Colorado Plateau Project: Dialogue Between Two Worlds
           

An on-line educational exhibit bringing together cultural values about water, wind and breath and global climate change

Photographs Courtesy of www.wunderground.com

Above, the circular Colorado Plateau, center, has many cloud faces. As the earth’s revolution brings the high plateau into varyious meteorological conditions, it functions like a round stone in a stream, endlessly influencing moisture concentration, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure and levels of atmospheric electricity.

 

 

The Colorado Plateau is a roughly circular high desert plateau defined by volcanic mountains. Often called the Four Corners area, the plateau is located in the North American southwest where the states of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet.

The Colorado Plateau plays a critical role in global climate balance—and dynamical regional changes— revered and recorded by ancestral Native Americans using symbolic language in pottery designs and forms, rock art, dance choreography, architecture and oral traditions.

This distinctive land form, covered with over two million ancestral ruin sites,  is some 350 miles in diameter and rises some 7,000 to 14,000 feet in altitude. It is geologically independent from the continent of North America by means of deep tangential fault lines.

Native American art forms encode “models of the cosmos” which have been corroborated by modern scientists in archaeology, anthropology, meteorology and climatology.

 
Text Box: Joan E. Price, Director Colorado Plateau Project 406 Durazno Tularosa, New Mexico 88352

To contact us:

Dialogue Between Two Worlds:

Art and Science

 on the Colorado Plateau
Text Box: Courtesy, James Kootshongsie, Corn and Cloud Clan This Hopi shield symbol represents the Colorado Plateau as a circle of four mountains — “elder teachers” that “breathe” and give insights and wisdom to those who contemplate their inner nature. “It is a seal to protect the world with other people who still believe in their religion and act as the pillars of the earth. If one of them falls, then the world will be out of balance.” Text Box: The exhibit, quotes and commentary introduce models of reality of traditional Native American peoples who, while speaking many languages, share a set of core values about the sacred mountains and climate patterns of the Colorado Plateau that define their cosmos and world view. Modern scientific models of reality created in the English language and visualized by computer graphics programs add a modern dimension to the perception of the Colorado Plateau as one distinct bioregion that plays a role in global weather patterns. In the 1970’s, energy development companies began large scale mining of extensive deposits of non-renewable coal, uranium, pristine groundwater aquafirs and other natural resources uniquely located on the Colorado Plateau. An National Academy of Sciences report concluded that (coal) strip-mining in the fragile arid environment could permanently damage the land, resulting in “national sacrifice areas.” Now, national energy needs are undergoing review and the national economy is changing to renewable energy policy. The Colorado Plateau has been profoundly destabilized — and there are powerful reasons to regenerate the land and people. How can that best be done? This exhibit strives to bring the deeper meaning of the plateau country to the preservation community to support efforts to protect and regenerate the land and its people. This site is under construction—you are encouraged to check back at a later date. Text Box: Clay (dirt) is talked to because it is of the earth and shares in the flow of life. That flow described as Po-wa-ha (water-wind-breath), is the essence of life. Existence is not determines by a physical body or other physical manifestation but by the breath, which is symbolized by the movement of the water and wind. The Po-wa-ha, then, is the creative force causing life which is the same as learning…” Rina Swentzell, Santa Clara Pueblo

“Po-wa-ha”

The Many Faces of Wind and Water

Right, streams of  moisture coming from the Pacific Ocean curl around the Colorado Plateau while streams of dry air are diverted to the south by the high altitude of the plateau  lands.

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