00:00.00 archpodnet Go. 00:01.48 alan Hey out there in rock art podcast archeology podcast lamb. We have Johnny back here's Johnny how you how how you doing Johnny so. 00:10.54 Johnny valdez I Love that I'm doing very well. Thank you dog. 00:20.20 alan Quick introduction I think you should introduce yourself and then pray over us before we begin like we did last time and and I think maybe a soundb bite about who I'm talking with yeah and you represent. 00:28.44 Johnny valdez Um, absolutely my name is Johnny Valdez 00:36.50 Johnny valdez Okay. 00:38.79 alan Both the ah ute and pueblo people and you're a highly placed prestigious. Ah, ah well-known dignitary for those groups that works in the ah cultural resources and sovereignty space. How's that. 00:58.43 Johnny valdez that's that's funny it's you know it's true I've done a lot of that. So great. Um, my name is Johnny Valdez I am a descendant of the u tribe and of the pueblo tribes and I have spent a lifetime working on helping. 01:00.53 alan Yeah. 01:15.60 Johnny valdez Tribes with improving their position in the world helping people connect and get together. So We generally start off with ah a little quick blessing when we're doing something like this so we'll start in a good way grandfather more? Um, Thank you for. Giving us this opportunity again to speak with people out there in archaeology podcast land and the rock Art. Um group We think that everything that we do is important and that's a wonderful thing. Want to bring people together help them seeize from a different perspective that we should all take the time to see it from a different view and hopefully I'll be able to bring bring that viewpoint and perspective to people who are listening grandfather in a good way Bless all the people of the World. We. We All struggle. There's a lot of things going on right now and hopefully we can have the world calm itself down a little bit so we may enjoy it grandfather in a very good Way. We Ask you to bless all the people that are listening and all their families and friends. Get them to take a a different view of life hear it from someone else's view smile. Be happy, be in a place where they can be loved by everyone. That's around them. So Thank you for that Grandfather. There's so many things that we we shared. 02:48.80 Johnny valdez Talk about and and ask for but we know that you'll take care of those things grandfather. So in a good way. We'll continue on the way. Oh my. That's all. Thank you. 02:59.40 alan Thank you Johnny that was important and spiritual and and religious and I want to thank ah the lord and our creator for giving me this opportunity I'm honored and blessed to have a prestigious and deeply knowledgeable person such as yourself. To come on the show and talk about a ah an american indian perspectiveivism on both rock art. The the subject matter the context the the deep meaning and the the nature of that particular. Element and I'll open it up to you and you can start at the beginning and work towards the end. How's that. 03:43.94 Johnny valdez Um, yeah, that sounds good. Yeah I think you know there's there's a lot that we were talking about the last time and if anyone wants to go back and listen to some of that. That's probably good but you know it's viewpoint and perspective about Shamanism Medicine Men Medicine women however you want to talk about those things they're they're religious. They're their their religion and their beliefs and ah sometimes they get tangled up and people don't recognize that they think that shamanism is just nothing but supernatural. Um, nonsense or it's just spirituality that people are making up that isn't how native people I think of most kinds around the world think of it they think of it as part of their belief system. It's part of a structure of understanding. But is valuable and important so as we look at at a piece of rock art. There's there's an image there. There's a thought there that means something very specific to some people but it's also in a way art. It's left up to interpretation. These people were putting it down and knew that it was going to be many years into the future that people were were looking at this but this shamanism that people talk about the spirituality There's so many pieces of it that are loss or misconstrued because there are so many different. 05:10.73 Johnny valdez Types of shaman and I'll just give you some examples there. There are medicine people who are strictly about medicine some that are strictly about the scientific part about being a shaman they can tell you the plants and the animals and their uses then there's shaman that that are for the hunt. But tell you the future of your hunt. The positivity of your hunt you go to them and and listen to them because they tell you stories about hunting. They tell you about what you should expect to see and the positivity that you need to have to be a good hunter and to lead a good hunt. But then you also have another group of of shaman that are. Truly about spirituality about the future about the past about vision quests about sundances and altered states peyote and nettles and ants and down eagle down feathers using ayahuasca all of those kinds of different things. So. There's a large variety of shaman in different tribes and some call them shaman some call them medicine people some some call them something else. You know doctors other kinds of things and there's a lot of experience that goes along with it. It's not something. You can get in 8 years from going to to classes in schools your classes and schools are visiting with relatives and other families within your nation and and families in other nations near you and learning from them. 06:47.28 Johnny valdez Learning the process learning the understanding of it all, um, the why and how and sometimes it may take you a lifetime to learn it and know it and in fact, your mentor probably doesn't know it all and because no one really ever does they're just doing their best in in a good way. Trying to learn as much as they can and pass that along to to other people. The difficulty with with all of that is that in in true shamanism form or in medicine man form someone like myself I wouldn't be considered 1 simply from the fact that I'm not a member of of any of the tribes. But I certainly know the ins and outs of of most of our religion and belief I wasn't lucky enough to be a sun dancer. Um, you have to dream that it's it's a dream. It's a process that you have to go through and. And it's so a very big honour to do it. But I have been very lucky to be a historian and learn about different dances learn about the process and and what all the plants and animals are how to go on vision quests I've been on them myself I know what? that's like um. Getting you know, walking across the sky they say you know you go and walk 20 or 30 miles across the the high mountains at 10 or twelve thirteen thousand feet and by the end of the day with no water and no food I'm going to tell you right now you're in an altered state and you start. 08:18.83 alan Ah. 08:19.88 Johnny valdez You start seeing and feeling things and and it really does get to your emotion. It does get to get you right down to where you need to be to understand here's something I did wrong you you start seeing it feeling. It. You recognize that in yourself and then you there's this desire and belief within you. You need to go make that right? You don't need to go talk to that friend. You need to go talk to that family member and it's very powerful at the same time when you have a vision quest like that there's a ah lot of positive things that you can do to improve your life and and your friends and family. Maybe your tribe's life. By taking a different look at it. You know you've you've gone to a place where you can actually free your mind up a little bit and you're you're seeing clearly and thinking clearly and it seems illogical like how can I be thinking clearly I'm worn out I'm on my twenty seventh mile and been in a high country. My legs are burning I can't breathe I can't I can't um I can't feel my my body. It's just kind of going on autopilot trying to get down to the bottom where I can get a drink. You know you start fighting all of those things. But what. What really becomes powerful is that belief system that you have from hearing from other elders from other people from your contemporaries you you hear that this stuff is going to happen to you and then when it does you kind of know what you're looking at you're you're starting to understand it. 09:55.84 Johnny valdez And um, very much like a few of the recent podcasts. You talked about you know people see a very similar thing to something someone else saw and and it's because the spiritual belief that you're you're built into. Ah, system that ah allows you to have that altered state to to look within yourself and and to see the environment around you and and recognise it now I'm by no means ah an expert in all the different groups within the utes just in the utes alone. There's ah ah, 11 original bands. So 7 bands now they say and and 3 tribes with the pueblos there's 24 different pueblo tribes and a couple of different languages there so to know in any great detail. 10:50.34 Johnny valdez Any One of those would take you a lifetime to do just one and to know a general amount about a bunch of them takes a lifetime too. So I'm I'm not here to speak on Behalf of all native people. But I am here to say as a native person. I See that this perspective is lost and it gets lost a lot of times. Um with the scientific world with archaeologists and geologists and others who are are looking at it from a completely different perspective. 11:27.63 alan Johnny can you hear me Johnny did I lose you okay could you could you give us a ah bit of an insight on one of your personal journeys on your vision. Quest I think that would be very special for us. 11:29.49 Johnny valdez Um, yes. 11:32.59 Johnny valdez Yeah I got you. 11:45.49 alan If you're able if it's if it's not too intrusive as to what you, but you saw what you felt what the? ah what sort of the takeaway was from that experience and um, how that related to who you are now and and how you see the world. 11:52.90 Johnny valdez Are. 12:03.27 Johnny valdez Sure. Yeah, absolutely yeah I give you a little insight into that well going on on a vision. Quest is is kind of a long and and drawn out thing most times most times it takes you. 12:05.30 alan Does that make sense. Okay. 12:11.20 alan Yeah. 12:21.49 Johnny valdez 3 or four days no food no water you're in a sundance you're in a specialized vision. Quest um years ago and obviously I didn't do this myself. But years ago they used to take young kids up into the very high country drop them off in the mountains and make them walk home. You know. We didn't do exactly that kind of thing but my my brother Chris and and myself we we have a landscape irrigation contracting company and all this stuff but but we did a lot of forestry I was a hot shot firefighter and and did that around the country and when I came home. We went out and we got government contracts and and we got a contract to build trails and so we built all of these trails and and then we've also got another contract to fix the trails to to do trail maintenance and so. After ah a long summer it was kind of ah a long summer of doing this work. We were kind of down to the last one and it was one that we kind of and we were just like oh man that's a long ways. It's 30 something odd miles. It's going to be tough. We can take a. And extra backpack we can camp out out there or we can just fight it and work our butts off and get it all done in one day and we knew that that was going to be a vision quest we knew that looking at the trail maps and all of that stuff. We couldn't carry enough water there was there was no way we would have to get water along the way where we could. 13:54.77 Johnny valdez And we knew a few of the sites. We'd been there before um, were native from the area so we went up to a place called hope creek and then walked up to the top of South River peak and came all the way back down to a place called Turkey Creek and this is out in the. San Juan national forest but when we first started the trip and this is this is what's so valuable when we first start that trip we get in there about 3 or four miles in a very lush place a place you would never expect to see what we saw running down the trail right at us was one of the. Biggest most beautiful rocky mountain bighorn sheep I'd ever seen in my life and it was running right at us and it slammed on the brakes we were jogging we were runners. We were pretty good shape back of those days and we slammed on the brakes and we're about. 14:39.93 alan Um. 14:42.78 alan Wow. 14:49.78 Johnny valdez Twenty feet away from each other just staring at each other not knowing what to do right in the middle of the trail and um, finally he just kind of ambled off. He didn't run. He wasn't scared or anything. He was just surprised he was running down the trail for whatever reason and he was like jogging you know. 14:50.35 alan Oh my word. 15:08.21 Johnny valdez And it was like that's very strange to see a sheep jogging down the trail but he stopped they kind of just walked off to the side and let us go on our way but then we went up into these high peaks and you're talking about thirteen thousand feet we've gone from about 9000 to 13000 and we're clearing Trail. There's a few trees knocked over. We've got axes and and little handsaws and we're clearing the trail off making it wide enough for for horses and people to get onto the trails and we're we're kicking rocks off the Trail. We're fixing water bars anything that's happened in this trail. And we figure we get about half sure. Yes, okay, okay, absolutely. 15:43.21 alan Johnny kind of Johnny Johnny let's let's do a cliff hang. We'll stop there and we'll pick it up on the next segment. Um, and and we we don't want we I don't want to stop the cycle. But. Ah, we'll we'll pick it up there see in the flipflop gang.