Arizona Daily Sun from Flagstaff, Arizona • B1

ARIZONA DAILY SUN SUNDAY, JANUARY 14, 2018 B1 1 ARTS LIVING SUNDAY, JANUARY 14, 2018 azdailysun.com SECTION MARY TOLAN Thank goodness over. The year of Tweetarama, a time of division and ugliness but also some coming together. Since this is already the third week of January, probably read enough politi- cal year-end, year-beginning articles and opinion pieces to make your eyes water. Tears, yes, but also the eyeballs simply throbbing and sweating with having rehashed last bad news that sunk our spirits on a daily basis. This is not a political column.

But, still. I think we can agree that last year stunk to high heaven when it came to people getting along, members of di erent persuasions trying to see eye- to-eye on just about anything and feelings of peacefulness abounding. Did not happen. So here we are. Now what? Finding peace within and send- ing it back out is a beginning of change, I believe.

And people young and old embracing activ- ism is the beginning of hope. for one, will focus on the here and now. A news junky, still try to read only enough news to stay informed and to teach my journalism students how to cover stories. turn the TV and radio news and stop reading news articles when it becomes too overwhelming to feel healthy. But also ad- mire and root for local groups crying out for change in our own state, and those who sup- port then-children who came here years ago as innocents and now want to stay and make this country greater.

do work about which passionate: writing in the wee hours to sooth my soul, creating words I hope people will want to read, sentences and stories I dream will do some good. try to listen to others more including those with whom I disagree. Is that enough? Probably not. OK. meditate for peace.

eat food good for me and the planet, and work to be more conscious of how my actions can impact people all around the globe. tell more jokes, and laugh as much as possible. Oh, and quite griping about the downtown parking meters. For such a silly way for us to spend our energies. all had our complaints about the darn things, but now next year: let it go.

Not sorry to say goodbye GABRIEL GRANILLO AND MACKENZIE CHASE Sun Sta Reporters The Flagsta Arts Council and the Coconino Center for the Arts are beginning the new year with two exhibits that look at change, growing technologies and diminishing culture. Choctaw Story of Land and In the Jewel Gallery, Prescott- based artist Karen new exhibit, Choctaw Story of Land and explores how assimilation, relocation and the Dawes Act a ected Choctaw tribal relations, community and culture. By painting faces and people over legal, binding documents, reproductions of archival doc- uments from the late 1880s and early 1900s, Clarkson reminds us of the real-life consequences of the Dawes Act and the sys- temic subjugation and assimi- lation of Native Americans, that history is not as clean as the documents that tell its tale. The Dawes Act of 1887, other- wise known as the General Al- lotment Act or the Dawes Sever- alty Act, authorized the division of tribal lands into allotments that would be given to individual Indians. Dawes ectively revoked all tribal land ownership in Indian territory and cleared the way for any unallocated land to become the state of Okla- said Clarkson, who is Choctaw.

they had made everybody an individual with a small allotment of land, the tribe was automatically Named after one of its com- missioners and creators, Sen. Henry Laurens Dawes of Massa- chusetts, The Dawes Act and its amendments under the Curtis Act of 1898 and the Burke Act of 1906 abolished Native American tribal and communal rights with the intention of assimilating Indians into American society. Land was transferred to settlers and the U.S government. Within half a century, Indian land would decrease from 138 million acres to 48 million acres. you take land away from people that shared it freely among each other and started basing Indian-ness on whether you had a land allotment it changes tribal said the artist.

allotment policy depleted the land base and ended hunting as a means of suste- nance. It also a ected gender roles, as communal living had al- ways shaped the order of Native Despite overwhelming op- position from the Choctaw, America spent the next century dismantling the Choctaw, Creek, Seminole, Cherokee and Chick- asaw communities and culture. Collectively, they were called the Five Civilized Tribes by the gov- ernment and settlers. was very sad and unfor- tunate, but it still is a part of history. Any time you can ect upon history only a good thing, whether a sad history New exhibits explore change, culture GABRIEL GRANILLO Many of work images of her father, Charlie.

Here Charlie is depicted as a boy over a reproduction of the Dawes Roll on which he and his mother are listed. RANDY WILSON Daily Sun Editor The beach master raised his head, surveyed the scene for rivals, then grunted loudly before going back back to sleep. Despite a summer of res just beyond the beach and a brewing storm that would wash away pups along with houses, the elephant seals keep coming to California on a migration that dates back hundreds of thousands of years. On iso- lated beaches up and down the coast, the females arrive rst to give birth, then mate with the late-arriving alpha males. By late February the adults are gone, leaving the pups to fend for themselves for a few months on land before they, too, take to the ocean.

The scene above di ers from a century ago only in the throngs of tourists watching it all from a boardwalk just 10 feet away. The seals used to be hunted for the oil from the their blubber and were wary of humans as their numbers dwindled to 50 animals. But the development of kerosene and petroleum left them with no commercial value and their population has grown to 250,000. Thousands were on display in early January in the Piedras Blancas rookery just High- way 1 near Hearst Castle. We were part of a Road Scholar trip witnessing the four migrations in the region in January birds, whales and monarch ies were the other three.

Many in our group were East- erners congratulating them- selves on booking a week on the central California coast three months ago that turned out to be the coldest in a hundred years back home And Shannon, our trip leader, noted that the trip was nearly rained out last year, with a mudslide wiping out the ground oor of the hotel and forcing a retreat to the second oor. Little did she know what was about to come down just a day after she said goodbye to us. So the vibes were positive even as the rst clouds of win- ter moved into San Luis Obispo they made for better sunsets even if the monarchs were less active than they would have been in full sun. MORE LIKE SUMO WRESTLING Of the four migrations, the most interesting to observe was that of the seals a video I made with sound is more like a Sumo wrestling event than a day at the beach. Mothers and pups try their best to stay out of the way of the raging bulls, but the pitiful little corpses of pups that littered the beach showed that many failed.

At sea, the males are swimming and diving machines, able to hold their breath for 25 minutes while descending to 3,000 feet and foraging the bio- luminescent bottom dwellers. The monarch ies at nearby Pismo Beach numbered about 14,000 this year, part of a generation that lives about six months while on their southern range. (Many Midwest monarchs winter over in Mexico.) It takes three more generations to make the migra- tion north then return south genetic programming allows entirely di erent individuals to complete the journey than the ones who started. Monarch populations are declining, mainly due to herbi- cides that are wiping out their essential food, the milkweed, and habitat loss in Mexico due to logging. And climate change helping as more violent storms and parched summers batter the tiny insects.

Beyond and mud on the California coast LINDSAY WILSON, COURTESY The alpha male, aka, the beachmaster, asserts his authority with a grunt and an arched neck at the Piedras Blanca elephant seal rookery in early January. THE LONG WINDING ROAD Year of Tweet-a-rama is whooshed away MARY TOLAN Four great migrations converge along the central coast If you go Road Scholar Trip Four great migrations con- verge ered for a week in early January and based out of San Luis Obispo, Calif. Cost: $1,149 per person all-inclusive, except round- trip airfare. More info: www.road- scholar.org Art tells stories of tragic history and If you go Choctaw Story of Land and and for Silent Or- chestra: are on display through Feb. 10 at the Coconino Center for the Arts, 2300 N.

Fort Valley Road. Open Tuesday through Satur- day, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Please see TOLAN, Page B2 Please see EXHIBITS, Page B2 RANDY WILSON, ARIZONA DAILY SUN A female otter and her pup pose in Morro Bay for the camera. Please see MIGRATIONS, Page B2.