WHEN THE CREATOR MOVES ME

An environmentally and politically minded memoir of Clan Dyken, a touring folk-rock band that’s dedicated to environmental activism.

Muniz effectively blends history, biography, and Navajo cultural traditions as she traces the evolution of a musical group that brothers (and credited co-authors) Mark Dyken and Bear Dyken formed in the late 1970s, at the height of anti-nuclear activism in the United States. “The band’s core mission is to help people create a better world through music and nonviolent activism,” she writes. At the center of the story is Muniz’s trip with the band on their annual Beauty Way Tour, during which they delivered food and firewood to Navajo families resisting forced relocation from their homes in Big Mountain, Arizona. The Navajo-Hopi Land Settlement Act had forced displacement and relocation of many Navajo people; however, many families, including a contingent of protesting grandmothers, have refused to go. The people must contend with poverty, destruction of natural resources, and a lack of electricity because there’s “no infrastructure, no grid” on the land. Big Mountain is located next to the world’s largest coal strip mine, which has drained the land’s aquifer and killed natural vegetation, Muniz writes, causing Navajo and Hopi people to suffer from environmental devastation. In intimate detail, the author narrates the history that’s shaped the Navajo people and culture of Big Mountain. Along the way, she also offers an essential account of Clan Dyken, which became politically engaged after an anti-nuclear talk at the University of California, Davis, in the early 1980s. With their solar-powered sound system, the band has taken their music on the road, playing festivals all over the country and protesting at nuclear testing and waste sites in Nevada and California. Other tours have included tree-logging protests, and the band travels annually to Bear Mountain in support of Navajo families. Over the course of this book, Muniz movingly relates how those families have continued to refuse displacement, spurring a creative movement. 

An engaging look at a band’s artistic activism and Navajo people’s resistance.