A vital way of being

After experiencing the new photography/audio documentary "A Gesture of Kinship" at the Utah Museum of Natural History, some visitors may confess to suffering a mild cultural concussion.

The insights of a select group of young adult Navajos speak convincingly to the power and continuity of a Navajo way of life.

The genesis of the show goes back to 1978 in Montezuma Creek, Utah. Photographer Bruce Hucko, then 24, had just completed a children's photographic workshop for Navajo youths and didn't want to return to his regular job in Salt Lake City. Hucko asked the school's principal if he knew of any jobs in the area, and the principal said the kindergarten teacher needed a classroom aide. "I took the job," said Hucko. "My first day was National Native American Indian Day, Sept. 28, 1978, and I stayed for 10 years."

For the first year, he lodged with the kindergarten teacher's mother in her Hogan. "They were nice to me," he said. "I kind of assumed I wasn't even among, you know, Navajo people. It was like living with a bunch of great neighbors."

During his time in Montezuma Creek, teaching photography, creative writing and art to the children, Hucko took pictures of his students — more than 6,000 pictures.

"After school and on weekends," he said, "we'd go out photographing. I had some old cameras that I gave to the kids and taught them how to use. I had a darkroom in my little trailer, and after I gave them a roll of film, we'd go out and take pictures."

While the children hiked around the reservation, occasionally snapping a photograph, Hucko photographed them.

Years later, while perusing the images he'd taken of the Navajo children, Hucko came up with an idea for a photographic follow-up. "That's when I called Donna Deyhle," he said. Deyhle, a friend and professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, eventually collaborated with Hucko on the project.

"As Donna and I talked, we decided there was a neat opportunity to kind of get a cross-sectional view of what's going on in the minds of young Navajo adults."

"I think what Bruce and I really wanted to do," Deyhle said, "was break up some of the stereotypes people have of who Navajo people are today." According to Deyhle, they wanted to show the complexity of the Navajo identity and that young Navajos are still drawn to the landscape and life on the reservation.