Rebalancing the Cold War: Diné Sandpainting and Earth Diplomacy

Abstract

Abstract From 1966 to 1968 the United States government commissioned Diné artist Fred Stevens to demonstrate sandpainting across Eurasia and Latin America, in accordance with a prevailing logic of a “balance of power” in international relations. Stevens’s translations of ephemeral ceremonies worked against the grain, palpably connecting Diné efforts to protect Navajo Nation lands from military-industrial incursions to the acceleration of sand mining to feed a global building boom. Stevens’s demonstrations and gifts serve as exemplars of earth diplomacy, a practice of engendering sensuous material exchanges to facilitate reciprocity among disparate human communities and the lands that sustain them.