Roanna “Rowie” Shebala is Diné (Navajo) and A:Shiwi (Zuni). She earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM. Shebala’s works combine story, poetry, and performance in her aesthetics. She has been on a number of National Poetry Slam teams and competed nationally and internationally with her spoken word art. She is also a member of Saad Bee Hozho: Diné Writers’ Collective.
Paul Lantz
Untitled (Church in Rio Grande Valley)
About 1930s
Oil on canvas
40” W x 26” H
Purchased by in 1939 McKinley County for the Courthouse.
Audio description for individuals with low vision. Audio descriptions produced by Art Beyond Sight.
This is an untitled painting by artist Paul Lantz, depicting a New Mexican church. The work is 40 inches wide and 26 inches high, painted with oil on canvas. For more about this painting style and the history of this painting, read the “About the Artwork” section above.
The painting shows a small church in what we know is the Rio Grande river valley of New Mexico. It sits at the base of two large hills, both brownish red and dotted with green trees or shrubs. Above the hills is a blue sky filled with three different white cloud formations—billowing cumulus and popcorn-shaped stratus clouds directly behind the hills, and wispy cirrus painted with sweeping brush strokes flowing above.
The rectangle-shaped church has brown walls, a white rectangular door, a square dormer window above the entrance, a gray pitched roof, and a short steeple with a cross on top. The white door of the church opens into a courtyard enclosed by a brown adobe wall and brown wood door. The straight lines and square corners of the church building contrast with the soft, undulating curves of the adobe wall. On either side of the church building are unconnected sections of wooden post and rail fencing that are falling apart in places, appearing older than the church which looks newly built.
The ground in the foreground of the painting in front of the church is smooth, brown earth, with small patches of green grass and the occasional shrub. In the lower right corner, bristly branches of a green bush poke up through a pile of sharp-edged, glinting light brown rocks.
In the foreground a lone woman walks across the painting from right to left on a dirt road in front of the church. She wears a red, short-sleeved shift and she is in mid-step. Her torso is turned toward the left and she walks forward, while her head turns back in the direction of the church behind her.
In 2008, Mass Graves of Indigenous Children were found around Indian Residential Schools in Canada, turning attention to the schools in the US as those numbers rise as well. In October 2024, President Biden made a formal apology to all Indigenous people for the use of Indian Residential Schools to implement the cultural genocide and assimilation of Native Americans.
The hills with red clay and brown roots coming out of the cedar trees
almost match her red dress.
A dress made with linen from the nuns who traded for corn.
Small rocks and pebbles slide under her moccasins,
as she followed the dirt road to the
steeple in the distance with a red door.
She hears children’s laughter,
hoping to hear familiar voices.
Her heart sinks to the wind whispering songs
with a slight whistle through the cedar branches,
yucca swaying against the wind with resistance.
There were no children.
Left on her doorframe was a letter in a language she could not read.
Not knowing where her child was, she took this paper
to the local diner, asking for translation.
Hand trembling, she holds out the notice to
the boy who was forced to learn to read.
Using the language that he will never teach his children in fear of backlashing
he tells her, “Your child was taken to place they where they try to make them forget—
Forget their language,
Forget their home,
Forget themselves.”
She hears from relatives of places with
crosses, pews, staples
where they were told to pray.
Some would come back with blade cut hair,
and their feet covered with soles that didn’t hold their imprints
like their moccasins.
There in the distance,
following the night sky, with cedar berries under his tongue
his hair cut short,
the rim of his shoes digging in his ankles,
he could smell the recent wet dirt, sage, and juniper.
He found his way home to the mountains in the north.
She found a pair of shoes covered in the red clay from the hills.
A fire coming from her home as she enters—there he is, slipping his moccasins on,
grounding his stance in the earth, creating his footprints around their fireplace.
He survived.
This is his third time escaping,
Never to be taken again.
Listen to Roanna recite the poem:
Roanna Shebala
Red Clay
2025
Poem (written and spoken word)
Gallup’s New Deal art collection consists of over 120 objects created, purchased, or donated from 1933 to 1942 through New Deal federal art programs administered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to support artists during the Great Depression.
The Gallup New Deal Art Virtual Museum features three types of exhibits, combining traditional and non-traditional approaches to illuminate academic, creative, and individual understandings.
Gallup’s New Deal art collection includes works by a demographically, professionally, and stylistically diverse group of named and unnamed artists.
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