(flute music)
(eagle screeching)
My family has lived here in Monument Valley
for a long time.
(flute music)
I am from the (speaking foreign language) clan,
which means red-streaked bottom clan.
My name is Lorenzo Begay.
I am a Navajo.
A few years ago a man showed up
with old pictures of my family.
The pictures were from a movie that we had never seen.
I never thought that pictures would change anyone's life.
But that was before the return of the Navajo Boy.
(singing in foreign language)
I had no way of knowing
where the road was going to take us.
All I was doing was taking this guy to different places,
to different people's homes,
to show them the movie of the Navajo Boy.
(singing in foreign language)
(speaking in foreign language)
[Bill] Hi, I'm Bill Kennedy.
[Translator] This is Jimmy.
Nice to meet you, Jimmy.
My father did a movie of you when you were a young boy,
called Navajo Boy.
I thought I was never going to see that movie.
It's about 29 minutes, the movie,
there is no sound to it.
It's a silent movie.
My father would narrate it when he would show it to people,
and explain what was happening.
I asked him to give me
all of the information about this movie,
and he never did.
And he died suddenly.
I didn't understand anything about it,
but I wanted to learn from your voice.
What you think of that?
(speaking in foreign language)
(all laughing)
[Bill] That was you.
Cannot go back younger.
I don't know, maybe we both can, huh?
(all laughing)
Remember, we're the same age.
That's you Jimmy, right there.
[Jimmy] Slow motion.
Had a really hard time to make a movie out there.
At that time it was hot, just crying.
Both my tear was coming down.
Keep going with the donkey.
I was earning only about 25 cents.
Just little bit, I remember it.
[Bill] Then you find out
that some of your relatives are ill.
You get on a little burro,
and ride to the medicine man.
(speaking in foreign language)
And you bring the medicine man back to your hogan,
and they perform a ritual.
How long did the movie take?
(speaking in foreign language)
[Translator] About one whole week.
[Jimmy] It was hard work.
(singing in foreign language)
[Bill] We could go over to see your hogan,
yes?
[Jimmy] Hogan.
Can you say Hogan?
-Hogan? -Yeah.
This is my number one hogan we made.
Do you ever stay in here?
Yeah, we used to stay all the winter.
My father usually told,
always the door is out the east way.
So when you get out in the morning,
get up and run into it,
as far as you can.
So when you get old, you get stronger.
That's what he told me, when I was young.
[Bill] Do you mind if we take a look at your sheep?
[Jimmy] Yeah.
When I was 10 years old, I used to have
-about 340. -(bells clanging)
Now it's really small, only about 33,
but now I'm just taking it easy.
It's all that I've got left here,
taking care of the sheep.
(gate rattling)
(bells clanging)
One day he was herding sheep.
He said if something happens with the sheep,
they all die, somehow can he survive.
So he sneaked out to work
as a uranium mine worker over there.
He told the boss he was 15 years old.
He was only 14.
So he started working there for two months,
and on his payday, he bought his clothes and a suitcase,
and he took off to school.
(flute music)
[Lorenzo] After leaving Jimmy's house,
I took Bill to meet my mom.
My mom was the oldest
of all the children in "Navajo Boy."
She remembers the most.
My name is Bill Kennedy.
Nice to meet you.
-This is Elsie Begay. -Elsie May Begay.
Nice to meet you, Elsie.
This is Bill.
My maiden name was Cly, C-L-Y.
-Your maiden name, Cly? -Cly, C-L-Y.
[Bill] Okay, so I remember
that you were in the movie you'll see.
[Lorenzo] This was the first time
that anyone brought pictures back to the family.
[Elsie] I haven't seen that.
(speaking in foreign language)
[Lorenzo] We discussed using the old footage
to make a different kind of film.
Our own documentary.
(speaking in foreign language)
(children laughing and shouting)
(speaking in foreign language)
And that's my grandma, fixing my hair.
[Bill] And that's your hair, that's you,
-isn't it? -Yeah, that's me.
My grandma used to comb my hair
and put up my hair like this,
and used to say that if we have long hair,
that's how the rain comes.
But right now today, they cut their hair.
Maybe that's why we don't have the rain.
(Elsie laughing)
[Bill] Now who is this?
That's my mom, that's holding the baby.
My brother, his name is John Wayne Cly.
He was two years old when they adopt him.
I haven't seen him.
No, I haven't seen him.
[Bill] Oh.
I think he was the baby at that time.
And his name is John Wayne?
John Wayne Cly, C-L-Y.
[Bill] He never came back?
He never came back.
[Lorenzo] The old film brought back memories.
We were in so many pictures.
In the 1920s,
a white man came here and began trading with the Navajos.
To build his business and to attract tourists,
Harry Goulding began taking pictures
of my great-grandparents, Happy and Willie Cly.
(singing in foreign language)
Goulding brought lots of camera people to meet my family.
Goulding even brought John Ford,
the director who made all the famous westerns
with John Wayne.
When other Navajos didn't trust Goulding,
it was my family that accepted him.
My family helped him learn the language and the culture.
Goulding called us Cly.
He was just trying to say
(speaking in foreign language)
our family name, which means lefthanded.
The Navajo call him the
(speaking in foreign language)
He got a lot of sheep, he's told me.
When the Navajo needs some grocery,
they give some sheep to Harry Goulding.
That's how Harry Goulding got so many sheep,
maybe about 5,000 head.
Every day, Harry Goulding would come to our home,
and bring tours,
and we'd do some weaving, and carting,
and spin wool, and ground corn.
And my grandma used to make a fry bread for them too.
(fry bread sizzling)
(bells clanging)
Sometimes we'd herd the sheep too, for them.
And take the sheep up there to the sand dune,
and bring them down to the water.
That's what we'd do, almost every day.
Sometime he say these peoples come
from California, or Chicago,
like that, far away.
One time I was riding a horse on the sand dune.
They take a movie out of that.
[Lorenzo] All of the boys in "Navajo Boy"
went to work mining uranium.
My uncle Bernie was one of them.
(pastoral orchestra music)
Our history with uranium is in the movies too,
but they didn't tell anyone how it would change our lives.
[Narrator] The Navajos love the soil
from which they earn their livelihood,
and the various animals,
the horses, sheep, and goats they raise on the land.
Their hearts are as big as the area in which they live.
Recently, vast deposits of uranium
have been discovered in the Navajo Hills.
This rare natural resource is becoming
increasingly important in the development of atomic power.
[Lorenzo] My mom and my uncle Bernie were just little kids
when their mom and their grandma both got lung disease.
(speaking in foreign language)
[Narrator] Today's people are living on ground
hallowed by their ancestors,
looking forward to the future of many brilliant tomorrows.
(pastoral orchestra music)
[Lorenzo] When nobody could take care of John Wayne Cly,
white missionaries took him away from home.
My mom passed away when he was about maybe two years old.
White men came,
and took him.
They told my grandma and my grandpa
that they going to take away the baby.
My grandpa told me
that he's gonna be back,
And that he's gonna be back when he's six years old.
And they took him.
They didn't bring him back when he was six years old.
That's why my grandpa told me.
[Lorenzo] Pictures and movies
of my great-grandma Happy Clyde
were taken every day in the 1940s and '50s.
One magazine called Happy Cly
the most photographed woman in America.
But in most pictures she's only identified
as the Navajo woman.
(singing in foreign language)
[Narrator] This land is barely touched
by the civilization around it,
almost untouched by time itself.
For this is the whole of the Navajo,
the largest Indian reservation in America.
Here the people live almost precisely
as their ancestors did 100 years ago.
Into this land that time forgot,
John Ford brought men and equipment to film the searchers,
to capture the color, tradition, and echoes of the past.
The danger and excitement of the days
when the fierce Comanche Indians
cut a bloody trail through the rest.
The now peaceful Navajo
have a war-like history of their own,
and even today are considered
the finest horsemen in the world.
So all it took was a little war paint
to convert them into hard riding, bloodthirsty Comanches.
My grandfather Herbert Clyde Sr.
told us what it was like
being in the movies.
(speaking in foreign language)
[Narrator] Hollywood bulldozes its way
into Arizona wastelands,
to film one of the screen's greatest Western dramas,
"The Searchers."
(speaking in foreign language)
[Narrator] Just as there was a century ago,
the staff of life of the Navajo is still corn,
still being ground into meal by the same process
that has been used for generations.
Nor has the Navajo accepted the advances of modern medicine.
The Navajo still puts his faith in the healing powers
of these mystic symbols.
Do you feel that this ceremony is authentic,
or do you feel it's not authentic?
How do you feel about that?
[Lorenzo] It's authentic.
(speaking in foreign language)
[Elsie] Yes, the ceremony is real.
My grandma is not breathing right,
or the little boy's not breathing right.
Then you had the medicine man singing or praying for you,
and then you had to believe that that song or that prayer
are gonna heal you.
That's what my grandma's thinking,
that he's going to get well.
But some morning in Navajo, we say,
(speaking in foreign language)
Some of the medicine men,
they don't want to be filmed, or take a picture.
They don't want it.
But this one said it's okay,
-so they film. -(dog barking)
That's my grandma's kids here.
[Bill] Now, is this Happy Cly?
[Elsie] Yeah, this is Happy Cly.
[Bill] And it's the same lady,
[Elsie] That's the same lady in the movie.
And this is me doing the carting again.
The hogan is right here, it was sitting here,
after your grandma was doing the spinning.
And then she used to cook here,
make a fire, and cook on top of it.
And then there's, the stove pot was here,
and the stove is still waiting for her.
[Lorenzo] My mom still uses postcards
to show our family history.
How about this one?
-I haven't seen this one. -This one has a donkey.
The sheep herding.
[Elsie] This is our sheep,
[Family Member] Yours?
[Elsie] Mm hm.
[Family Member] Your grandpa's?
[Elsie] My grandpa, grandma, my mom.
Everybody in the family.
Four or five sheep each.
(speaking in foreign language)
[Narrator] Perhaps the most desperate
physical need of the country is water.
The annual rainfall is meager,
and little provision has been made for conserving it.
(speaking in foreign language)
I can see it.
Did you always had to put your hair in a bun?
Yeah.
What'd you do for a friend?
(speaking in foreign language)
(Elsie laughing)
(singing in foreign language)
(speaking in foreign language)
(flute music)
(speaking in foreign language)
[Elsie] I used to do that, when I was a little girl.
(speaking in foreign language)
[Lorenzo] My parents separated when I was 16.
My mom raised us by herself.
In wintertime, she worked as a housekeeper.
In the summer, she worked as a tour guide.
(water splashing)
Now she sells jewelry with us at the mall.
(flute music)
We all make our own jewelry.
Look at that necklace right there.
The big one?
-Yeah. -Oh wow.
-That's pretty. -Everything from Navajo.
So where are you guys from?
I'm from Kansas, and then Missouri.
Missouri.
And we're studying the Indians,
'cause we just got finished reading
"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee."
[Lorenzo] Oh really?
That's, that's good.
People from all over the world come through my shop,
and I like to find out what they do in their country.
Yeah, that's the only place.
-It's unbelievable. -Did you make most of these?
My son Lorenzo did.
[Lorenzo] It's like playing down in Phoenix.
A lot of them come back because of the spiritual feelings
in this valley.
People just come back year after year.
There's a lot of Navajo tour guides.
Everybody has their own story about things,
the rock formation, the landscape,
and the tradition around it.
Everybody has their own way of looking at things.
(singing in foreign language)
People call this the Three Sisters, but Navajo,
we just call it
(speaking in foreign language)
which means many rocks.
(singing in foreign language)
And this is Cly Butte,
which was named after my great-grandfather.
In Navajo, we call Monument Valley
(speaking in foreign language)
meaning sand dunes around the rock formation.
I wonder what it would be like
if there was no tours around.
(tourists chatting)
Now that there's a lot of people,
there's always noise wherever you go.
I always wonder how many people go through here.
I feel like they're not invading,
I travel all over different countries,
and I wanna know what their life is like.
So you lived on the reservation all your life?
Yeah, in the Monument Valley,
-here. -In Monument Valley.
Yeah, I was born here, near Totem Pole on Sand Dune.
I was born there.
And your name is?
I'm Elsie May Begay.
[Tourist] Ah, Begay, okay.
-Elsie May Cly Begay. -Yeah.
I'm a movie star with John Wayne.
(all laughing)
[Tourist] She's a movie star with John Wayne.
(all laughing)
[Lorenzo] Like all Navajo women,
my mom is strong and independent.
The community water pump is about five miles
from my mom's house.
We all get our drinking water from the same place.
There's about 200 people who live in this area.
It takes about 10 minutes to fill one barrel.
(valve squeaking)
My niece Sherry learns to be patient filling the barrels.
The government came here a few years ago
to check the safety of our drinking water,
but they never came back with the results.
Stop!
Dealing with water, it takes a lot of time.
It does take hours.
It's kind of hard.
This one right there, the blue one probably.
Look right there, it's coming out!
(water pouring)
(flute music)
My grandma and my grandpa used to say
that this is our mom here, the land.
And the sun is our father.
This has to be carried on generation to generation.
Like our clan,
(speaking in foreign language)
(singing in foreign language)
[Lorenzo] The Navajo Nation Museum invited my family
to come to its grand opening,
and show the highlights of our documentary.
Hi.
How are you?
Nice to see you again.
(speaking in foreign language)
[Lorenzo] We were excited
to tell our story for the first time.
And Bill was happy to see his father's film was helping us.
Nice to see you.
[Bill] When you're 10 years old,
you don't know what your father's doing.
You only look at him as a man, and you're a young boy.
And by me going back and looking at this,
and figuring it out,
I understood a lot about my father
that I didn't know before.
(applause)
(speaking in foreign language)
(applause)
(speaking in foreign language)
(applause)
(singing in foreign language)
(speaking in foreign language)
[Narrator] Royalties from the uranium mines
are providing much needed cash
for the Navajo prospector, and for the tribe.
Many of the Navajo men are employed in the uranium mines,
where they are valued as conscientious workers.
[Lorenzo] The mining company
didn't tell our fathers and uncles
that uranium could kill them,
or that it would be used to make atomic bombs.
(bomb exploding)
Radiation, they've got lots of radiation in there,
they shut the mind down.
'Cause this radiation is really danger for the people
that live down below.
You know, my whole family lived down there.
My sister Elsie, my uncle, and all is my family here.
[Lorenzo] The company that was involved
with these uranium mines,
they should come back and clean up the area.
They weren't thinking about the people,
the Navajos and what my family's going through.
(speaking in foreign language)
Two months ago, these people that came,
they told us to do a testing on the radiation
on the uranium mine.
They said the radiation is too high
for us to live around here, so we might have to relocate.
What you're seeing here is the backdrop of the area
where the Cly family lives.
It's now a contaminated area,
by the tailings out of the mines.
And the children are still playing there,
and still being exposed.
This is part of the horror of this whole tragedy.
[Lorenzo] The government apologized
to the Navajo uranium miners,
and promised compensation to everyone who got lung cancer.
My uncle Bernie wanted to make his case in person.
Uranium would change my family's future, once again.
I got a surgery right here,
here, all over my belly here.
And they put all my rib up, and then they work on my lung.
They cut my lung in half.
[Journalist] So did you try to file a claim?
What is that?
Did you try to get your money?
Yeah, I tried to get my money, yeah.
Have you gotten any compensation?
Have you gotten any money
for that lung they took out of you?
[Bernie] No.
[Journalist] Nothing?
[Bernie] No, not yet.
Because of this?
Because the cigarette is right here in front of me.
This is not true, you know.
I don't smoke white man's tobacco or cigarette.
He said he wasn't smoking white man's cigarettes,
-but it was -Traditional tobacco.
traditional tobacco.
And, but yet scientifically,
we should be able to determine
that this is not a factor in the prog, right.
[Bernie] It's right here.
[Official] All the way back, all the way through here.
Bernie ought to qualify,
but he doesn't,
because they will not recognize
or accept any direct evidence from him.
And that's where the real injustice comes,
in a case like this.
(speaking in foreign language)
(flute music)
When I was little kid, my mom got lung trouble.
She passed away in Tucson.
I think the same problem.
-From the radiation. -Yeah.
We was little kids.
My little brother, white guys took away
because nobody took care of him.
So we didn't see him yet.
Maybe he's a man now.
(flute music)
[Lorenzo] A couple of weeks later,
a newspaper article came out with a story
about Uncle Bernie and the return of Navajo Boy.
What happened next was totally unexpected.
I called the editor of the newspaper,
and he found out it was about my family.
He gave me a name of Violet, who I found out to be my niece.
And she told me that her grandfather and grandmother
were Happy and Willie.
When I was small, I was told about them.
Happy and Willie were your grandmother and grandfather.
And when I saw their name in the article,
I kind of knew that maybe this was
the right road to follow.
I live in Zuni, with my wife and kids.
My name is John Wayne Cly.
I'm 43 years old,
I think.
I never could get a birth certificate.
[Elsie] John Wayne came to our house,
and what's the name of the baby, he said,
and he said he don't have any name made yet.
So he said, I'll make the name,
and his name gonna be John Wayne Cly.
So we call him John Wayne.
[Lorenzo] We were surprised to find out
that my uncle John lived in Zuni, New Mexico,
a four hour drive from Monument Valley.
We were anxious to meet him, and hear his story.
After I was picked up in Monument Valley
by the missionaries,
I was taken to a mission home.
It's in New Mexico, in the Continental Divide.
I was raised with two foster brothers
and two foster sisters.
My foster brother's name was Ron Hudson,
and my best friend's name was Robert Goulet.
So there was three of us.
Robert Goulet, Rock Hudson, and John Wayne.
The reason I never had a handle on Indian culture
was because I never was introduced to it
when I was young,
and nobody around me knew anything about it.
The people I lived with,
they didn't even want me speaking Navajo,
for some reason, they didn't want
me and my foster brothers and sisters talking it.
This is a place I used to live when I was small.
The building has changed.
The people I lived with told me
I could call them mom and dad,
or you know, and it didn't work.
It didn't fit.
All my life, I never was really attached to anyone.
I fell out of this tree once when I was small.
I lost my footing,
and there used to be a barbed wire fence
that ran acrossed here to this tree,
and I fell on it and I gashed my arm pretty deep,
acrossed here.
And I got spanked for that.
Even though I was injured.
When I was small,
I used to come out to this tree.
But the tree grew some.
We would sit here and count cars.
I would wonder if my family or any relatives
would go cruising by and see me sitting there.
And one time I wondered if maybe John Wayne himself
would come cruising by,
so that I could ask him, you know,
take me back,
'cause you're the only guy that knows the way back home.
(soft piano music)
After I graduated, the people at the mission home,
they told me that I was old enough to be on my own,
and told me to take off and not look back.
So that's when I was on my own.
And I think things became a little tougher for me,
and I had to find out how to do things on my own,
because they really never showed me
how life is beyond high school,
or being alone, being on your own.
So I had to do all this by myself,
and I think all this really worked on me,
and that's when I started
hitting the bottle a little harder.
(flute music)
After I got out high school,
I came here to work in this uranium mine.
I knew I had to find my family,
and make amends with my life and theirs,
but I really didn't know if they would accept me back
as being part of them,
or had I been gone too long to be remembered,
there was just all kind of thoughts in my mind, yeah.
(melancholy music)
Then I go into Richardson's, it's a big store,
and on their walls they have these pictures
of elderly Navajo couples.
And when I first saw those,
I would look around and see if I could identify any,
or if there was any names on them that I might know.
But, no.
(flute music)
I've been telling all my kids and my grandkids
that I had a brother somewhere.
In the ceremony, when I pray,
I always say that my brother's gonna come home.
That's what I said.
And even in church, I always pray
that he's going be home some of these days,
and he's coming back today.
I'm very happy about it.
[Bernie] And I have dinner for my brother John,
all the family come around to see him in person again.
We've haven't seen him in a long time,
since he was a year old.
People come around, and we're going to talk to him
about some of our background and everything.
We really love him.
That's what I lost, I guess,
my culture, my language,
the way of life that the Navajo people live.
The things that are taught to people
by their grandparents and parents, sisters and brothers,
they all help out.
(fry bread sizzling)
(Elsie flipping dough)
The missionaries who took me from the reservation
had some letters.
I've read all of 'em.
Happy Cly wrote,
I don't know if she wrote this herself,
or had somebody write it, but it says,
"When I get real well, I want John Wayne back."
This is a letter from John Wayne.
"Thank you for writing me about my little Navajo namesake.
"I'm glad to know that he is being cared for
"along with other Navajo children.
"I hope the check and clothes will be of help.
"Best of luck.
"Sincerely, John Wayne."
It made me feel like these people told a lie to me,
and told my family a lie,
it kind of angered me a little bit.
Maybe I could have went back and lived there.
I never thought that I would see a family reunion,
with my family, you know,
because I thought all was lost.
I felt like there was nothing left to look for.
(flute music)
(children shouting and laughing)
The return of the Navajo boy,
me returning back to my family on the Navajo reservation,
you know, I haven't seen them for 40 years, or more.
(cow mooing)
[Elsie] Grandpa, the relatives,
(speaking in foreign language)
[John] My family was worried
that it may not be the right person,
but I was just anxious to meet them.
[Family Member] Here's Johnny!
[Elsie] Welcome home!
-Welcome home! -(applause)
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
I'm your sister.
(Elsie crying)
I knew that someday I would reach you.
And you were out there, on your own.
(indistinct)
[John] For the first time I could hold my sister,
you know, my blood sister,
the sister that came from the same home I did.
(indistinct)
[Elsie] I always prayed for you to come home.
(Elsie crying)
(speaking in foreign language)
And that's your sister, Ruth.
Here's your brother, too.
And this is my daughter.
-Do you remember me? -Hi.
My oldest daughter.
It's nice to meet you.
This is my daughter too,
My youngest one.
[Family Member] Lorenzo?
Lorenzo,
this is my son, too.
[Lorenzo] I never thought I'd see myself
in the same picture with my uncle John.
(all laughing)
(speaking in foreign language)
(cheerful music)
(family members chatting)
[Lorenzo] Let's all give him a good hand.
(applause)
(cheerful music)
I never thought that pictures would change anyone's life,
but that was before the return of the Navajo boy.
(all laughing)
I just wanted to tell you all as a family
that it's really nice to be back where I came from.
It's really nice to see all of you,
knowing that you belong to me, instead of somebody else.
(all laughing)
The gifts are great.
Thank you, thank you.
I hope I wasn't a disappointment to you in any way.
All this time, I have been looking for a way to get home,
and I needed to meet my sisters.
They were like the ones I really wanted to see.
There was something missing in my life all the time,
and I knew that was this.
(singing in foreign language)
[Announcer] For more information on
"The Return of Navajo Boy"
and other Independent Lens shows,
visit PBS online, at pbs.org.
(uplifting music)
To order a video cassette of "The Return of Navajo Boy,"
call PBS Home Video at 1-800-PLAY-PBS.
(flute music)
(eagle screeching)