The 11th annual Diné Language and Culture Festival brought together students from across the district in a competition to showcase their Navajo heritage in the categories of oral presentation, singing, and dancing May 4. The event took place at Gallup High School.

Vern Bia, director of cultural education for Gallup High School, commended students for their traditional dress and encouraged them to take pride in their identity.

“Feel good about being Diné, be proud of it. There’s a beauty in our way, our language and our people,” he said. “Our language is important.”

Carmen Moffet, director of the GHS Johnson O’Malley Department, provided the welcome address.

“We would like to welcome all of our students here representing the high schools,” she said. “We have four events scheduled for the next two weeks.”

The upcoming events include a middle school competition, which will be held May 14. The in-town elementary school competition will be held May 15, and the elementary in-county school competition is scheduled for May 16.

“We welcome you to come back and help us support our students who will be competing in these categories,” Moffet said.

In the first event, high school students from Crownpoint, Gallup, Miyamura, Navajo Pine, Thoreau, Tse’ Yi’ Gai, and Tohatchi competed to show off their knowledge of Diné culture through song, dance, and oral presentation, where they highlighted their language skills.

Oral presentations ranged in their topics, covering the oral history of the Sacred Mountains, their representative colors, Navajo tenets, the traditional names of the mountains, and gender.

Tohatchi High School students presented a re-enactment of a Star Wars scene in Navajo, including stage props that featured Darth Vader and Storm Trooper masks.

Other performances included the traditional Navajo Round Dance, Sash Belt Dance, and traditional singing performances.

Origins of Tradition

Bia praised the student participation and said the culture festival originally began with parents working with the JOM Dept. The Johnson-O’Malley Program is a federal subsidy that funds native education and cultural programs.

“It’s about bringing students together to share what they learned in class,” Bia said, of the competition’s goals.

Moffet said she was part of the event from the start and praised the work of Louise Benally from Church Rock.

“We used to send our children to compete at other competitions, like the one at Window Rock High School. Louise also served as a judge at those events,” Moffet said, referring to the time before a similar competition found its place in Gallup.

Gaining institutional knowledge of how to organize such a competition was important, from establishing categories to formatting judging.

Eventually, Moffet and Bia decided to organize an event for the Gallup McKinley County School District, and despite some growing pains during the early years, their work led to the successful cultural festival of today.

During the May 4 culture festival, the following schools placed in competition:

For oral presentation, Tse’ Yi’ Gai took first place, Gallup took second, Navajo Pine took third, and Crownpoint took honorable mention.

For the singing presentation, Tse’ Yi’ Gai took first place, Gallup took second, Miyamura took third, and Tohatchi took honorable mention.

For the dancing presentation, Navajo Pine took first place, Gallup took second, Tse’ Yi’ Gai took third, and Miyamura took honorable mention.

By Rick Abasta
Sun Correspondent

Rating: ««« out of ««««

Running Time: 113 minutes

A word of warning... this reviewer has liked a surprising number of movies featuring killer sea life. I’m not one for water sports and the fact that I enjoy them so much almost defies explanation. They’re often over-the-top and don’t always make a whole lot of, well, sense. Relatively recent efforts like 1998’s Deep Rising, 1999’s Deep Blue Sea and 2010’s Piranha 3D aren’t award-worthy classics, but they all provide a steady supply of goofy, monster-movie fun. The very same can be said of The Meg and, well, I liked it too.

Jonas Taylor (Jason Statham) is an underwater rescue operative who vows never to return to the sea after being blamed for a tragic event on the job. Thankfully, his retirement is short-lived after an incident in the South Pacific at an undersea research facility funded by billionaire Jack Morris (Rainn Wilson). A submersible craft piloted by Taylor’s ex-wife (Jessica McNamee) is attacked by a Megalodon in a trench at the lowest depths of the ocean... beneath a sulfur cloud that has been separating ancient aquatic lifeforms from the known waters. The revelation vindicates Taylor’s claims of a monster, but puts everyone on the shark’s menu after it follows the survivors up through the cloud to their base.

The shark may be the biggest scenery chewer, but some of the cast are just as exaggerated. This epic silliness coincidentally puts Taylor near the doctor (Robert Taylor) who reported the hero as being cowardly on his previous mission. Team member Suyin (Bingbing Li) is determined to impress her father Dr. Mingway Zhang (Winston Chao), which ultimately leads to an overly heartfelt declaration about how proud he is of her. And there’s goofiness as the “brilliant” team throw around not-so-great ideas on how to stop the menace. This includes hopping in a shark cage after the designer insists that it can handle any kind of pressure. That may be true, but pretty much anyone watching will wonder why no one asked about the line holding the cage to the boat.

Ultimately, logic doesn’t matter. The cast are all likable enough and their knowing looks and offhanded comments are clear winks at the audience. Everyone involved seems to know just how ridiculous all of this is and appear to be having as much fun as they can. Several conversations between the stars supply laughs as they express great concern or disturbance at what they’re being asked to do - and most of the time, what transpires is just as embellished as imagined. Even the reemergence of one figure at the end of the film results in an amusingly baffled and confused reaction from the lead.

The action scenes are fun and the movie makes frequent use of characters slowly fleeing, diving and turning away at the last possible moment from the shark as it veers towards them. Even the computer generated animal has a seemingly sinister grin, almost as if it’s in on the joke. And there’s plenty of strangely humorous bloodshed as the Megalodon chows down on beachgoers playing in the water on a comically wide variety of floating apparatuses.

Who knows why I enjoy these kinds of pictures? Perhaps there’s something mysterious about the world beneath the surface that adds a layer of tension to the proceedings. Or maybe it’s also because the filmmakers involved knew not to take themselves seriously. In the end, The Meg may be one of the most expensive B-movies ever made, but one can’t help but smile during several of the film’s absurd, shark-related set pieces. It will never be mistaken for a cinematic masterpiece, but this flick meets all of its intended goals and ends up providing plenty of goofy undersea adventure for thrill seekers.

Visit: CinemaStance.com

By Glenn Kay 
For the Sun

Part of $1.5 million investment by district

Learning is more than just reading a book these days. Gallup-McKinley County Schools is constantly coming up with new ways to engage their students in learning. This year, they’re implementing more interactive technology with a partnership with KIDSjumpTECH, a technology group based out of Miami, Florida.

KIDSjumpTECH offers a variety of technology, including mobile interactive floors, interactive AI sandboxes, interactive walls, and multitouch kiosks. The technology comes preprogrammed with lots of educational tools that can help students learn about math, science, and reading, and many other topics.

Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum/Instruction Wade Bell also pointed out that the products can help students with both their fine and gross motor skills.

“A lot of students learn by physical movement,” Bell said.

KIDSjumpTECH has already installed some of the tech into GMCS’s elementary discovery centers, their elementary low-incident disability classrooms,  - which serve students with significant intellectual disability and those with multiple disabilities – their preschools classrooms, and their Pre-K classrooms.

Bell said the company’s customer service has been great, also noting that the devices have a five-year bumper-to-bumper warranty.

“We put a lot of money into this, so they’re putting a lot of investment into Gallup-McKinley to make sure we’re happy with the product,” Bell said.

Bell said GMCS is KIDSjumpTECH’s biggest partnership in the education field yet. The district spent about $13,000 on each AI sandbox, $11,000 on each interactive wall mount, $7,500 on each multitouch table, and about $14,500 on the mobile floors, equaling out to a price tag of over $1.5 million.

The AI sandboxes and mobile interactive floors were place in every elementary discovery center, elementary low-incident disability classroom, preschool classroom, and Pre-K classrooms. The interactive walls and multitouch kiosks are only in the elementary discovery centers for now.

During his presentation, Bell explained how the interactive floor design amazed a disabled student and distracted him from a bad mood.  The student happened to be in the classroom when they were installing the technology, so he got to try it out and played a game featuring piranhas.

“He came in, saw the device, and was completely taken aback and the mood was gone within seconds,” Bell said. “… It can change a kid’s perspective on what’s happening in the environment, get them excited immediately.”

GMCS board members got the chance to play with the multitouch tables and the interactive floor at a board meeting on Aug. 14. Most of the games and learning opportunities are geared toward younger children, preschool and elementary students specifically. But GMCS Superintendent Mike Hyatt said the technology for middle and high school will be coming soon.

“We’re continually looking for opportunities in our classrooms for interactiveness. We started with these,” Hyatt said. “Some of the technology for students in middle school and high school is not as plentiful, but there are some things we’re investigating and looking forward to in the future that the technology is just becoming available….”

Hyatt said that older students could possibly use the technology in science work such as frog dissections or in welding to practice the skill before they are given actual power tools. It could also come in handy during anatomy lessons.

Hyatt also mentioned that specific topics that are related to GMCS and N.M. could be programmed into the learning tools as well.

To see videos of GMCS students playing with the mobile floor mats and the AI sandbox, go to the Sun’s Facebook page, @GallupSunPublishing.

By Molly Ann Howell
Managing Editor

The mixed media artist’s debut show runs until mid-May

Local Navajo and Diné artist Aaron Yazzie describes his art as an effort to create meaning when his environment offers none. A mixed media artist from Bread Springs, N.M., Yazzie, who has been making art professionally for the past five years, is currently debuting his work at the Octavia Fellin Public Library in a show that will run through mid-May.

Twenty-three-year-old Yazzie said he became interested in art at an early age. Whether he was outside playing with clay or making drawings on his Etch A Sketch, he said his interest in art grew out of being a creative person. He decided to pursue art as a career soon after he was accepted to the Institute of American Indian Art.

Yazzie said art is like a language, which allows him to communicate with people visually. Yazzie identifies as a shy person and said his art captures who he is. Focusing on mixed media work helped him find his niche.

“I looked at different types of art. You can go particularly into acrylic, oils, and drawing, but I just realized that mixed media was a combination of all of them and that really appealed to me,” Yazzie said. “I can keep adding to it as much as I can, so there really isn’t any restrictions, as (opposed) to others where there are restrictions. But with mixed media, I feel the limitations are at a distance, so I can do more with it and the mistakes I make with it are more interesting as opposed to one form of media.”

Yazzie said this method came to him during his undergraduate studies at IAIA, where one of his instructors helped him define his talent. Yazzie describes his work primarily as two-dimensional art, which incorporates a lot of material.

“There’s this dynamic you can achieve with mixed media art and that is my chosen discipline at this point,” he said. “As for my themes, it has to do with my own personal search for reality. In this time and age, we are so distracted with everything, I feel it has to do a lot with our connection with nature, our connection to the spiritual world, our connection with other entities, so art is a good way to explore that.”

An avid reader, Yazzie’s influences include philosopher Simone Weil, artist and poet William Blake, and Native American artist Rick Bartoe. Being a member of the Navajo Nation, Yazzie uses these influences and bits of his culture to expand on his art.

“Growing up in this century we are so exposed to a lot of belief systems,” Yazzie said. “I’m not purely into the traditional Navajo belief. I take properties of different beliefs into my work and integrate them and make comparisons and contrasts between them. It’s an array of cultures.”

Yazzie said his work inspires a range of responses, from bewilderment to simply trying to decipher the message that he is conveying to the public. Two of his paintings, entitled “Superstitions” and “Reaching for Harmony,” represent difficult moments in his life.

“It’s more philosophical, our state of human beings,” Yazzie said. “I was going through a rough time in my life, I was reading different poetry. The poetry was an expression of trying to reach out, trying to find meaning in a meaningless environment.”

At the library, where Yazzie’s work is currently on view, one visitor found the pieces left her with questions. Ruby Ella pointed out some of the darker images in the work.

“I can see various images of dark sequences, yet it also takes you to a place where he’s trying to convey other messages,” Ella said. “It’s really dark with a mixture of death, really freaky.”

Another visitor at the library, William Krause, took a moment to view Yazzie’s work. He said he was taken aback by the use of psychedelic colors.

“I really like this piece and the use of how he swirls the colors around,” Krause said. “No wonder it’s called ‘Superstitions.’”

Yazzie will be graduating this spring with his bachelor’s of fine arts in studio arts from IAIA. He plans on later attending the University of New Mexico to obtain his master’s degree in fine arts.

Aaron Yazzie’s works can be seen through the middle of May at the Octavia Fellin Public Library on 115 Hill Avenue. For more information, call (505) 863-1291. You can contact Aaron Yazzie at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

By Dee Velasco
For the Sun