Ronnie is fifty-four years old, born and raised in Zuni. A:shiwi was his first language, taught to him by his grandparents. He is a medicine man for the Eagle Plume Down Medicine Society and a head rain priest, along with his grandfather, Smith Cachini Senior. Together, they select the dates for fasting during the summer and winter solstices and participate in ceremonies and prayers to renew the earth. “We offer the prayer sticks in asking our ancestors to protect the land and to nourish Mother Earth with an abundance of moisture. . . . If we’re still fasting when it snows or rains, it’s a great feeling, because they have accepted our prayers and our prayer sticks. . . . Whatever moisture we get, we count it as a blessing.”

In his map of the reservation lands, Ho’n A:wan Dehwa:we (Our Land), Ronnie painted places and waterways of cultural significance tied to the A:shiwi migration history. His painting features snow-capped plateaus, ancient farming villages, buttes, and lakes, all of which rise as soft islands of color from a green and yellow background. Modern roads intersect the canvas as thin black lines. Deep blue, angled feathers hang from the rim of a golden basket.

Ho’n A:wan Dehwa:we looks nothing like a typical road atlas. It in no way resembles the Google Earth view pulled up on your phone with the swipe of a screen. It is full of color and texture and story, painted onto wide canvas.

“A conventional map takes you to places—it will tell you how many miles and the fastest route. But the Zuni maps show these significant places that only a Zuni would know,” says Ronnie, “especially if you’re in a religious leadership position: you see the prayers that we say, the prayers that we hold. . . . I incorporated a basket and prayer sticks to signify that. The prayer sticks that we make and that we offer to our ancestors are what holds this village together, which holds the people together. That’s what my painting means.”

During the winter solstice, the prayer that relates the Zuni creation and migration history is told in its entirety. Mallery Quetawki grew up on the Zuni Reservation, hearing the prayer every year in the short days of winter. She did not, for a long time, think of this prayer as much more than a beautiful poem. Of a younger generation, Mallery did not grow up speaking Zuni fluently as Ronnie and Jim did and could not always glean the full meaning of the words being chanted and sung. The places sung about often remained abstract in her mind.

“We misconstrue some of the meanings because we don’t know what some of these words mean. We don’t speak complete Zuni anymore. We’ve mixed with English, we’ve mixed with Spanish, and other languages that have come along.” When the prayers were incorporated into the Zuni maps, however, Mallery was able to relate to them in a way she never had before. “It’s a really great learning experience to actually visualize these prayers, to put prayer into art and into a literal map. Culturally, it allows us to reconnect to our past.”

Mallery was in her second year of a dual degree in biology and art at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque when she heard about the Zuni mapping project through her father, who was serving on the cultural advisory committee and encouraged her to submit a sketch.

“I was selected to paint our connection between our village and the Grand Canyon area.”