When the Creator Moves Me: A Story about Music, Resistance, and Creative Activism

When hippie activists first wound their way on to the Navajo Reservation at Big Mountain, Arizona, what they saw and what they did would influence social and environmental activism in the Black Mesa region for many years to come. Navajo Grandmothers were being tormented. Water wells had been capped. As a result of corporate interest in uranium and coal extraction, and the passage of the 1974 Navajo/Hopi Land Settlement Act, sheep, goats, cattle, and horses were being confiscated and sacred ceremonial sites desecrated. In 1994, the activist band, Clan Dyken, followed the lead of their predecessors and made their first annual Beauty Way Supply Run to Big Mountain. When the Creator Moves Me is the story of both the Big Mountain Dineh, and Clan Dyken—what happened, how they met, and why they have remained in each other’s lives for over a quarter of a century.