Rebalancing Power: Diné Sandpainting and Sand Mining

On a tour through Eurasia and the Americas from 1966 to 1968, the Diné (Navajo) haatali (singer, healer) Fred Stevens practiced sandpainting, an ephemeral ceremonial art that facilitates cosmic rebalancing. He translated sandpainting into public demonstrations and durable gifts for the purposes of diplomatic exchange. His altered variants palpably connected Diné efforts to protect sacred homelands from military-industrial incursions to the acceleration of sand mining to feed a global building boom in countries abroad. Stevens grasped sandpaintings’ potential to heal an out-of-balance system of international relations when he collaborated with curators to consolidate sand into a lasting gift at the Horniman Museum in London in 1966 and when he stole construction sand in order to demonstrate for the cultural program of the inhospitable Olympic Games in Mexico City amid the global uprisings of 1968.