A Galaxy Far, Far Away
A new Star Wars-themed exhibition at the Museum of Northern Arizona brings a Native American perspective to the timeless saga.
FLAGSTAFF, AZ
It’s one of the most iconic scenes in movie history: Starfighters careening across the shell of a metal planet-sized space station. Turrets swivel back and forth firing barrages of green lasers. After raking the surface, the tiny spaceships make a high banking turn into a trench that circles the hulking station. Our hero, in an orange jumpsuit and scuffed helmet bounces in the seat of his starfighter. He looks through a computer targeting system that is aimed down the trench. As he prepares to fire, a voice cuts through the mayhem of the space battle, calming his fears and setting him on his path to victory.
The scene begins with the line, “Ast’a ho nii yee holood.” Sound familiar? Maybe you’ll know the English translation: “May the Force be with you.”
When Star Wars was officially translated into the
Diné language in 2013, the message it sent around the world was one of inclusivity—the Navajo people had a seat at the Star Wars table. But it was not the first time, nor the last, that Native American culture would find itself in the middle of George Lucas’ famous space opera. “Star Wars has touched every culture,” says Museum of Northern Arizona curator Tony Thibodeau. “But especially Native American culture, and in a very big way.”
Thibodeau is the curator of The Force is With Our People, a new exhibition opening October 5 at the museum in Flagstaff, Arizona. It will feature more than 60 different objects created by Native American artists who were influenced by the characters, settings, lore and mythology of the hit 1977 science fiction film. Lucas famously borrowed from many sources—buck Rogers, old television serials, Japanese director Akira Kurosawa—to create his original film, but for this
exhibition it will be the artists who bring Star Wars into a Native American context.
“I did a number of interviews as part of this project—a year and a half of interviews—and one of the things that started to emerge was that Star Wars resonates so strongly with Native Americans due to the parallels of the themes and imagery in the films to their own traditions. Especially, the concept of balance, with the light side and dark side of the Force,” Thibodeau says. “Other things were more specific imagery, such as locations Lucas chose to film, like the desert of Tatooine. When you look at the film’s setting of Tatooine it’s so similar to the landscapes and locations of the Navajo people, and about half of the show is by Navajo artists. When they watch the film they see their home.”
Navajo painter Ryan Singer couldn’t agree more. “I really connected with the first movie. Tatooine was this desert place and it looked like where I grew up, in Tuba City, [Arizona]. The sand dunes, the dry creek beds, the location of Jabba’s palace in the later movie…it reminded me of being on the reservation,” he says. “I could always relate to Star Wars. It had a universal appeal, especially to Native people who could watch the movie and see similar aspects of family, tradition, culture, good versus evil and even the religion, and the Jedi are sort of a religion.”
Singer will be showing several works, including (De)colonized Ewoks, which features his commentary on the Indian boarding schools that assimilated Native American children in the 19th century. In the third film, Return of the Jedi, the Ewoks are a race of furry tree-dwelling creatures that live in a forest setting. In Singer’s painting he shows an Ewok in its natural environment, and then again after it has been assimilated into the Galactic Empire, the fascist government in the film’s
narrative. The Empire was run primarily by white male soldiers (many played by British actors), while the rebels who were fighting against it were often a mixture of creatures, in all different colors, from all around the galaxy. This did not go unnoticed by Singer when he saw the movie.
“Think about all the different characters, including so many aliens…everyone gets along. There is no racism. Everything was sort of organized by class, but not by race. There was good and bad, and the Empire and the rebellion, but everything in the middle was about all the people, not just a few,” he says. “It really had universal ideas.”
Other works in the show include beadwork by Zuni beaders Farlan and Alesia Quetawki, a Star Wars pot from Santa Clara potter Susan Folwell, silver jewelry featuring the Empire logo and a depiction of bounty hunter Boba Fett by Cynthia Begay (Navajo/hopi/ Chicana) and wood pieces from Hopi carver Mavasta Honyouti, who has used Star Wars as a motif many times before in his work.
“I’ve always found similarities to our culture, especially the light and the dark, and how the Jedis were the protectors of goodness, of spirituality, of hope, of faith…all things that exist in Native American culture,” Honyouti says. “For me, I’m really drawn to Boba Fett and Darth Vader, as well as the Tuscan Raiders and the Stormtroopers, which I call Cloudtroopers.”
Another aspect that Native Americans are drawn to in Star Wars is the central conflict, in which the Empire is trying to rule over everything and everyone, including the lives of peaceful people who are living on the margins of the galaxy. Squint just a little and you’ll begin to see European settlers who are arriving to take land, impose order and squash rebellions organized by the locals. For Native Americans, this plot hits almost too close to home.
“I think that Lucas has said it’s not a science fiction film but a space fantasy, and often times those films have more relevance to marginalized communities, including Indigenous communities. These are people who don’t see themselves in mainstream films and don’t feel relevant to many ‘realistic’ types of films,” Thibodeau says. “Resistance to imperial control—that has a lot of parallels in communities that have wrestled with ideas of resistance against an empire, whether that is literally military imperialism or cultural imperialism. Those themes are appealing because they are relevant.”
The Force is With Our People continues through March 29, 2020.