monument Valley arizona

Monument Valley is a tribal Navajo park on the border of Arizona and Utah. The park is set up much like a National Park with guided tours of the park and a gift shop with tourquoise jewelry, t-shirts and books. The 'monuments' of Monument Valley are sandstone buttes carved by wind and rain for thousands of years. They have been used as backdrops for countless Hollywood movies including the most recent "Lone Ranger" movie. The Navajo reservation covers approximately 30,000 square miles, primarily in northern Arizona.	The 4" video monitor is powered by its own battery pack. A DigiViewer plays a Lone Ranger video animation from an SD card. The DigiViewer is powered by four 1.5 V double A batteries. The afternoon sun caused the battery pack to overheat, so it became necessary to allow the battery to cool down before the animation could be viewed on the screen. The location of the performance was off a trail below the Park Visitor Center and the parking lot away from the vacationers, campers and site seers.

The Holiday Inn in Chinle, Arizona is on the Navajo Reservation. Chinle, Arizona, is the gateway to Canyon de Chelly where several periods of Native American culture lived dating from 350 A.D. to 1300 A.D. The franchises and chain stores in Chinle are run and staffed by Navajos including the Burger King and the Holiday Inn. Caravanning 'motorcyclists' ride down the highway before pulling into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn where travellers can swim in the pool and eat in the restaurant before retiring in the evening beneath clean white sheets. The motorcycles are lined up on the diagonal in the parking lot each tilting in the same direction. The next morning they will leave in single file before entering the highway to let insects smash against their visored helmets.

The video of the Lone Ranger and Silver used in the installation was excerpted from the original movie "The Lost City of Gold" (1958). This video animation was originally created for the exhibition "Horse Tales" at the 2001 Katonah Museum as one of several individual video 'installations'. Before the movies and television the Lone Ranger and Tonto starred in a radio program where kemosabe and Tonto fought evil bandits. The term kemosabe became famous after it was used in the show the Lone Ranger by the fictional character Tonto. It is sometimes translated as "trusty scout" or "faithful friend" in Potawatomi. Jay Silverheels played the original Tonto. Johnny Depp played Tonto in the 2013 Disney remake.