New Mexico to come to Salt Lake City. 

“I said to my grandma ‘I will remember who I am. I’m going to go to Salt Lake and make it. I’m going to succeed no matter what has happened to me,’” Nez said. 

Nez quickly adjusted to his new surroundings in Salt Lake City. At South High School, he excelled in his studies, especially his art classes. Nez had been interested in art since childhood and really began to develop his talents during high school. 

After high school graduation, Nez began to pursue another form of art: graphic design. He quickly fell in love with graphic design and decided to pursue a career in the field. 

Nez started his career by working for several different graphic design companies in the Salt Lake City area. After a couple of years, he decided he wanted to start his own company. He quit his job that same day and pled with his pregnant wife to trust him. 

“I don’t have a job, but we are going to make it,” Nez recalls telling his wife, Yolanda. 

Nez grabbed his portfolio and drove to Arizona. He met with Peter MacDonald, then the tribal chairman of the Navajo Nation, and asked if he could do some graphic design work for him. After only a brief meeting with MacDonald, Nez secured two high-profile graphic design jobs. Within the coming months, after many sleepless nights and a lot of hard work, Cal Nez Design was born. 

Cal Nez Design, Inc., was officially started in 1989. From the beginning, the company has strived to maintain artistic integrity.

“The graphic design industry has been messed up,” Nez said. “They have lost the integrity of art. I’m trying to keep integrity of communication, of artistic expression.” 

Most importantly, Nez believes that his designs are a way of giving Native peoples a voice in modern society. 

“The Native Americans, we are here. We’re still here,” Nez said. “We have a right to fulfill our space as human beings. I’m trying to keep [Native American] traditions alive through modern technology.” 

Despite his success in the business world, Nez believes he still has much to accomplish within the Salt Lake City Native American community. 

“I need to work that much harder, reach out to my community, the younger generation,” he said. 

In April 2008, Nez helped start the first Native American Chamber of Commerce in Utah. He hopes the Chamber will promote economic and business development for Native Americans. 

“The time [has] come when Native Americans need to have a voice in business [and] politically,” Nez said. “The time has come where we need to teach our young to be employers and not employees.”

Even though Nez feels the Native American community in Salt Lake has a long way to go, he is optimistic. “We’re going to keep going,” he said. “That is my goal.”

 

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SLC designer takes long road to finding identity

Posted on November 16, 2008 by comm5775

by ANNE ROPER

Cal Nez entered the room so serenely, he almost went unnoticed. He came to address a journalism class at the University of Utah and brought with him two seemingly contradictory symbols of his life: the first, a copy of Utah Business Magazine bearing his picture on the cover placed carefully in a protective plastic bag. The second, a wrinkled green paper certifying he is Navajo.

The two objects begin to coalesce when Nez states he is both owner of Cal Nez Design in Salt Lake City and president of the Utah Native American Chamber of Commerce. But his search for his identity as a Native person, like many, is more complicated than his prized possessions. 

Nez’s life has challenged norms, making it hard for him to rely on someone like him to aid his identity search. He was given to his grandparents in Tocito, N.M., to be raised, which isn’t uncommon in Navajo culture. But instead of following the Navajo tradition of being given to his mother’s family, the dominant clan, he was given to his father’s. He never knew his mother and hardly knew his father. Then, at 6 years old, he was enrolled in the Bureau of Indian Affairs Boarding School in Sanostee, N.M.

“Boarding school is one of the demons of my past,” Nez said with sudden seriousness. “I really feel like I was in prison for six years in boarding school.”

Nez spoke only Navajo before attending boarding school, where he was forbidden to speak anything but English. He said the school shaved his head, a stark contrast to his now long hair, tied back in a ponytail. Children stood at attention for hours and were punished for acting too much like a child, Nez said.

“It took the beauty, serenity and peace out of being a child,” Nez said.

For his sophomore year of high school, Nez decided to go to South High School — in Salt Lake City.

Before he left Tocito, he made a promise to his grandmother.

“One day, I’ll come back for you,” he said. “No matter what my trials may be, I’m going to make it.”

Through the Indian Placement Program, an initiative of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1947 to 1996, Nez found a family to live with in Utah. He somehow always knew he was supposed to go to South High School, he said. It was there that his art teacher saw his talent and encouraged him to pursue art as a career. Nez agreed, and knew a little more about who he is.

“I’ve always been an artist,” he said. “I’ve always been able to duplicate, [to] capture.”

Although Nez could identify himself as an artist, he still struggled knowing what to call his ethnicity. After considering the terms American Indian, Native American and Navajo, he felt most comfortable with Diné, meaning “the people.”

Lena Judee, the American Indian program coordinator at the University of Utah, has addressed this issue herself. Finding a name isn’t as important for her.

“It’s just a label,” Judee said. “As long as I know who I am, it doesn’t matter.”

However, knowing who she is didn’t come easily. Judee also attended boarding schools. She said she couldn’t say anything bad about them because they gave her an education and something to eat. The trouble came when they would show “cowboy and Indian” movies in school.

She didn’t understand the Indians were supposed to be representing her, and she thought the people in the movie were stupid. When she found out she was being stereotyped by the “Hollywood Indian,” Judee was upset at the misinformation being mass-produced. She decided she wanted to be the one who informed people.

However, she soon realized taking on the world at once in order to change it was ineffective. She would have to work one-on-one to get a result.

“I can’t rescue all stray cats,” Judee said. “But I can make a difference.”

Nez has adopted this same give-and-take approach to change.

“We can’t do anything about the past, but there’s the future,” Nez said. “That’s where the answer lies.”

Maybe Nez will find the answers to his existential question in the future. But for now, he knows one thing for sure about his people.

“We’re here. We’re still here,” he said. “We have a right to fulfill our space as human beings.”

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Two Utahns find power in their personal history

Posted on November 16, 2008 by comm5775

by BRYNN TOLMAN

“History empowers people!” says Forrest S. Cuch, director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs.

Cuch, a Ute, is one of the many people who has used his history to find power and strength. He says, “What I’ve learned from my own history is my own humanity; my good side along with my bad side.”

As Cuch attended public and private school in Utah, he was taught that Indians were savage. He says the lessons he learned each day were very different than the ones that his parents taught him at home. It wasn’t until after college that he was able to really learn the truth about the history of his people; the Utes.

Discovering the truth about Native Americans has empowered Cuch. It has given him the motivation and the desire to teach others about his own history. He recognizes the misconceptions many people have about American Indians as ignorance. His goal is to change the way people view the natives of Utah, his ancestors.

According to his Web site, “He sees his present job as a major challenge with primary emphasis on educating Utah leaders and the general public, not only calling [others’] attention to the ancient presence of American Indian people in Utah, but also their present and enduring plight as citizens with very unique contributions yet to be made to modern day society.”

Some of those contributions are featured in “A History of Utah’s American Indians,” a book he edited that was published in 2000 by Utah State University Press.

Learning the truth through research and study has given Cuch a power to stand as a symbol for the American Indian people.

Jeanne Ludlow, a resident of Sandy, Utah, is another individual who has learned how history empowers people.             

Ludlow is a family history expert and has found a similar empowerment from discovering her history. In a recent e-mail interview she was asked how discovering her family history has empowered her, “It has changed my outlook on life because I don’t have to stumble through life alone. When you research someone, you become very close to him/her. I can endure because they endured. Not only that, I believe they’re pulling for me – cheering me on – maybe even guardian angels in this and other aspects of my life.”

Ludlow grew up with two grandfathers who were very diligent in the research of their family history. They taught her at a young age to appreciate this skill and to desire to learn and discover the world and people that came before her.    

She recognizes that as she has researched her personal history, she has developed skills that she can use in the world to help herself and others succeed. “I have learned how to read early handwriting. I have become familiar with Scandinavian, and German resources, and [am] familiar with words on research documents. Computer skills have changed my life. I could make an income with [these] skills. I have had people offer to pay me. Or, like others, I could compile my work and sell it in a book, or write a biography.” She continues, “I have the means of being of great service to others. I could teach or research for other people. I guess the empowerment is the perspective I get about my place in the community and the world, today; an interest in all people, and a desire to learn their history.”

Ludlow mentions the simple things she now appreciates because of the lessons she has learned from her ancestors. “I’m grateful for electric lights, bathrooms, refrigerators, pick-up trucks…there are so many relatives, who have gone before me, it makes me want to make the most of my life.”

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Salt Lake graphic designer builds business from scratch

Posted on November 16, 2008 by comm5775

by LANA GROVES

Cal Nez remembered working at a small but growing graphic design business in Utah in the late 1980s. He was content being an artist and working on logos and designs, but the pay was small for the number of awards his designs were receiving.

“We were the ad agency, graphic design [company] of that era,” he said. “We were taking every award. The designs in there, they were mine.”

Nez, a member of the Navajo Nation, realized that he was working at minimum wage or less, and not receiving as much credit for his work as he should. After another couple of weeks contemplating the issue, Nez decided to quit and open his own business.

Nez explained the decision to his pregnant wife, Yolanda, and set out in his car to New Mexico in search of work. He introduced himself to Peter MacDonald, former chairman of the Navajo Nation, and showed his portfolio.

“I picked up two jobs that meeting,” Nez said. “The dollar amount was quite significant for someone who was making 6 dollars an hour.”

Nez started out designing the Navajo Nation poster in 1989 and has since gone on to create the design for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, former Gov. Mike Leavitt’s re-election campaign and others.

More than 20 years after that fateful day, Nez is the one of few Native Americans in Utah to own a business in Utah.

Nez said he was one of the first design company owners to create a web site for his company, Cal Nez Design, Inc., which is a prospering graphic design and advertising company. He said the thrill of finishing designs for a client still makes it worth the effort.

“Right now I just finished a project for the United States Marines,” Nez said. “I get this energy. I love art; I love that challenge.”

In addition to running his own business, Nez started the Utah Native American Chamber of Commerce in April 2008 by sending out letters to registered businesses in Utah.

“We’ve started small, but it’s going well,” said Sandy McCabe, a board member and owner of Sandy’s Kitchen. “Cal has done a lot.”

Nez remembered the path he took to become a business owner. He spent six years in a boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs that he despised. The schools were part of an effort in the 1800s that required Native American children to attend English-speaking schools to assimilate them into American culture. By 1902, the United States government had opened 25 federally funded schools.

Despite that turmoil, Nez said he first realized his potential as an artist at the school.

He left his grandparents in New Mexico at 16 to live with a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints family in Utah and studied at South High School in Salt Lake City. Nez said his experience in Utah changed his life, and although he thinks of his Navajo heritage with pride, he also considers himself an active LDS church member.

Now, Nez has a family of his own. He remembers when his first daughter, Courtney was going to school for the first time.

“I sat out there literally all day to make sure she was going to come back to my arms,” he said, remembering the terrifying experience of his first school.

Nez’s son, Colby, is in high school, and Nez said he is proud of the school work he brings home.

Besides spending as much time with his family as possible, Nez continues his business and produces designs for other organizations. He cherishes his Native American roots and includes that in his designs as much as possible.

“I can go out there and oil paint any concept you can imagine,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any sign that looks alike.”

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Keeping art alive through graphic design

Posted on November 16, 2008 by comm5775

by AARON K. SCHWENDIMAN

A black hat and mirrored aviator sunglasses stares from the page. A Navajo person looks onto an audience cheering for the participants in a rodeo while a carnival goes on in the background. In the reflection is a community joining together for its nations fair.

“I wanted every viewer to ‘become’ a Navajo for a split second and to look through the eyes of a Navajo person,” said Cal Nez, a Navajo-born graphic designer about one of his first works.

In 1989, former Navajo Tribal Chairman Peter McDonald hired Nez to create a poster for the annual Navajo Nation Fair. This is still the most meaningful and powerful piece for Nez.

Staying true to his artistic roots is what has made Nez so successful in the graphic design field. As different forms of art progress, Nez has brought his graphic design business back to the basics and kept the integrity of art alive.  

Nez owns a graphic design firm in Salt Lake City that is presently celebrating its 20th anniversary. Nez has always been an artist at heart and the consistency in providing quality pieces of art for clients has stayed true throughout the years.

Not only is Nez an artist, with his job as the president of the Utah Native American Chamber of Commerce he gives a voice to the local Navajo owned businesses. 

Chamber board member Rosemary Giles has known Nez for only a couple months, but is very surprised at how many people he knows in the community.

“That’s what really surprised me, is that when you mention his name in the [Salt Lake] valley, everybody knows him,” Giles said in a phone interview.

Nez was born for the Tanaszanii Clan from Tocito, N.M. He was given to his grandparents, Bitonie and Mary B. Nez, to raise him from infancy. 

At a young age Nez was forced to attend the Bureau of Indian Affairs Boarding School in Sanostee, N.M., where he first learned to speak English.

Even though boarding school was a dark chapter in Nez’s life, it was at that school where he ventured into the world of art. He recalled a picture he created depicting Abraham Lincoln chopping a piece of wood as one of his earliest works. From that experience Nez said that he has always been able to duplicate real life on surfaces.

After boarding school Nez made a conscience decision to move to Utah where he still resides today. Though Nez wanted to stay in New Mexico with his grandparents he knew there was nothing left for him in his community.

“I’m going to make it,” Nez said to his grandmother before for Salt Lake City. And that’s exactly what he did.

Nez attended South High school and graduated as one of the top students in his class and earned a Sterling Scholar award.

Nez worked for several graphic design firms before deciding to take on clients by himself. He was not receiving the credit he deserved for many of his works. So he quit his job and gathered a portfolio of his works together. He drove to New Mexico to see former Navajo Tribal Chairman Peter MacDonald and was soon hired to do the Navajo Nation Fair poster. Nez has done projects for many clients during the twenty plus years he has been in business and still has the focus and drive he did when he first started.

Abel Saiz, a good friend and vice president of the Chamber described Cal’s artwork in a phone interview as being very “professional.” With his drive and determination he is always focused on keeping his work professional and unique.

Nez said today many graphic design companies have ruined the creative aspect and originality of the graphic design business. Even though the industry has been saturated with pre-installed templates on computers, graphic design companies are demanding the human element side of the graphic design versus standardized design Nez said. 

Nez’s passion for his community and his success in the arts has surpassed many of the hardships he has faced in life. He is a person who keeps the spirit and roots of art alive in his work and it shows through the hundreds of designs he has created for clients such as the Utah Museum of Natural History, Eastman Kodak Company, Navajo Transit System and many others.

Nez offered some advice to aspiring graphic design artists: “Bottom line: don’t forget the artistic aspect of art itself.  Keep the integrity of the artistic aspect alive.”

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For SLC graphic designer, a life spent searching for home and helping others

Posted on November 16, 2008 by comm5775

by CHRIS MUMFORD

Perched on the edge of a mesa overlooking Albuquerque, N.M., surrounded by a desert calm interrupted only by the occasional breeze, is where you’ll find Cal Nez with his laptop, sending email, completing the mundane clerical tasks associated with his work as a graphic designer.

Nez, speaking to a reporting class at the University of Utah, shifts his recollection from the sweeping vistas of New Mexico to the dreary confines of the boarding school where he was, by his reckoning, held as a prisoner for six of his formative childhood years. He remembers ranks of children, standing at strict attention like soldiers, sometimes for hours. Mincing no words, Nez refers to the experience as one of the biggest demons in his past.

“It took away the beauty of being a child—the beauty, the peace of it,” he says.

Nez, who was born in the Navajo Nation, relates his life story in a series of evocative, symbol-laden snapshots like these—some real, some imagined, others a mixture of the two. Beneath each image, the fight to define a geographic and spiritual home simmers, informing Nez’s dual roles as artist and founder of the Utah Native American Chamber of Commerce.

The impetus behind much of his work, Nez says, is an effort to reassert the presence of Native American people.

“We have a right to fulfill our space as human beings here on earth,” he says. “We are not history; we are not what you see in movies. Our drums, our songs are still going on.”           

Following boarding school, Nez was uprooted once more, this time landing in Salt Lake City, where he enrolled as a sophomore at South High School. Here, he invokes the mental picture of a long school building corridor, his grandmother silhouetted against the light spilling through the door at the end, never turning back.

Nor would he turn back, racking up a dizzying number of achievements and accolades by graduation, including a Sterling Scholarship, a position as editor of the school newspaper, a spot on the wrestling team and student-of-the-year honors.

“I knew I was supposed to go to South High School,” he says, emphasizing the sense of providence he felt in making the wrenching move away from his grandmother and the Navajo Nation. His voice soft, he gazes above the class and, as if speaking to her in person, recalls promising his grandmother that he “won’t ever cry,” and that he was “going to make it.”   

But, even as he celebrates the 20th anniversary of Cal Nez Design, his Salt Lake City–based graphic design company, the 50–year–old father of three still muses over what life would have been like had he been able to stay with his grandparents on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico. 

The tension between these two versions of home is evident in much of his work. Using a diverse range of media, including oil paint, pencil and airbrush, he has produced art and designs for everyone from Governor Michael Leavitt, to the Navajo Nation, to the Utah Museum of Natural History. They are works that dot the spectrum of his identity, which stretches between his life in Utah and his roots in the Navajo Nation.

In April, Nez, in a drive to provide support for fellow Native American business owners, founded the Native American Chamber of Commerce. The organization, he says, is designed to unite Native American voices, bring increased awareness to Native American issues and for lobbying purposes.

He further hopes to foster a spirit of entrepreneurship in the younger generations of Native Americans.

“[There is] nothing you can do about the past,” he says, his voice low but clear, “Read about it, study it. But there’s the future…future. That’s where I think the answer lies.”

Abel Saiz, owner of Saiz Construction, is a member of the chamber and an acquaintance of Nez. He speaks of the organization as a support network for Native American business owners who are often discriminated against.

“We’re not called the invisible people for nothing,” Saiz says, adding that he wishes an organization like the chamber had been around when he created his construction company 22 years ago.

Though Nez acknowledges that many challenges remain in his life, he has found some measure of peace on questions of his identity and his true home.

“I’m beginning to find home is here,” he says, pointing to his heart. “And it doesn’t matter where I’m at.”

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