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A New Plateau
The event will begin at 4:00 p.m. with a panel discussion by seven honorees – including Hell’s Backbone Grill proprietors Blake Spaulding and Jen Castile and Winter Sun herbalist Phyllis Hogan – as they talk about how their efforts relate to sustaining the region’s landscapes and cultures. A book signing and regional foods reception will follow the discussion, and feature editors Peter Friederici and Rose Houk. The evening finale will be stories and songs by the Center’s folklorist-in-residence Tony Norris, Navajo storyteller Sunny Dooley, and borderlands cowboy poet Drummond Hadley. A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon Country profiles 38 grassroots projects on the Colorado Plateau, ranging from straw bale houses to native crop farming, as part of a nationwide Renewing the Countryside campaign. The book, edited by acclaimed natural history writers Friederici and Houk, features reports from the field written by many other Flagstaff-area residents, including Gary Nabhan, Roger Clark, Tony and Sue Norris, Susan Lamb Bean, and Charlie Laurel. Tony Marinella, Tom Bean, and Tony Norris are among the featured photographers. The book is a publishing partnership between the Center for Sustainable Environments of Northern Arizona University, the Museum of Northern Arizona, and Renewing the Countryside. Folklorist Tony Norris will be master of ceremonies for the evening’s entertainment, as well as releasing a new CD of stories, songs, and poems from the region’s most heralded voices celebrating the multi-cultural heritage of the Colorado Plateau. Norris weaves together cowboy stories, songs, humor, and poetry in a way that makes him unique among Western entertainers today. Whether in schools, in concert, around a campfire, or at a cowboy gathering, audiences are captivated by his homespun charm and rich tenor voice. Norris invites the adventurous spirit in each of us to journey into the historic Southwest. Sunny Dooley is an internationally recognized storyteller. She has been a featured performer at the Northern Arizona Book Festival and at the National Storytellers Festival. A former Miss Navajo Nation, the stories she tells echo those that come through generations from her matrilineal clan of the Saltwater People Clan. Ms. Dooley interprets her Diné people’s stories with a rich cultural and historical context. Drummond Hadley has been a leading poet of Western lands and people for 30 years. He has ranched in Guadalupe Canyon, Arizona as well as at Grey Ranch in New Mexico, as part of his conservation work with the Animas Foundation. Mr. Hadley has been featured at the National Cowboy Poetry Festival, and along with Simon Ortiz and Gary Snyder, on tours across Indian Country, and throughout rural communities in Alaska and Arizona. His two pioneering chapbooks of poetry, Strands of Rawhide and The Webbing, will soon be joined by a book of his collected poems, to be released this winter. Regional food samples will be provided by Simply Delicious, featuring locally grown and organic ingredients. Please RSVP to Julye Evans at (928) 523-0602 or Julye.Evans@nau.edu. |
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The
Center for Sustainable Environments will honor innovators in
grassroots sustainability profiled in its recently published book,
A New Plateau: Sustaining the Lands and Peoples of Canyon
Country. A book and CD launch will be part of celebration
including a late afternoon panel discussion of honorees, a book
signing and regional foods sampling, and an evening of stories and
songs about our Southwestern sense of place. The free event,
co-sponsored by the Center and the Museum of Northern Arizona, will
be held in the Museum auditorium, where you can hear stories of
sustainable building, farming, wildcrafting, and renewable energy
generation from honored practitioners from across all Four Corners
states. 