A Family of Artists and More … Roxanne Swentzell, 2008 “There is a flavor to each family. When I stepped back and viewed my extended Naranjo family, I couldn’t help but be impressed. At first, being an artist myself, I noticed a surprising number of well-established artists starting with my grandmother, Rose Naranjo. I thought that this would be a great way to start looking at this family by starting with Rose, or rather Gia (what we all called her, which translates into Mother).

“Mothers are central to families. My grandmother had many children and raised a few others. Those children had many children, and so on, for five generations before she passed away in 2004. It is unfair to talk about Gia without talking about Ta (‘Father’ or my grandfather Michael Naranjo). Of course they created this family together, but there’s something about starting with Gia that acknowledges that she was, for better or for worse, a person who centralized this family through love, guilt, force or just plain need.

“We all buzzed around her like a queen bee. When she died, the hub of this family died with her. I would like to take time to acknowledge this. We all have our own nucleus of families and friends, but for five generations this woman created a world that spun around her, extending far and wide, pulling our many nuclear families into her orbit. For many of us, this orbit was consuming. It was the thread that bound us to her and we loved and hated it. Maybe she held the key to how community is held together — you let yourself need each other. She needed us and we needed to be needed.

“But the times had changed, and the Western mind-set of individualism had seeped into the Pueblos and we, too, wanted our own lives with our own cars, private property, names, nuclear families that are held away from extended families, our own differing ideas and beliefs. The Pueblo sense of one large extended family of cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents and greatgrandparents had been pierced by the sword of ‘Me versus You.’ Gia was still functioning under the old Pueblo belief that the hive is only strong when we work together around our mother. And she was our Mother.

“As the wave of her life and death has settled some, I look around me and see what is left. I see our family scattered here and there, slowly trying to establish ‘hives’ of their own. I see remnants of Her everywhere — strong mothers, a deep sense of home, strong work ethics and a strong sense of DES0257_1208-program.indd 18 1/12/09 11:17:04 AM being. I felt overwhelmingly proud of US. We are an amazing group of people. I wanted to show us to the world, but mostly I wanted to show us to ourselves. I wanted to mirror to us what we have come through and become. As I looked around, I saw not only amazing artists and craftsmen, I saw groundbreaking scholars, scientists, athletes, builders, singers, dancers and spiritual leaders. And I saw such physically beautiful people that I wanted to gloat over us all – just for a moment in time — before it passes and we disappear into the vast history of mankind.

“We are a moment in time that merged from a situation that was shifting, struggling with the future and the past, a moment that had its own unique flavor. This is our family that buzzed around Gia for 60-plus years. This is our family that created its own art and culture, its own strengths and weaknesses – our own heart. Before we all go our separate ways, I would like to take a moment to look at us before the hive swarms away forever. We are all strong, amazing individuals, but we all owe some of that strength to Gia, our queen bee for so many years. It is no small feat to hold five generations together for so long. As I take a sigh of relief at times that we are all free to go our separate ways, I also have a need to look back and bow my head with respect, gratitude and awe at every one of us. “We are part of this amazing story, this chapter in time. “I stop and acknowledge Gia’s Family.”