Press Release

Journeys Home:
Revealing a Zuni-Appalachia Collaboration

Zuni A:shiwi Publishing and the University of New Mexico Press announce the publication of the bilingual book, Journeys Home: Revealing a Zuni-Appalachia Collaboration. The 112-page book with accompanying compact disc documents and probes the sixteen-year collaboration between artists from two of our nation's most traditional cultures--Zuni Native American and Appalachian.

For some 10,000 years, until an alphabet was developed 30 years ago, the Zuni language (a language isolate) was exclusively oral. For the Zuni, the creation of an alphabet and the publication of Journeys Home are part of a strategy to preserve and perpetuate their language and culture. The Zuni language version of the original play, Corn Mountain/Pine Mountain: Following the Seasons included in Journeys Home is the most inclusive example of written Zuni extant, and the book will become a primary text for teaching written Zuni in the Pueblo's public school system, which has a new bilingual education program.

The sixteen-year cultural exchange between Roadside Theater and Zuni community artists resulted in the 1995 founding of Idiwanan An Chawe (Children of the Middle Place), the first Zuni language theater.

Native American author Dr. Gregory Cajete sets the stage in the book's foreword, examining the intimate and enduring connection between storytelling, language, and culture. In addition to the bilingual play text, Journeys Home includes the story of the collaboration as related by the artists, essays about the history of the Zuni language and the Appalachian dialect, illustrations, and a compact disc of Appalachian and Zuni music, humor, stories, and oral histories drawn from the play. The CD was co-produced with Taki Telonidis, former senior producer at National Public Radio, and Hal Cannon, founder of the Western Folklife Center. The book's editors are Dudley Cocke, Donna Porterfield, and Edward Wemytewa.

Because many people in Zuni and Appalachia believe their traditions to be at risk, the challenge was to create a contemporary play and now a book that speaks across cultural boundaries, while at the same time bolstering each unique heritage. The book and CD will be compelling to anyone wanting to look inside two U.S. cultures and see how their artists collaborated with each other over sixteen years.