In this episode of Local Motion, host Brody Wilson brings listeners two stories about how we connect to land, language, and each other.
Lupita McClanahan
In the first half, Diné elder Lupita McClanahan joins a packed room at the Sherbino Theater in Ridgway. Speaking from her home community of Canyon de Chelly, she shares memories of her childhood herding sheep beneath the sandstone walls, and the generational trauma of the Long Walk and federal boarding schools. Lupita describes being taken from her family at eight years old, having her hair cut and language punished as teachers tried to strip away her Navajo identity. She has been traveling across the West, often by bus, sharing these stories with schools, theaters, and community groups.
Even after all of that, Lupita grounds her teaching in what she calls the beauty way — a call to live with intention in the present moment, in relationship with land and water. As she tells Brody, “Live the beauty way. Concentrate on your family and especially the land and especially the water and the four elements, the other three elements. We got to do this all together because we all live in this precious world.” Today, she leads cultural immersion trips near Canyon de Chelly through Footpath Journeys.
Paonia Literary Project
The second half of the show travels up to Paonia, where a small indie bookstore has blossomed into the Paonia Literary Project, a new nonprofit housed at Paonia Books. Executive director Emily Sinclair and program and events coordinator Taya Jay explain how the project grew out of author visits and free writing classes that had already turned the shop into a community hub.
Their mission now has two parts: building community through literary events, and getting books into the hands of people who might not otherwise have them. Emily shares research showing that only 50 percent of kids in the United States own a book, and that book ownership and being read to are closely tied to language, imagination, and school success. The Paonia Literary Project hosts book giveaways at rodeos, schools, clinics, and senior centers, and experiments with “social events for introverts” like a silent AV Club and bring-your-own-book reading nights.
Together, these two conversations ask what it means to live in beauty, tell the truth about history, and make sure the next generation has both stories and community to grow into.
