Our Voices, Our Land

The 1984 AV presentation, Our Voices, Our Land, captured the hearts of visitors to The Heard Museum in Phoenix. Native Americans applauded it. This book captures the essence of the project: an emotionally overwhelming collage of faces, landscape, and words. These voices come from ten tribes in Arizona and northern New Mexico: elders, teenagers, medicine women, artists, tribal chairmen, teachers--a cross-section of contemporary Indian people of the Southwest. They speak about everything of concern in their lives: the past, the present, and the future. In doing so, they eloquently communicate their complexity, vitality, and grace.The land is here, too, from Monument Valley to the Sonoran Desert, from the Rio Grande Pueblo villages to the Grand Canyon. Photographers Harvey Lloyd and Stephen Trimble capture the power of the southwestern landscape and the spirit of its native peoples. Carefully chosen black-and-white historical photos provide contrast and perspective. In short essays, Lloyd describes the genesis of the show and Trimble shares stories from his summer on the road, gathering these intimate words in recorded interviews.