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    Klee Benally, Navajo Activist and Artist, Dies at 48

    He helped found a punk-rock band when he was 14. That led to a long career as an advocate for Native American and environmental causes.Klee Benally, a dynamic Navajo activist, artist and punk-rock musician who championed Native American and environmental causes, died on Dec. 30 in Phoenix. He was 48.His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his sister, Jeneda Benally. She did not specify the cause.For decades, Mr. Benally, who lived in Flagstaff, Ariz., fought the expansion of the Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort on one of the San Francisco Peaks, a mountain range just north of Flagstaff that 13 tribes consider sacred. He also fought the resort’s use of treated wastewater to make snow, a practice that Native Americans and environmental groups said was poisoning the ecosystem. He protested against a pumice mine on those same peaks, and against uranium mining and transport in the area.He campaigned for the rights and care of Indigenous homeless people and against racial profiling. He made films and art about his activism.He was a community organizer and a youth counselor; he taught media literacy and film to Indigenous teenagers; and he marched against the celebration of Thanksgiving. Late last year he published a book, “No Spiritual Surrender,” about his efforts practicing what he called Indigenous anarchy, and he created a board game, “Burn the Fort,” in which Native American warriors fight off colonizers (and learn some history while doing so).He chained himself to an excavator, was charged with trespassing and joined numerous legal complaints.But his first foray into activism was through music, in 1989. He was 14 when he and his siblings, Jeneda and Clayson, formed Blackfire, a high-velocity punk band that mixed traditional Navajo chants and music with protest songs about the oppression of Indigenous people.Mr. Benally embraced the middle-finger-to-the-world punk ethos — he loved the Ramones, whose music he introduced to his mother, a folk singer — and he could really shred a guitar. The Ramones loved Blackfire back: C.J. Ramone produced the band’s first EP, “Spirit in Action” (1994), and Joey Ramone sang on two of the songs on “One Nation Under” (2002), its first full-length album.Critics were admiring, too. In 2007, David Fricke of Rolling Stone touted Blackfire’s fourth album, “[Silence] Is a Weapon,” as “pure ire, CBGB-hardcore-matinee protest with jolts of ancient chorale.”The band played at South by Southwest and other music festivals but declined to play in bars, at least at first. Mr. Benally thought it would be hypocritical, given that alcohol abuse was an issue on reservations. In addition, at the time the Benally siblings were all under 21.“Some people watch too many movies and think John Wayne killed all the Indians or they’re out dancing with wolves,” he told The Albuquerque Journal in 2003, explaining Blackfire’s mission to educate audiences. “But in reality there are over 500 nations throughout the U.S. carrying on their cultures, their own individual ways of life, their own languages and their own ceremonies.”Mr. Benally in 2005. He spent decades protesting the expansion of a ski resort on a mountain range that 13 tribes consider sacred.Jill Torrance/Arizona Daily Sun, via Associated PressKlee Jones Benally was born on Oct. 6, 1975, in Black Mesa, Ariz., on the Navajo reservation near Flagstaff. Music and activism ran in the family. Klee’s father, Jones Benally, is a traditional Diné (as the Navajo call themselves) medicine man; his mother, Berta Benally, is an activist and folk musician of Russian-Polish Jewish heritage who grew up in the folk scene of Greenwich Village. The couple met in Los Angeles, where she was working with Hopi elders.Klee and his siblings were brought up with their father’s Diné traditions, and they grew up performing traditional dances. Their mother introduced them to the folk canon; Blackfire would later set some of Woody Guthrie’s poems to music. The area where they lived was part of a land dispute that forced the relocation of thousands of Navajo people, and attending protests became a family affair.In addition to his sister and his parents, Mr. Benally is survived by his wife, Princess Benally, and his brother.Blackfire went on hiatus after two decades, mostly so the Benally siblings could concentrate more directly on advocacy and activism.Mr. Benally often framed his environmental work in terms of religious freedom. “As Indigenous people in the so-called United States, we don’t have guarantees for our religious freedoms like the rest of you,” he told The Arizona Republic in 2013. “This is a struggle for cultural survival — the struggle to protect sacred spaces.”Mr. Benally was a local hero in Flagstaff, where he founded a number of community organizations and aid groups. He was both angry and pragmatic; he liked to say that everyone was indigenous to somewhere.“He was a powerhouse of anticolonial thought and action — ever ready to protect the land,” Dallas Goldtooth, a Native American activist and actor, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.Mr. Benally explained his worldview in a 2020 interview with Spirituality Health magazine: “As an artist, there’s no dichotomy between art and life with our traditional teachings as Diné people. There’s no separation; our life is creation. So our creative expression comes in many different ways. What I look at is: What are the issues facing our communities, and what strategies can be most effective? Is it going to be through song? Is it going to be through prayer or action? Or can it be all of them?” More

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    Dobby’s Grave Can Stay on a Beach in Wales, but Please Stop Giving Him Socks

    After a grave site for the “Harry Potter” elf became a tourist attraction, tributes to the character prompted environmental concerns.LONDON — In one of the more tragic moments from the “Harry Potter” series — spoilers ahead if you’ve been meaning to get around to it for a decade or two — Dobby, an elf, dies in Harry Potter’s arms on an expansive beach that the creature describes, in one of his final breaths, as “such a beautiful place to be with friends.”The “beautiful place” where the scene was filmed for the 2010 movie “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” was Freshwater West Beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where fans have assembled a memorial to Dobby, a recurring character in the series who befriended Harry and his fellow wizards-in-training and became a fan favorite. Environmental officials, however, became concerned that the site’s popularity with tourists was having a negative effect on the beach and considered tearing the memorial down as part of an eight-month review.Last week, Dobby’s grave site won a reprieve, when officials announced that it could stay, as long as visitors stopped leaving behind tributes to Dobby — or, from a different perspective, environmentally ruinous litter.Dobby, who is voiced by Toby Jones in the “Harry Potter” movies, in a scene from “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.” Warner Brothers Pictures“The memorial to Dobby will remain at Freshwater West in the immediate term for people to enjoy,” the National Trust Wales, the conservation charity that initiated the review of the area, wrote in its assessment. “The Trust is asking visitors to only take photos when visiting the memorial to help protect the wider landscape.”Part of the problem arose from a gesture many fans most likely intended as a tribute but had damaging consequences: People kept giving Dobby socks.In the “Harry Potter” series, Harry tricks Dobby’s master, the evil Lucius Malfoy, into giving his captive elf a sock, which frees Dobby. The elf then wears the sock until his dying moment, making it a memorable symbol of his friendship with Harry.Back in the real world, socks are a bad thing to leave on a beach. Many have been left at the grave site along with messages painted on rocks to match Harry’s final tribute to his friend: “Here lies Dobby, a free elf.”The National Trust Wales said in its assessment that “items like socks, trinkets, and paint chips from painted pebbles could enter the marine environment and food chain and put wildlife at risk.” Tens of thousands of people visit the beach each year, the trust said, and more than 5,000 responded to an online survey as it sought the public’s opinion on the future of the site.“While we’re delighted that so many want to visit, we have to balance the popularity of the site with impacts on the sensitive nature of the beach and wider environment, and pressure on the facilities and surrounding roads,” Jonathan Hughes, an official with National Trust Wales, said in a statement. More