It begins... by Ella Schoefer-Wulf

​Three days ago we packed up two cars with gear, guitars, bags and books and began our drive to Navajo  Mountain to begin the official reconstruction of the boarding schools. One car held the team, Ryan, Graeme, Magdalena, myself: Ella, and a volunteer, Sarah. The other car held three volunteers, Grace, Sitou and John. Everyone was extremely cozy, wedged between what we were transporting and each other. There was a lot of resigning ourselves to the space we had and the fact that we would be driving through the Mojave Desert, and drive through the Mojave we did. That Tuesday the white sand and white-blue skies boasted 106 degrees and every time we stopped for gas or a restroom it felt as if the sky was giving us a tight, hot hug and wouldn’t let go no matter how much you wiggled. Needless to say there was a lot of talk about sunhats and watermelons.
 
In Ludlow, California, we pulled over to watch a spectacular desert sunset in. It was a chance to take stock of the situation: this is actually happening. We are going to restore the boarding schools. We will be spending a little over a month in the red, high desert of Utah trying to participate in healthy community building and art practices. OK. But what does that mean? We don’t have many answers beyond general dialogical inquiry and listening a lot. We have a lot of questions and thoughts. We are all trying to be brave enough to really look at ourselves and our beliefs and intentions. I think I’m using the word we a little liberally. I’m mostly talking about how I feel: full of a lot of questions and a really tender heart. The sunset helped. 

The two cars met up at the notorious EL TROVATORE motel. Is it really notorious? I think it has become notorious in my mind. Three weeks ago Ryan, Magdalena and myself took a treacherous three-day road trip form the East Bay, California to Navajo Mountain in Utah and back, to meet with the Navajo Mountain Chapter Council and discuss our project with them. We managed to get there in one drive (a whooping 18 hours), but had to break up the way back because our sanity was leaving us (we had a mere 22 hours at Navajo Mountain for our meeting, which went wonderfully, and rest between car travel time). We ended up breaking up the drive in Kingman, Arizona, at El Tovatore: a Route 66 themed motel.
There is so much to be said about the art-deco meets Hollywood meets cartoon painted doors meets small Route 66 town in Arizona meets motel owner with stories for days about Clark Gable and Pamela Anderson meets the fattest miniature pincher maybe in the world named Taco meets tiny cave-like showers meets oddly cozy vibes that I just need to write a separate post about it and post a hyperlink when I have time in the future. It is a spectacular experience and I recommend it to anyone road tripping through Arizona. It pairs nicely with a milkshake from In-and-Out in the evening and breakfast at a local diner in the morning.

But I digress. We spent the night at El Trovatore and enjoyed a thoroughly delicious breakfast (I had Macacha for the first time!) before hitting the road. Apart from a brief stop in Flagstaff for video equipment, we headed straight or Tuba City, where we have lunch at Tuuvi Travel Center. Navajo Tacos, it felt like a real moment of arrival. Navajo Tacos at Tuuvi are beans, meat, shredded lettuce, a green chilli and salsa served on fry bread. I want one right now. I want one whenever I think about them. But here I am, at a desk in Ryan’s family home, two hours from Tuba City, in the middle of the desert.
 
It’s four PM and most of the group is doing an architectural survey at the boarding school buildings, 15 minutes down the road, while I’m sitting here, after having written e-mails and updating media accounts, drinking coffee and writing. When I look to my left, out of the small window, I see red dirt sprinkled with sage and tall, brown grass. The neighbors’ house has horses that stroll by. Graeme is in the living room updating the first video footage from today.

The day started with a visit from Krista Allen from the Navajo Times. She dropped by as we were all eating breakfast and discussing the day plans. We are staying at Ryan’s home, where his mother grew up and his grandmother lived. The kitchen was bustling with coffee in bright morning light as Krista asked Ryan about his family history and the project. The team and volunteers added in their ideas and introductions.

After the interview, Magdalena explained to the group how to do an architectural survey. The boarding school  we are working on is a historical building site, a unique fusion of Western and Hogan architecture that housed a curriculum that was a sharp departure from the earlier boarding schools. Instead of violent cultural eradication, these boarding schools fostered a dialogue between cultures. The buildings are on the National Registrar, which means that any and all restoration, specifically to the exterior, must be made in the same style as the original building. We are very excited about restoring and rebuilding these buildings in the traditional manner. It is unique and beautiful architecture. We are also planning on keeping the interior as close to the original as possible. We want the buildings history and story to be visible in the structure. The architectural survey will serve as an archive of the state that the buildings were in when we began our restoration. This will allow us to track the progress, while also keeping an accurate historical archive on the buildings.
 
The entire crew went to the buildings this morning to start the survey. Some of us measured, the others did drawings, took pictures and made notes of the cleanup and reconstruction that needed to be done.
While we are surveying all of the buildings, we will only be doing restoration on the main school buildings. Some of the other buildings, such as the old school teachers house or the schools community building,  have tested positive for lead the paint and asbestos in pipes. The removal of these toxins requires a thorough procedure. This is an expensive procedure, one we dream about doing in the future. Toxins like lead, asbestos and uranium are deadly and prevail in their presence in communities to which blind eyes are turned. This isn’t just an issue on the Navajo Reservation, I’m thinking of Flint, Michigan. This needs to change. I hope that projects like the Navajo Mountain Boarding School Project create momentum and funding for this set of buildings (so we can hire a team to do professional and safe lead and asbestos removal) but also for other communities tested positive for toxins.
For now we will seal the buildings tested positively for toxins to prevent further decay and clean around them.  The actual reconstruction, as previously stated, will be the two round school buildings, which do not have any toxins.
 
Walking around the school buildings today, looking at the piles of now unused books and sagging bookshelves bathed in sunlight from the cracked windows, it seemed both real and so far away that we will have created a functional community space out of these rooms in four weeks. There is so much to do. There is so much to document, so many stories to be heard, so much junk to pick up. We have to replace the windows. We have to re-do the mud roof.
 
When you walk between the buildings everything smells like the sage that grows thigh high and tickles your legs. There are lizards sunning themselves on the rock stairs that lead to the buildings. The sun assertively drives you to clench your water bottle. We all look pretty hilarious in our hard hats.

Tomorrow we will begin cleaning the grounds. We are hoping to do our first walk through with people who used to be students at the boarding school in the next few days. They will tell us stories for our archive and documentary.
 
Sidebar, as previously mentioned, most of the team is at the boarding school, still doing the survey. Graeme and I are the only ones in the house, and we were working very quietly, when all of the sudden Graeme called my name.
“What’s going on?”  I asked.
“So, when the other’s left to finish the survey they forgot to close the gate and…the sheep got in.”
There is a gated wire fence around Ryan’s house, which makes perfect sense now. There is something really relaxing about corralling sheep. Especially when there is a fluffy little baby in the bunch. I wish I had taken a picture, but you are just going to have to picture us clucking at the sheep and coaxing them to the gate and back out to the red expanse beyond the house.