Klee Benally, Navajo activist and artist, dies at age 48

Klee Benally, a dynamic Navajo activist, artist and punk rock musician who championed Native American and environmental causes, died Dec. 30 in Phoenix. He was 48.

His death, in a hospital after a short illness, was confirmed by his sister, Jeneda Benally.

For decades, Mr. Benally, who lived in Flagstaff, Arizona, fought against the expansion of the Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort on one of the San Francisco Peaks, a mountain range just north of Flagstaff that is considered sacred by 13 tribes. He also fought the resort’s use of treated wastewater to make snow, a practice that Native Americans and environmental groups say poisoned the ecosystem. He protested against a pumice mine on those same peaks, and against the mining and transportation of uranium 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 youth counselor; he taught media literacy and film to indigenous teens; and he marched against the celebration of Thanksgiving. At the end of last year he published a book, ‘No spiritual surrender’ about his efforts to practice what he called native anarchy, and he created a board game, ‘Burn the Fortress’ in which Native American warriors fight settlers (and learn some history in the process).

He chained himself to a backhoe, was charged with trespassing and joined numerous legal complaints.

But his first foray into activism came through music, in 1989. He was 14 when he and his siblings, Jeneda and Clayson, formed Blackfire, a fast-paced punk band that mixed traditional Navajo chants and music with protest songs about the oppression of the native people. people.

Mr. Benally embraced the punk ethos of giving the middle finger to the world — he loved the Ramones, whose music he introduced to his mother, a folk singer — and he could really shred a guitar. The Ramones were also fond of Blackfire: CJ 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), the first full-length album.

Critics were also admiring. In 2007, Rolling Stone’s David Fricke recommended Blackfire’s fourth album, “[Silence] Is a Weapon’, as ‘pure rage, CBGB hardcore matinee protest with jolts of ancient chorale.’

The band played at South by Southwest and other music festivals, but initially refused to play bars. Mr Benally thought it would be hypocritical as alcohol abuse was a problem on probation. Furthermore, Benally’s siblings were all under the age of 21 at the time.

“Some people watch too many movies and think John Wayne killed all the Indians or they’re dancing with wolves,” he told The Albuquerque Journal in 2003, explaining Blackfire’s mission to educate the public. “But in reality, there are more than 500 countries in the U.S. that continue their cultures, their own individual ways of life, their own languages ​​and their own ceremonies.”

Klee Jones Benally was born on October 6, 1975 in Black Mesa, Arizona, 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 descent who grew up in the Greenwich Village folk scene. The couple met in Los Angeles, where she worked with Hopi elders.

Klee and his siblings were raised with their father’s Diné traditions, and they grew up performing traditional dances. Their mother introduced them to the folk canon; Blackfire would set some of these later The Poems of Woody Guthrie 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 also survived by his wife, Princess Benally, and his brother.

Blackfire disbanded after twenty years, mainly so that the Benally siblings could focus 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 have no guarantees of our religious freedoms like the rest of you,” he told The Arizona Republic in 2013. “This is a fight for cultural survival – the fight to protect sacred spaces.”

Mr. Benally was a local hero in Flagstaff, where he founded a number of nonprofit organizations and support groups. He was both angry and pragmatic; he liked to say that everyone was native somewhere.

‘He was a powerhouse of anti-colonial thought and action – always ready to protect the country’ 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 is no dichotomy between art and life with our traditional teachings as Diné people. There is no separation; our life is creation. So our creative expression comes about in many different ways. What I’m looking at is: what issues are our communities facing, and what strategies can be most effective? Will it be through song? Will it be through prayer or action? Or could it be all of them?”