How to Interview the Makers of Crude Independence: A Travel Narrative

✈️ The Dust Didn’t Settle — It Stayed in My Throat

I coughed into my bandana as the pickup bounced off the gravel road near Chaco Canyon, my notebook already smudged with dust and sweat. Two hours after arriving unannounced at the adobe compound where the makers of Crude Independence lived and worked, I sat across from Manuelito Yazzie — co-director, weaver, and one of the film’s central voices — watching him thread juniper bark through hand-spun wool. He didn’t ask why I’d come. He just handed me a cup of strong black coffee, steam rising like breath in the thin air, and said, ‘You wanted to interview the makers of crude independence? Then sit. Watch. Listen first.’ That silence — not awkward, but thick with intention — was my first real lesson: how to interview the makers of crude independence isn’t about questions. It’s about presence, permission, and patience. This wasn’t a press junket. It was a slow, reciprocal exchange rooted in land, labor, and decades of quiet resistance.

🗺️ The Setup: Why I Drove 300 Miles Into the Navajo Nation

It started with a film — not the kind you stream with popcorn, but one that played on a cracked projector screen at a community center in Taos. Crude Independence (2018) documents Navajo and Hopi families who refused uranium mining contracts on ancestral land near Crownpoint and Church Rock, NM. Not with protests or lawsuits alone, but by reviving traditional fiber arts, water stewardship, and oral history as acts of sovereignty. No voiceover. No NGO logos. Just hands, soil, and stories passed between generations. I’d written about extractive tourism before — the kind where outsiders photograph poverty as ‘authenticity’ — and something about this film felt different: grounded, unsentimental, deeply local. When I learned the filmmakers hadn’t done press tours, hadn’t partnered with galleries or festivals outside the Southwest, I knew the only way to understand their work was to go where they made it.

I booked a rental car in Albuquerque in early October — dry season, low monsoon risk, high visibility for backroads navigation. I studied maps, not just Google’s satellite view, but the Navajo Nation Parks & Recreation Department’s official trail guides1, cross-referenced with the Diné Bikeyah map published by the Indigenous Environmental Network. I noted road conditions: many routes were unpaved, marked ‘seasonal access only’, and required tribal permits for non-residents. I applied for a Diné Permit online — $15, valid 30 days, non-transferable — and waited five business days for approval. I packed water filters, a solar charger, spare fuses, and three notebooks: one for observations, one for quotes (with consent), one blank — ‘for when words aren’t enough’.

🌧️ The Turning Point: When the Map Ran Out

The first 120 miles went smoothly — I-40 west, then NM-371 north through Gallup, past roadside stands selling fry bread and turquoise. But at the junction near Pueblo Bonito Trading Post, the GPS blinked ‘No route found’. My printed map showed a dotted line labeled ‘Tribal Route 12’ heading east toward the Chuska Mountains. I followed it. Within ten minutes, the pavement gave way to graded gravel, then rutted red clay slick with morning dew. By mile marker 7, the track vanished beneath a washout — recent rains had carved a three-foot gully across the road, flanked by sagebrush and silent, watchful ravens.

I sat in the car, engine off, listening. No cell signal. No passing vehicles. Just wind moving through piñon pines and the distant yip of coyotes. Panic rose — not about being stranded, but about violating trust before I’d even arrived. Had I misread the permit terms? Was this land even open to visitors? I opened my notebook and reread the letter Manuelito had sent months earlier after my first email: ‘We don’t host interviews. We host relatives who learn. If you come, bring no agenda. Bring your hands. Bring your ears. Leave your assumptions at the wash.’

I turned the car around. Drove back 14 miles to the trading post. Asked the clerk — a woman named Lucinda, her silver hair braided with red yarn — if she knew where the Yazzie family compound was. She didn’t offer directions. Instead, she called someone. Ten minutes later, a man named Thomas arrived in a dusty Ford F-150. He didn’t introduce himself. He just nodded, loaded my gear into his truck bed, and said, ‘Get in. We go slow. The land remembers speed.’

🌄 The Discovery: Not Interviews — Apprenticeships

Thomas drove without speaking for nearly an hour, winding up switchbacks into the Chuskas. The air grew cooler, pine-scented, layered with woodsmoke and damp earth. We passed no signs, no fences — just stone cairns, weathered cedar posts, and occasional sheep trails crossing the road. When we stopped, it wasn’t at a gate or driveway, but beside a low stone wall half-buried in rabbitbrush. Manuelito stood there, arms crossed, wearing faded jeans and a handwoven sash. He looked at Thomas, then at me, then at my backpack. ‘You brought tools?’ he asked.

‘Just notebooks,’ I admitted.

He gestured to a stack of split willow rods drying under a tarp. ‘Then start with these. Soak them. Split them finer. We weave baskets tomorrow. You hold the pattern, not the pen.’

That first afternoon changed everything. There was no ‘interview’ — no recorder, no list of pre-written questions. Instead, there was rhythm: soaking, splitting, twisting, counting warp threads. I learned that ‘crude independence’ wasn’t a slogan. It was literal: crude oil leases rejected, crude tools revived (bone awls, stone mallets), crude language reclaimed (Diné bizaad phrases woven into song lyrics). Maria, Manuelito’s sister and co-filmmaker, showed me how she filmed the opening sequence — not with a drone, but from the roof of her hogan, shooting downward as her niece carried water from the spring. ‘The camera must be lower than the people,’ she said, adjusting the tripod. ‘Or it lies.’

Sensory details anchored each day: the sharp, green smell of soaked willow; the gritty texture of hand-ground pigment from crushed iron-rich rocks; the heat-haze shimmer above the drying racks where raw wool hung like pale ghosts; the sound of Maria’s 16mm Bolex clicking like a heartbeat under the hum of cicadas. One evening, after dinner — mutton stew, blue corn mush, roasted acorns — Manuelito lit a small fire and told me about the 1979 Church Rock uranium spill, how the EPA buried reports instead of cleaning wells, and how his father taught him to test water quality by watching how willow roots grew. ‘They don’t lie either,’ he said, poking the embers. ‘If the roots curl, the water is sick. If they stretch straight down, it’s clean. That’s data. Better than any machine.’

🚌 The Journey Continues: From Observation to Reciprocity

I stayed eleven days. Not as a journalist, but as a temporary member of the household — helping mend fence lines, sorting wool fleeces by grade and color, transcribing oral histories Maria had recorded over the past decade. I learned what what to look for in Crude Independence collaborators meant practically: no single ‘spokesperson’, no hierarchy — decisions happened during shared meals or while walking the sheep trails. When I finally asked, tentatively, about filming permissions, Maria handed me a laminated sheet titled Community Media Agreement. It listed six principles — including ‘no footage used without collective review’, ‘archival copies held locally’, and ‘profits reinvested in youth language programs’. It wasn’t a contract. It was a covenant.

I also witnessed friction — not with outsiders, but within the community. A younger filmmaker from Flagstaff wanted to shoot a ‘behind-the-scenes’ docuseries. The elders declined. ‘Your lens sees conflict,’ Manuelito explained to me later. ‘Ours sees continuity. We don’t need your “story”. We need our children to remember how to tie this knot.’ He demonstrated a specific overhand hitch used to secure loom beams — a technique nearly lost, revived only after finding a 1930s WPA field notebook in the Window Rock archives.

My role shifted gradually. On day eight, Maria asked me to help digitize audio reels. On day ten, I co-led a workshop for teens on basic sound recording — using gear donated by the Navajo Nation Museum, not commercial sponsors. No credit was given. No bylines requested. The point wasn’t exposure. It was capacity-building — making sure the tools stayed, not the traveler.

📝 Reflection: What This Experience Taught Me About Travel and Myself

I left with fewer notes than I’d planned — just 17 pages of handwritten observations, three hours of ambient audio (wind, looms, children laughing), and one completed willow basket, slightly lopsided, its rim uneven where my fingers slipped. I’d gone seeking a story about resistance and returned with something quieter: a lesson in relational time. In Western journalism, ‘interviewing’ implies extraction — taking words, images, experiences, packaging them elsewhere. Here, it was circular: I brought knowledge of archival standards; they taught me how to read soil pH by tasting clay. I shared digital preservation methods; they showed me how to store oral histories in seasonal rhythms — monsoon stories told in summer, winter migration songs in January.

My own assumptions unraveled slowly. I’d assumed ‘independence’ meant separation — from government, from industry, from outside influence. But here, independence meant interdependence: with land, with kin, with memory. It wasn’t crude because it was rough — it was crude because it was elemental, unrefined by market logic. The film’s title wasn’t ironic. It was geological.

And I realized how often I’d confused access with understanding. Getting a permit, driving the road, showing up — those were logistical steps, not relational ones. Real access came only after I stopped performing ‘researcher’ and started practicing reciprocity: repairing a broken water pipe, teaching a teen how to back up audio files, sitting quietly while Maria’s grandmother sang a lullaby in Diné bizaad — not recording it, just holding space for it.

💡 Practical Takeaways: What Readers Can Apply to Their Own Travels

This wasn’t a trip I could replicate — and that’s the point. how to interview the makers of crude independence isn’t a template. It’s a posture. But certain practices translated directly:

• 🔍Verify access protocols before departure. Tribal lands have distinct permitting systems — Diné permits are issued online, but Hopi access requires written invitation from a clan representative. Never assume ‘public land’ status applies uniformly.
• 🤝Lead with labor, not questions. Arrive prepared to contribute physically: repair, harvest, build, cook. Ask ‘What needs doing?’ before ‘Can I record?’
• 📝Consent is ongoing, not transactional. Maria reviewed every audio clip I digitized — not once, but twice — and vetoed two segments where tone shifted. Consent isn’t signed at arrival; it’s renegotiated daily.
• ☕Slow down your timeline. I’d budgeted five days. Eleven were necessary. Rushing erodes trust faster than poor preparation. Build buffer time — not for delays, but for relationship depth.

Most importantly: don’t seek ‘the makers’ as subjects. Seek them as co-archivists. Their knowledge isn’t content — it’s context. And context can’t be extracted. It must be tended.

⭐ Conclusion: How This Trip Changed My Perspective

I used to think ethical travel meant minimizing harm — avoiding exploitative tours, paying fairly, respecting sacred sites. This trip redefined ethics as participation. Not participation in a performance of culture, but in its maintenance. The ‘makers of crude independence’ weren’t creating art about resistance. They were resisting through making — weaving, filming, singing, teaching — in ways that couldn’t be commodified because they had no audience beyond their own community’s needs. My presence wasn’t justified by my interest. It was justified only by my willingness to disappear into the work — to become background noise, not foreground narrative.

Now, when I plan travel, I ask different questions: Who holds the archive? Who decides what gets remembered? What labor sustains this place — and how can I share it, not observe it? Crude independence isn’t a destination. It’s a practice — one measured not in miles traveled, but in humility earned.