Film
Exposes Family, Land History
By
Matt Kelley, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
(AP) - The film gathered dust for decades, a silent, 28-minute documentary
titled "Navaho Boy: The Monument Valley Story,'' about a Navajo family
whose home was the backdrop for one of John Wayne's most famous Westerns.
Years later,
filmmakers traveled to the land of otherworldly stone promontories on the
Arizona-Utah line to locate the people and stories behind the blurry, Technicolor
images. They found Elsie Mae Cly Begay, matriarch of a family still strong
in its Navajo traditions but sickened by uranium mining's radioactive legacy
and grieving over a brother adopted away by white missionaries 40 years
before.
The film's
return set off a chain of events that led to the brother's reunion with
the family he had never known - as well as the discovery that the traditional
dwelling where Begay lived for years was dangerously radioactive.
Now the Cly
family is chronicled in another documentary, "The Return of Navajo Boy''
being shown at independent film festivals and on public television stations
across the country.
"Things happened
because of the camera coming back into their lives,'' director Jeff Spitz
said after a screening at the Smithsonian Institution last week. "It led
to the recapture of a lot of family history, the expression of a lot of
pain, and the return of Elsie's brother, who many people thought was a
myth.''
The Cly family
- pronounced "klah,'' it's an English rendition of a Navajo term meaning
"left-handed'' - has lived for generations in Monument Valley, a stretch
of high desert studded with rock formations that look like huge mittens
and chimney spires.
The white
photographers and filmmakers who came to the exotic landscape in the mid-1900s
took thousands of pictures of the family's daily life: herding sheep, weaving
rugs, wrapping their long hair into the traditional Navajo bun at the back
of the neck.
One of the
visitors was Robert Kennedy, a Chicago businessman whose midlife crisis
found him trying his hand at moviemaking. Kennedy shot "Navajo Boy,'' depicting
events in the Cly family's life as well as a traditional healing ceremony
performed for Elsie Zina Cly, Begay's mother.
Kennedy's
son, Bill Kennedy, started trying to find his father's film subjects in
the 1980s, and hooked up with Spitz in 1997, when they first traveled to
the Navajo reservation.
A better-known
visitor to the Clys was director John Ford, who used Monument Valley as
a dramatic backdrop for his classic 1956 Western, "The Searchers'' starring
John Wayne. Some Cly relatives even worked as extras, playing some of the
"Commanches'' who had kidnapped the niece of Wayne's character, played
by Natalie Wood.
Wayne also
stopped by the Cly home one day. Spotting an infant boy - Elsie Zina Cly's
son - he asked the child's name. When told the boy did not yet have a name,
the actor suggested one that stuck: John Wayne Cly.
The lung ailment
that prompted the healing ceremony took Elsie Zina Cly's life sometime
after that. Records of that time are hard to come by, and the Cly siblings
do not have birth certificates, but little John Wayne was only about 2
years old. A missionary couple adopted the boy, telling the family they
would return him in four years. They never did.
John Wayne
Cly grew up in New Mexico with other Indian foster brothers and sisters.
In the movie, he tells of watching cars on the highway and dreaming that
his Navajo family would pull up and take him away. Or John Wayne himself
would show up and take him to the relatives he pined for.
"All my life
I felt I never fit in with anyone,'' he said.
About three
years ago, he read a newspaper article about the Chicago filmmakers who
had found the family that were the subjects of an amateur documentary,
and how one of them was Bernie Cly, Begay's brother and a former uranium
miner seeking compensation from the government. John Wayne Cly had found
his family.
The documentary
captures John Wayne Cly's reunion, his nervous approach to the family he
had not seen in 40 years and the fierce, wailing hug from Begay, his long-lost
sister.
"I hope I'm
not a disappointment to you,'' John Wayne Cly says during the reunion.
He has not
been, Begay said. The siblings now visit frequently, and John Wayne Cly,
now in his mid-40s, is starting to learn the Navajo language that he had
lost but that his siblings prefer.
John Wayne
Cly's siblings recently held a traditional Navajo ceremony for him - the
Blessing Way, a ritual for someone who has returned after a long journey.
Filmmakers
were not the only outsiders who came to Monument Valley in the 1940s and
'50s.
The vast Navajo
reservation, spanning parts of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah, holds extensive
deposits of uranium. As the Cold War nuclear arms race heated up, mining
companies dug hundreds of shafts and open pits in the area to extract the
valuable and deadly mineral.
The mines
provided plentiful jobs and the unseen danger of radiation. By the late
1970s, the mines were closing and many miners were dying of lung cancer,
emphysema or other radiation-related ailments.
Whole communities
were affected, too. Children played in the rocks left over from the mining
and milling. Miners brought home yellow uranium dust on their clothes.
The mines helped speed the flow of radioactivity into drinking water supplies.
People used stones striped with yellow uranium ore to build homes.
"It (radioactivity)
is everywhere,'' Begay said in Navajo, with Indian Health Service official
Rosetta Tracy translating. "It's in the air. It's in the ground. It's in
the water.''
People kept
getting sick, often with lung problems like the one that felled Begay's
mother.
Under pressure
from Navajo and other uranium miners, Congress in 1990 passed the Radiation
Exposure Compensation Act, giving $100,000 payments for a list of ailments.
Navajo miners
have criticized the law, saying its requirements are too strict. Bernie
Cly, for example, had part of a lung removed because of cancer but had
his compensation claim denied because he had smoked
tobacco during
traditional ceremonies.
Congress changed
the law this year to remove many of those impediments and increase compensation
to $150,000. Bernie Cly's compensation application was finally approved.
Earlier this
year, the Environmental Protection Agency tested radioactivity levels in
Begay's hogan - a traditional Navajo dwelling where Begay and her family
had lived for years.
The hogan's
stone floor has the telltale yellowish stripes of uranium ore. Radiation
levels inside, the EPA found, are up to 100 times acceptable levels. The
agency told Begay to keep out of the hogan and agreed to help the family
tear down the structure and rebuild without radioactive materials.
Begay and
Spitz say they hope "The Return of Navajo Boy'' will aid efforts to expand
compensation and cleanup.
FILMMAKER
BRINGS THE PAST
TO MONUMENT
VALLEY
by
Pat Hubbard, Monument Times
A bit of history
retumed to Monument Valley this year in the form of a film titled, Navajo
Boy. It was made in the early 50's and featured local residents some of
whom were infants at the time the film was made. Jeff Spitz of Jeff Spitz
Productions in Chicago has embarked on a mission to find the people in
the film, update the film and expand on it before it is donated to the
Native American Museum in Window Rock.
The original
film came into Jeff's possession through the mail from the son of the filmmaker
who had made the original Navajo Boy. "I didn't know what to make of it,"
said Jeff. But I was curious so I watched it. The film was silent, listed
no credits, there was no sound track, but it was not amateurish. It looked
professionally done by someone who knew what they were doing and the filmmaker
obviously had a good rapport with the Navajo family portrayed in the movie."
Jeff began to wonder about that family and the other people in the film.
Who were these people? Were they still alive? Who came to film them? How
did they live back then? How and where were they living now? But all Jeff
knew about the Four Corners and Monument Valley was what he'd seen in the
movies. "I assumed only snakes and lizards lived out there," he said. But
Jeff continued to be in-trigued.
One day in
a bookstore in Chicago, he picked up a book called, The Vanishing Indian,
compiled by photographer Ray Manley. Out of curiosity, Jeff opened the
book and to his surprise saw a picture of the same Native American woman
he'd seen in Navajo Boy. Then he no-ticed the book was dedicated to Happy
and Willie Cly of Monument Valley. Jeff immediately called the photographer
who generously shared more photos of people who had been featured in the
book, and as it turned out, in the film, also. He shared what information
he had and told Jeff that some of those people and their grandchildren
were still alive and living in Monument Valley. Jeff called Bill Kennedy
to tell him what he had found. Kennedy, whose father had made the original
film, said that as a memorial to his father, he wanted to give the film
back to the people of Monument Valley. He said he thought the film might
be useful to the Navajos who he had heard were interested in New Mexico.
The Cly family
gratefully acknowledges all those information he could find about Monument
Valley and the Navajos whom he knew little about. After weeks of research
Jeff came to Monument Valley in May of 1997, checked into his room at Gouldings,
sat down and said, "Now what?" The prospect of tracking down people from
45 years ago was daunting. He started in the restaurant, talking to people,
showing pictures, and sure enough, just as he had been told, he found one
who then led him to others and eventually the biggest mystery of all was
solved. A rough chitty ride down a wash brought him to the real Navajo
boy who had been featured in the film.
It was Monument
Valley resident Jimmie T. Cly who was ten years old at the time the film
was made. Jeff returned to Monument Valley in July bringing with him the
original Navajo Boy film which he showed to the people who had appeared
in the original as children and to their families. Richard Blackwater,
Head of Maintenance at Monument Valley High School, was a small boy when
he appeared in the original film. "You see," he said, "I was making films
here before John Wayne did," he laughed. MVHS student Armando Cly whose
relatives are prominently featured in the original film said he did not
recognize anyone, but was in-terested in the changes that had taken place
in Monument Valley since then. "It looks different now," he said. "They
don't travel on horses anymore. There are hardly any dirt roads now."
The Kennedy
family will donate the original film to the newly built Native American
Museum in Window Rock along with a filmed update of the featured families
which will be produced by Spitz Productions next spring.
Emmy Award-winner
Jeff Spitz has written and produced highly acclaimed documentaries for
national broadcast on ABC, PBS, cable chan-nel A & and the Learning
Channel. His work includes From the Bottom Up, a national prime time PBS
documentary that focused on four poor neighborhoods where neighbors turned
to each other to rebuild their communities, and Tell No Lies, a documentary
which revealed the struggle of teachers, parents, students and principals
as they attempted to break the factory mold and reinvent public schools
in Chicago.
