2009-03-30T16:10:00.000-07:00

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i nterview with Robert Mirabal, Tewa
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“A biography of place”, la Puerta, Taos, vol. 2, is a full color collection of art, interviews, and stories from Taos, New Mexico.

“la Puerta, Taos....a wonderful mezcla of Taos voices put together by Wild Embers Press. In a time of tribulation, it is a bright vision whose gift will be to heal. As Taos has always encouraged a fusion of people and cultures, so will this energetic collection bring to life yet again the complex and shining spirit of northern New Mexico.” --John Nichols

A tribute to Northern New Mexico’s art, people and literary landscape, this second volume is a full color collection which includes over 80 full color images, an in-depth “meeting the people”—the Cantina--via interviews and art, a personal trek into the backroads soul of many artists first introduced in Vol. 1, replaying in full color some of the art found in Vol. 1 while providing a chorus of personal voices about “the myth and legends of Taos”.

For instance, la Puerta, Taos Vol. 2 features the “100 Taoseños” project by Taos artist Jaap Vanderplas—30 pages of local legend portraits—an exhibit first shown at the historic “Taos Inn”, including full color images and Vanderplas’ descriptive vision for the work. Vol. 2 also includes a previously unpublished interview with Tiwa (Taos Pueblo) musician and flutemaker Robert Mirabal. Vol. 2 explores details of the Pueblo uprising and Gov. Bent tales via an interview with Southwest Research Center librarian, Nita Murphy , while simultaneously offering a tribute to the notorious “Taos Poetry Circus”. Rounding out the collection is a 1980’s news article about the “hippie era” with photographer Lisa Law and artist Jaap Vanderplas. The culture-rich art of Taoseño Anita Rodriguez (as seen in on front cover) are ever-prsent and fused with D.H. Lawrence lore from Art Bachrach ( a local Lawrence scholar) and “Masks Without Meaning” a previously unanthologized essay written in 1951, by Frank Waters, renowned Southwest/American author.

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2009-03-30T15:00:00.001-07:00

Vol. 2 has varied sections, dedicated to beautiful Taosenos....
the following is from an interview antoinette nora claypoole did with Robert Mirabal, Tewa:

Robert Mirabal

Tiwa storyteller, writer, musician and flutemaker

“I’m an entertainer as well as a philosopher as well as an educator, as well as a father and a Kiva brother”

“You can tear it down in many different ways

but it's all about love…..

from an interview with Robert Mirabal, summer 2003

antoinette: So…a story for younger people. Something you want the young kids to know about. Things you've already lived through, you've seen. You know. Something that you'd like to… we talk about darkness...You know it seems to me that a lot of younger people are not…it's harder for them to see the light. I just say that from my perspective because I came of age in the sixties when we thought …anything was possible. ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE! There were a lot of dreams.

Robert Mirabal: Well…so how did it get so jacked up?

antoinette: How did we lose it?

Robert: Yeh. YOU GUYS!

I don't understand that because why…why did you have that…have that dream of wisdom and…and… I don't see this generation evolving at all because…because the way that I see it is that like…what happened in Vietnam…why did it happen in Nigeria…in Nicaragua…in Guatemala…in…in? Why is it still happening?

.... it hasn't changed. We're still in it. It's just that the war is different. The war is in front of us and I think all we need is a huge asskicking and that’s what we are doing to ourselves with our food. With our consumption of…of…of all these different “isms” and everything. The fire's just a reminder and that’s just it's just a way of kicking our ass. And I think that's pretty cool.

I accept it full force and if it kills people and if it kills trees and plants…so be it!… you know…

because what the kids need to understand I think from my point of view is …read…so that you're not sitting in…in the back of the school. So that you have an opinion.

You know…read…read…so that there‘s something that’s based on something ..that has something inside of you that gets worked. Just read…read anything you can get a hold of so that you have an opinion about your world and if the teacher disagrees then…you know…they're just as human as everybody else.

And you know what?

These kids are dark because of the things…the lies that we've given them.

The lies that this country's given them.

This country is part of it.

This country…it’s so…so new…it’s like dealing with a teenage boy.

I mean I've been many different places where you know there is true culture on a whole nother level. This country doesn't even know who…who…who they are and we're still…so young. We still need…I mean we’re…we're…it's like when you send this country out to war it's like a big blonde boobie you know that's pushing around the little Mexican kid or the Indian kid or whatever. That's all I see…and you're pushing around thousands and thousands of years of culture…thousands and thousands of years of…of motherin and fatherin in that home community rather than to understand all that this country is ever gonna do is push each other around.

So for me…the hardship and the pain that is in this world…in this country…we deserve it!…we’re a country of very very very evil ancestry and the only thing that's gonna save us is by truly understanding that that's what we've become is a country of fear. I go back to the beginnings.

Robert: Fear creates aggression. Fear creates animosity…jealousy…all these different things.

And we love…we loved conflict. We love conflict because…because then a bunch of hippies come out to fight against it…then a bunch of cops come out to try to control it…then a bunch of media comes out…AND WE LOVE IT!…you know.

I think it's better to see somebody just shot…BAM!…because that's what this country don't see. We always see it some place else but we love that. We want the taste of that aggression but we’re not willing you know…you know…to face it. It's always some place else.

My thing is that…I had some people over at…at the Pueblo some time back.

I don't know how they ended up there but people just show up and my friend had just bought a rifle... …and he’s all like well…let's go shoot it!… WHAUGH-WHAUGH!…that's a rifle right there!

…I said ”here”…gave her…gave her the gun…she was all, “man, you should see that dude run!”

And for me…it’s like I just wanted to do it…

like this is what a gun feels like…this is how it kills…because for me it was like when you grow up in a tribe… a thousand year old tribal society…and I'm talking you know like all over the world…they understand how to honor that moment of pain and sufferin.

And that's something that Americans don't understand.

Robert: It’s just that we keep going back to Kent State

or we keep going back to Pine Ridge[i]

or we keep going back to those little things.

That’s nothing compared to what a six year old kid in Afghanistan is going through. Just nothing. Shit man. That’s why when the helicopters fly by (fighting the Pueblo fire) constantly, you know what I do? Make flutes. What do you do? I dreamt about this..

antoinette: In my heart and mind I feel you are a visionary...

having seen you perform a benefit this winter, you started out saying these could be dark times. we could be on the brink of something harsh right now but we have to remember to love each other, and have a good time through it. Remember to stay connected. It seems you have a vision of all people being One— white guy on the cello, Indians in pow wow regalia, ... does that sound right to you ??

Robert: I think that's just the way I live. I mean you can't deny what we live today. I mean I'm sittin here drinking a Blue Sky cola...twenty years what would it be. Thirty years what would it be. Fifty sixty years ago what would it be.

So I think it's just an evolution of time.

We need to understand that we're living a certain lifestyle and that lifestyle means we need to immerse ourselves in the world because there's some issues that are happenin here on the Pueblo that parallel what's happenin with Maoris, what's happenin in Australia, what's happenin in Africa.

It's just the way I tend to see the world, that's what I need to live...

And that's why I need to understand what my circumstances is in my life. And then try to work with those circumstances and then--from out of those learning experiences--to relay them to maybe my writing, to my music and to the public.

And you know, who knows, those are human issues I think that we all strive for.

You can tear it down in many different ways

but it's all about love.

Love is death

Love is killing

Love is war

love is love is

everything.

And so stand still and feel it.

With whatever emotions we can.

antoinette: I think not every person has the kind of sensibility you have

regarding "connecting". Not every human being, not every anglo, not every person in Chicago understands what you understand. About being human in these times. How do you think that comes to you, or came to you?? Was it something from a Gramma, or a day at school or was there some kind of time in your life, something that went down...?

Robert: I don't know. You know, I' m finally understanding that not all people are meant to do what I do. I finally accepted what I have done, in the last year and a half. More this year (2003) than I ever truly accepted about myself.

And that's when I cut my hair, is when I did accept that this is what I'm meant to do in my life. Is that I'm an entertainer as well as a philosopher as well as an educator, as well as a father and a Kiva brother. And I FINALLY have accepted that this is going to be my life.

And it's like:

"Alright the death begins and the birth begins so boom I'll just cut my hair."

That's when I realized that there was a whole nother part of me that was so attached to the image rather than what was connected much more on a deeper level. And it took, it took, I really....I don't think you really begin to understand who you are going to become until you get into your maybe early to mid thirties. Because your twenties you're living so much and then your thirties you have to live with what you just created, whether it's good or bad you have to live with it.

Robert:

So, if you're consistent with what you just created, with what' you've been doin, I think something unfolds and does everybody have that insight, I realize they don't.

And that's why they make people like Gandhi or people like Jim Morrison or people like Steven Biko or people like, you know, like Martin Luther King Jr. And that's why they make people like that. To inspire us. For us to realize that we need to kill those people... and that for me, that's what we do. That's what we do to our prophets in this world. Is we literally, we kill them. We destroy them.

So for me, you know, with all the negativity that's thrown at me from my own people, my own relatives and this whole country, is like you know, I'm still here.

So what's my fate??

It doesn't really matter. I'm just doing what I feel like needs to be done.

And I've done a lot of things. I've created a huge family

and a following and I need to be responsible with the things I've created.

And so that's what I'm dealing with right now,

on a daily basis,

is trying to be the best I can in being responsible.

antoinette: You said maybe not always understood, by your own people, your family. By people your own age? How is it, "not always understood"??

Robert: Well, I don't think I really wanna....maybe that's too harsh a word. I really don't want to be understood. It's just maybe I think there's a certain form, I think when something new happens in any kind of community, whether it be Senegal or South America, something new begins and that becomes a threat. That's human nature. Human nature is to go against what is threatening.

I think unfamiliarity of things is a threat.

I think that's just the essence of radical behaviour. Violence is based on lack of understanding and fear. So I think when I started to perform and do the writing that I did, do the entertaining that I did, knock it up to a whole nother level of performing for Native people, then people begin to fear it. Before anybody can truly understand it, people begin to put a judgment on it.

And from judgment starts violence. From violence...

you can create formulas out of it.

But it's all a lack of love.

Extreme fear.

It has many different levels.

But you know, it is what it is.

antoinette:

I believe there are points in people lives--people they meet, stories from a Gramma

or the way the sun set one day that makes a person realize what it is their work is to be on the planet.

You are doing amazing art for the human race, and I know you are humble enough to maybe not even want to hear that. But you are touching a lot of different kinds of people with the openness you have. With the stories from your People and then you are able to translate them into a universal human condition. You know what I'm saying, right?

So ...is there a moment in time when you realized--if you look back, you say "THAT was how I got here"??

Robert: I don't understand it. I still don't understand it.

I do what I feel like the gods and the goddesses want me to do. That's it.

I mean I don't...I'm their instrument of fear and power and love and I don't know why or how. If you put ten people in a room what always happens, I know one thing, if you put those ten people in a room what happened most of my life is that I WILL organize those people. Those ten people, on whatever level. That's what I've done in my life is...I mean, are leaders made?? Or are they born, or what's the deal??

I mean am I a leader?? No.

You know, what? So there's a ....I've seen some of those things you are talkin about, but I think it's just...my interest is human nature. Not necessarily that we live with each other, not necessarily to try to understand each other. I'm not that interested on that level of gettin along. I'm interested in the moment of clarity and happiness. You know, like:

"Oh. That's it!"

Robert: Just that smile on somebody you don't even know

and you understand that there's a connection....OR that moment of aggression. Cause either one of those places can be changed in a second. And each one of those things are a place of growth. So I'm not really interested in a lot of people just getting along just to get along. I could probably just sit with the Taliban with their rifles and share hot tea. Just as well as I can sit here and hear the complaints of whoever. Doesn't make any difference to me.

antoinette: As long as you feel some point of life, some spark of life like a fire inside somebody. Alive.

Robert: Exactly. And the people that are meant to be here in front of me are meant to be here. That's one thing that not going to college, I think, has helped me with. Is that I think it's helped me to really accept my intuition.

That's it. And I can feel people because of that intuition that I need to be with. I mean on an emotional or physical level. Or whatever. I can do that. I mean people call it ESP or fair witness. There's that moment in your life when you can foresee things.

antoinette: Is there a Tiwa word for that?

Robert: I don't know, I have to think about it. I don't think so. I think everybody just had it so, we didn't name it. It was either a dream....

antoinette: You said you are a Kiva boy. Do you think living here on the Pueblo, being raised as Tiwa, encouraged you to be living in an intuitive way??

Robert: Well yea. But maybe it works both ways, you know? I grew up here. I didn't grow up in Colorado or any place else. This is where I grew up. But see, you know what makes me growin up without my father--and the guy I went to school--what makes us so different?? You know, why is it that some paths are so different but still in the diagnostic manual of the human brain that this certain way of livin is going to make you this way?? You know, I don't fit in any of those molds. I don't fit into a statistical manual.

I think you can be taught by anybody.

And anything.

And that is what I like to look for in human beings. Whether it's talkin to a woman selling her body in New York or the Olympic swimmer...it just doesn't make any difference. And after awhile in my life what I've noticed is that you walk these steps and after a while you come to a certain point where the people you begin to associate your life with are people in that same caliber. It becomes really interesting.

The women that you fall in love with or the men that you fall in love with have created things and it's amazing.

[i] Pine Ridge is famous in Indian Country for being the place of radical activism within the American Indian Movement during the 1970's. See Who Would Unbraid Her Hair; the legend of annie mae, by antoinette claypoole, for details about that era. There were mass killings, FBI shootouts and executions going on. Many deaths which continue to remain unresolved.

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2009-03-30T14:26:00.000-07:00

la Puerta, Taos the art of fetching Sky, Volume Two

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