Event—Public Programming

Gózhóó Le' – The Beauty Way

This project unsettles the borders of "Apache" (Nde) historiography and ethnography. Building on de-colonial theorists: Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Walter Mignolo, Emma Pérez and others, it speculates that what we know and retrospectively honor in archives regarding Apache peoples, is largely determined and configured by what is known and valued about their European or white colonizers. While true that "Apache" people did not surrender to manifest destiny easily, it might also be true that this representation of Apache warrior-hood valorizes more the strength and resolve of white settlers who declared war against them, relegating them to a life of either death (in Mexico) or perpetual confinement (U.S. reservations). This presentation ponders Nde life against the western/colonial trope of masculine warrior-hood and across the borders of two settler states. It does so to convey that 1) the "Apache Wars" are not over and that 2) Nde resistance lives and breathes beautifully in stealth.