DuBre, Merlene

In March 1979, James Wright, Head of UNM's Fine Arts Library and Director of the Archive of Southwestern Music, was given a grant by the University's Research Allocations Committee. Its purpose was to support Wright's efforts to record the musical culture of the Southwest, especially the ceremonies of the Navajo in the area of White Cone, Arizona. But this project soon grew into something quite different--the documentation of the forced relocation of many Navajos and some Hopis as a result of the Congressionally-imposed resolution of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute in 1974.

Wright originally focused on White Cone because of the ties that his assistant, Merlene DuBre, had there. Her father, Francis Powell, had run the White Cone Trading Post for many years, and was eventually adopted into the Navajo Tribe; DuBre herself was raised on the reservation, and still had many friends in the area. As it happened, White Cone was located in the Joint Use Area, a huge and long-disputed tract which, according to the provisions of Public Law 93-531, would soon be partitioned equally between the Navajos and the Hopis.

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