Yaqui Deer Dancer: Homage to the Ancestors at Scottsdale City Hall Mario Martinez		Print This Page Email This Page

Location

Scottsdale City Hall, Kiva

3939 N. Drinkwater Blvd.

Scottsdale, AZ 85251

Description

Completed: 1999

Media: Acrylic on canvas. 5' x 5'

This vibrant desert painting portrays a Pascua Yaqui Deer Dancer celebrating its ancestral past. The sun burns brightly on the Yaqui dancer who is adorned with a deer headdress and surrounded by stylized, desert plants and shrubs. Other objects within the painting refer to the culture of the Pascua Yaqui tribe, and the importance of their ancestral history.

Martinez, a Yaqui, grew up in the Penjamo area in south Scottsdale. Penjamo, the smallest of six Yaqui settlements in Arizona, today is four cul-de-sacs located between Vista Del Camino Park and 77th Street.

"Yaqui Deer Dancer is a tribute to all my Yaqui ancestors and to those who settled and lived out their lives in 20th century Scottsdale. It honors the economic, political, social and cultureal contributions the Yaqui people have made to Scottsdale and the Valley at large.

One of our most enduring traditions, Yaqui Deer Dancer, dances in my interpretation of the Flower World (sea ania), a magical, mythical, and beautiful world, a mirror image of the Sonoran desert. The Talking Tree or Talking Stick legend stands next to the Deer Dancer and tells the creation story. It was the Talking Stick that foretold the coming of a new religion (Catholicism), new technologies, new social problems, wars and death.

When you look at the talking Stick in the painting, you'll see many images portraying the predictions. They mark a historical boundary between the present day Yaquis and the ancient Yaquis, call the Surem. It is said that the Surem were an enchanted little people and never died. They rejected all that the Talking Stick predicted and returned to the wilderness to lead an existence unique to the rest of the world."  – Mario Martinez

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