LISA LAW
HEAD
The late thomas Lyttle (psychedelic Monographs and Essays and Psychedelics reconsidered) wrote of Amanita in
High Times. 2003.
High Times. 2003.
Lyttle interviews Lisa Law
FYI -TL
By Simone Lazerri Ellis
Lisa Law celebrated her 31st year as a professional photographer in
1993 with the release of her award-winning documentary Flashing on
the Sixties in the home video market. Flashing on The Sixties won the
GoId Plaque Award at the l99I Chicago International film Festival,
was invited for a special screening at the 1991 Woman's in Film
Festival in Los Angeles, and won a Silver Award at the 1992 Worldfest
Houston. Lisa's book of the same title sold out two printings,
Her career as photographer began in the early sixties. Camera in
hand, and working, assistant to a manager in the rock and roll scene,
she began taking pictures, Whether she was back stage with The
Beatles, Peter Paul and Mary the Kingston Trio, Otis Redding, The
Lovin' Spoonful, The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, taking
promotional photographs of Janis Joplin and Big Brother, or at home
making dinner for house guests like Bob Dylan or Andy Warhol, her
passion for photography grew into a profession.
Since that time, Lisa has specialized in documenting history as
she has experienced it. As a mother, writer, photographer and social
activist, her work reveals distinctive communities of people,
including the homeless of San Francisco, the El Salvadorian
resistance against military oppression, and the Navajo and Hopi
nations struggling to preserve their ancestral religious sites,
traditions and land. She continues to document any musical events and
the musicians of today as well as current political activists. She
plans to publish three follow-up books of the subsequent decades in
scrapbook form like her book, Flashing on the Sixties.
Lisa's work has been published in over 50 books and on 22 record
albums, CDs and tapes. Her editorial credits include Time, Newsweek,
The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Rolling Stone, High
Times, Vogue, Esquire, and National Geographic.
The night I caught up with Lisa, she was in the bathtub. She was
known for using the tub as an office, after a long day of whatever
she might have been doing, almost always something physically active.
"Who's this?" she teased when I said hello. We'd been friends and a
co-media team, as well as neighbors in Santa Fe, where Lisa's made
home base for some 25 years, and where I lived for seven years before
moving to Montana. I started with my usual line; "You're going to
electrocute yourself that way." hearing the waves splashing around
her, referring to the cordless phone. Lisa laughed and assured me
that she is using the "old fashioned" kind with a cord these days.
I'd found her at home, in between her many documentary outings,
ensconced in her adobe "get away" on top of a mesa in New Mexico. As
one of the most sought after activist photographers and the media,
Lisa is always on the road. This woman never stops. At 54, she runs
circles around everyone who knows her, which is a lot of people, most
of them in the famous category. This isn't surprising, considering
her and position of being in demand to shoot from the hip with one
phone call, or to add the definitive photo to a project from stills
that she's shot year around for three decades.
Known especially for her photographs of the sixties (and the fact
that she and Hog Farmer Bonnie jean Romney headed up the team running
the communal kitchen at the original Woodstock), Lisa Law didn't stop
shooting when the American M16s stopped in Vietnam. She is also known
for her ceaseless activism today in the nineties. She has at her
fingertips one of the largest archives of images from America's
subculture sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, and when that
millennial clock ticks a moment into the 21st century, you can be
sure that Lisa will be somewhere on this earth doing something from
dawn until midnight that really needs doing in the most whole earth
way.
Lisa-The most inspirational woman in my life? When I was six, my
mother hired a black woman to take care of my brothers and me. Her
name was Cora Lee Waller. She was from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And
she would always say to me, (falsetto) "Lisa, you're so daring!" So
when I'm out there doing something bold, I always say, "Lisa, you're
so daring!'"
Simone-You really are so fearless. Do you think that quality has
given you the edge in your art? l'm thinking of a photo shoot I saw
you doing of the Native American trick riders, at Indian Market, and
you were right up there with those horses pounding past you, and
some times riders flying over your head, and you were just click ,
click, You loved it when one of the horses Reared up, right over
your head! Click click click click.
Can you tell me about your first camera?
I got my first camera from Frank Werber, the manager of the Kingston
Trio. My first good camera, Frank gave me.
Didn't you take pictures when you were a little girl?
Oh, you mean my first camera. I had a little box camera. When I was a
young girl I was always shooting with a little Brownie. So I was
photographing all my friends in school, and the parties we used to
put on in high school, and all my boyfriends, and we'd go to the
beach and I'd shoot ... I've got pictures of me standing next to my
Ford Fairlane, in a bathing suit, down by Malibu.
And then I became the photographer for Galileo high school, for the
newspaper. I have a picture of myself walking around the football
field with a camera on my shoulder, shooting for the newspaper.
That's really grueling, do you think that's where you started to
learn about your discipline?
I learned that I liked capturing special moments. I went to College
of Marin and took a course in photography, and learned about setting
up people for portraits. But I think one of the best teachers I ever
had
was Guy Cross. He taught me how to photograph large groups of people
and get them to look at you, how to excite them and get them to do
things that is fun. He also taught me how to deal with people when I
was doing their portraits, how to touch them so that they got softer.
You touch them on the shoulders, straighten them up a little, brush
their shirt or whatever it is you do. A personal touch that makes
them relax a little. What I like doing is really capturing the
moment. It's a challenge. It's like Janis Joplin leaning up against
the wall with Tommy Masters. I was kind of scared to take pictures of
Janis. I hadn't shot pictures of her in three years. I didn't want
to interrupt a private moment, but I picked up the camera and did a
few shots. Well, that shot of Janis Joplin leaning up against the
wall is one of my more famous shots of her. She is sitting on the
ground after spending the night with her mountain man that she found.
She'd come to New Mexico looking for a mountain man while she was
doing a cigar commercial. She said, "Lisa, you can help me. Help
me! I want me a mountain man. I'm tired of these city men!' And, I
said, "I know of one, he's up at Truchas, " and she came up and he
happened to be visiting, and she went off with him for the night.
The next morning she came back and she was wearing sandals with heels
and a feather boa and her paisley madras outfit, smiling and carrying
on and very, very pleased with herself. In the photograph she's
talking to Tommy Masters, who's Dylan's driver now; he's a horse
trainer. And it was a special moment.
Photography is a wonderful, wonderful thing, you know. I mean look,
you have a little, tiny little hole in the camera, and in comes the
image through this tiny little hole. And it comes through the lens
and goes to the back, where there's film. And the details of that
person contact the emulsion of that film. And then you go in
reverse, because of the light and the darkness coming off the image.
Then you print it and it makes a positive on paper. I mean this is
an unbelievable process, that you can get that image of that person
on film through this little tiny hole. Can you believe it? It's an
amazing process.
Big Mountain
In the late '70s I was asked to photograph the strip mining of Black
Mesa in Arizona for Rebel Magazine, which was published by Larry
Flynt. I made some contacts and ended up staying with Woody
Kedenihii and his family in Tuba City. He took me for a tour of
Black Mesa and showed me the process of strip mining. Then he showed
me where his parents lived and how they lived. That's when I learned
about the austere lifestyle of the Navajos. I was hooked. I love
helping people; now I could take on an entire tribe.
The U.S. government-it was Ford that did it, President Gerald Ford.
He signed into law Public Law 93-531 in 1972, during his
administration. This divided a joint use piece of land that was
occupied by the Navajos and Hopis into two sections. That section of
Big Mountain was where 10,000 Navajos lived.
It just so happened that Big Mountain was sitting on top of a huge
vein of coal. These Navajos were being asked to leave their land and
relocate, the excuse being a dispute between them and the Hopis.
The real dispute was, and continues to be, between traditional
Indians who are opposed to land and mineral development on their
lands, and their tribal councils and outside forces that support
development. Seven thousand Navajos relocated. Their lives were
permanently destroyed, for the Navajo language there is no word for
relocation. To relocate is to die.
Three thousand residents of Big Mountain decided not to move, to
resist the relocation. These were the people I chose to help, and I
wasn't the only one. 'There were hundreds of volunteers who lived
with the Navajos and supported their resistance.
I started working with Big Mountain Defense in Flagstaff, and ended up
being the am contact in Santa Fe, working together with other
wonderful, dedicated volunteers. I helped organize marches,
demonstrations, and lectures; collected donations, bought groceries
that were then distributed among the resistors to the relocation. We
delivered Choro sheep-that's the kind of sheep with more lanolin in
their wool, the original sheep that they had before their herds were
polluted with other kinds' Once we delivered Choro sheep in the
middle of the night. My daughter Pilar helped during one of these
deliveries. It was almost like a Tony Hillerman mystery. We drove in
tandem, twelve miles in the dark on a dirt road to meet the truck
hauling sheep from Utah Navajos would pull their trucks up to the
side of the semi, tie the legs of the sheep so they wouldn't move and
we would load three to four sheep into each truck.
Pilar and I documented this, me in black and white and she in color.
We only had one power pack with two cords, so we had to move together
as we photographed the event, almost like Siamese twins connected to
each other by umbilical cords. It was a special moment of bonding
between Pilar and me.
Tory Mudd directed an Oscar-winning film called Broken Rainbow a bout
the plight of the Dine (Navajo) on Big Mountain, and the fact that
the BIA put up a fence to divide the two pieces. It was moving
documentary, but seemed to have little effect on the government's and
the BIA's position. We were at a loss as what to do next.
Some of the members of the Big Mountain Defense got involved with a
weaving project that was helping many Dine resist relocation by
remaining self-sufficient. The ones I worked closely with were Goose,
Hidden Mountain, Arlene Hamilton and Martha Bourke.
You brought in J. R Dejoria. How did t that work? Because it's one
thing to just hand money over to a resistance camp...
He backed my documentary, Flashing on the Sixties, and that's how I
first met him. He gave me money the first time he met me. He liked my
book, Flashing on the Sixties, which is be g published for the third
time August of this year, and he thought if he were to make a movie
on the'60s he'd make it just like I did, so he backed me. So after
wards, he
Was sort of wedded to me; there was no way he could get rid of me. I
was in his house; I drove his cars. We were pals. This was when he
was first starting to make his fortune.
He makes J. P. Mitchell hair products, right?
He's the CEO of Paul Mitchell Hair Systems. He's got about twelve other
businesses. He's nonstop, this guy. It comes from being actually a
very poor Harley biker. Very poor. Poorer than I ever was.
How did he help the resistance?
He said to me, 'You said you wanted to do another project; you wanted
to do a movie on the Native Americans." And I said, "Actually the
movie's already been done, and I've been thinking, I'd rather help
them first hand, because a movie's not going to help them personally.
It only helps people understand what's happening, and then nothing
happens to them. They're still in the same situation." So I said,
"Let's help with the weaving project." That's a project I really
like, because you bring out the weavings and you bring back 90
percent of what they're worth, rather than taking them to a trading
post and getting only 40 to 60 percent of what they're worth. That
way you support the independence of the women who are weaving and
their families; you support their struggle by getting them
financially able to resist. And then you support them in any other
way they ask for help. Rather than doing something for them, you do
what they want.
He said, "I'll give you $10,000 to start with." I went to the weaving
project and asked them what they would do with $10,000. They said,
"We don't know", and I said, "Well you better have the answer by
tomorrow morning, because I'm going to give you ten thousand
dollars." Martha Bourke and Arlene Hamilton were helping the weaving
project.
Martha said, "We would make a color brochure. Right now we just have
a blue and white one and it just doesn't do it."
So I said, "That's what you need to do, you need to get the word
out." So I said, "Here's $10,000. I'll watch and keep track of the
money, and you let me know what you're doing with it so I can tell
him." He's ended up giving them probably $250,000 so far, plus we got
Discovery to come out and I produced the shoot for a special on the
Discovery channel. He's put that Discovery tape into his own videos
that show him working with the Navajo. And we were able to bring out
lots and lots and lots of rugs and to support the resistance through
his donations.
What's happening right now?
They still want to ensure that the last resistors leave. They want
them to sign a piece of paper that says that the land does belong to
the Hopis. They want the Din to admit that it doesn't belong to them,
whereas the resistance says it does belong to them because their
treaty says it does. And it does belong to them. Their treaties were
broken, and the deeds to their land are there, and the government is
not acknowledging them.
Something I'll never forget, you said that their umbilical cords for
1000 years are there.
They're buried under certain bushes on their sacred places on the land.
It's just like going in and asking you to get out of your house. If
someone said "Just leave, it no longer belongs to you," you'd say,
"You're crazy, get the hell out of here."
And they're saying, "No, you're a dumb Indian savage, get out.
You have no rights; you're stupid, you're dumb, you live out here on
this nothing piece of land. They put them on this godforbidden place
that has no water and nothing growing and no grass and no anything,
and what's happened is the richest coal deposits, the richest uranium
deposits and natural gas deposits in the country are right there,
underneath them in this godforsaken land. Now they're saying, "Let's
move them again." They're continually moving them, and it's genocide,
because by moving them to tract homes and taking their sheep away,
you've taken their livelihood, their lifestyle away. Th e kids are
going to go out drink. They have to pay for gas and electric, whereas
before they didn't. They lose their cars because they can 't make
their payments, they end up drinking and the old people die. They die
right off, because they're heartbroken. So we're kill g off these
beautiful natives, from the land that we've raped and pillaged.
Who are also incredible artists. Who are creating magic every time they
weave.
Every time they make a fire, they pray. Every time they do something
with water, they pray. Every time they eat, they pray. They pray for
everything.
Do you do that in your life? Is that one way you keep your courage up?
Praying? I pray every day, at every meal. And I give thanks all the
time. When I go to my garden, and I stand there and look at the
little seedlings coming up, I give thanks. Because to me, to be able
to walk outside, to see things grow that I have cultivated and that
will nourish me, I give thanks all the time. And that's what I try to
tell my children, if they're worried about this or that, what
they need to do is think about what they are thankful for, and just
be
Thankful that they have what they have.
In the middle of that, I went to El Salvador.
How did that happen?
LISA GOES TO EL SALVADOR
I was at the Hog Farm anniversary.. Wavy Gravy's place in California,
and I was baking in the mud with Milan Melvin and his lovely wife,
Georgeanne. They turned to me and said, "Would you like to go to El
Salvador and take food and other aid to the people there, especially
the women and children?" They wanted me help them to do their video
documentary to show what was going on down there.
And I said, "Ha ha, sure." Like, this is never going to happen, but
boy it sure did and fast. They were supposed to drive down with me,
and we'd shoot all the way but about three days before, they couldn't
go, so they said they'd meet me there.
Well, hadn't shot anything but still photography since the Woodstock
footage. So three nights before I left, my son Solar had to learn how
to use the equipment and teach me I just don't learn any other way..
I have to have "hands on" experience, and hear and most of all, say
it out loud. I had never shot with a video camera before! The
Woodstock footage was shot with film.
Oh man, they are really different mediums, too!
Yeah, that's right. But a camera is a camera when it comes to
politics. So I flew t San Antonio where there were trucks coming in
from all over. There were 14 trucks with aid. Pastors for Peace
organized it, and they were aimed at San Salvador.
The people were trapped in a civil war between the Arena government
and guerrilla forces of the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation
Front-Ed.). The United States had sent, over a 13-year period, 400
billion dollars in aid to El Salvador's military forces and
government. Over these
same thirteen years, more than 75,000 civilians had been killed or
had disappeared. Thousands more were tortured. Human rights
violations gripped the nation, and we were supporting the regime that
was waging low intensity warfare on its own citizens. Women were
raped daily, and threatened that if they said a word they would be
killed, or their families
would be killed as well. When they wouldn't cooperate or admit their
collaboration with the FMLN, they would torture them.
They were "disappearing" a lot of politicos right then too.
Wasn't that around the early '90S?
Yes, in 1990. J.P. Dejoria backed my trip. You have to pay to help.
Thank god for JP's sponsorship. I had to fly down to Texas and back
from San Salvador and pay$500 for food too.
Is it unusual to have to pay to go on an activist trip?
No, it is the norm... but there are people like J.P. and churches and
organizations that are ready to do that. Always remember that.
So, when we got down to Central America we met with the women whose
brothers had been killed, whose fathers had been killed, whose
husbands had been killed (Lisa's characteristically strong voice
cracked at this point).
There were just the women and children left in some villages.
The crew showed up at that point, so I became the assistant cameraman
We went to a dump where five hundred people were living in, God,
these little shacks they'd built out of two-by-fours and cardboard.
We brought them corrugated roofing, because when a rain came their
entire house would disintegrate, they'd be left just sitting on two
little fold-
up chairs with all their possessions soaking wet, disintegrating
around them. I mean that's how they were living! Things got so bad
the rural part of the country that these people had come into the
city to live.
But, of course there is no room in the inn when they get there, right?
Right. There were at least 500 people living in all that filth in the
dump. The city wouldn't let em get water, so they dug a hole down to
the main water pipe and connected their own water. We were
interviewing them, and they served us Iunch. They had no money, no
homes, and yet they served lunch! On the way do to San Salvador we
stopped in Guatemala, and I took a photograph of some women in the
market. They were wearing Huipils from their area. I asked them why
they were so far away from their home. They said their tribes were
being wiped out and they had to run. They let me take their
photograph only after I told them I was shooting for Mothering
magazine.
Guatemala is the worst war zone now, I hear.
Anyway, we got stopped at the border and they wouldn't let us across.
A year before, Pastors for Peace were turned away at the border, went
all the way back to D.C. and protested; drove back down and were
finally let through. And here the El Salvador government was going to
do it again. They took away the visas of our three main people.
What did this border patrol look like? Lots of guns? Rude shoving?
They were little short people, wearing white (she laughs), but that's
not the point; they were using whiteout on our people's visas! And
you're not supposed to white out people's visas! So we said 'Wait a
minute, if those three people don't go with us we don't know what
we're doing. We've got fourteen trucks full of aid and we don't know
what to do with it without them. We're just the drivers."
They [Pastors for Peace group] decided to have a stand-in, instead of
a sit-in. So I got out my trusty video and started to record every
move this little pip-squeak was making. He got furious and came
running out of little cage and came up to me. Just at that moment my
co-driver, Keith, a very large Grateful Deadhead, his arms crossed,
stood right behind me staring at this little guy. Here I am, filming
away, and the border patrol guy says, "Who are you making the film
for?" I kept filming and said, "The President of the United States."
At that point we were the ones that were backing the army. Two more
Americans had just been killed down there, and the army couldn't
afford any more mistakes like that, or they would lose all our
support.
So, we went back outside and were ready to continue the stand-in, but
he came out and threw our visas at us and said, "Go." We got in our
trucks and left.
They didn't want us to go into the countryside to witness. See you're
supposed to witness whenever you are a mission like this. And they
didn't want us to see the devastation of what they were doing to the
villages.
Or help anyone in the rural areas with aid, right?
Right. Even the people who met with us told us not to go to the
country, that there were army blocks every where, and that we
couldn't go. But that's what we'd come down there to do: deliver aid.
They finally said that there was one village that we could get to.
Everyone wanted to go. Nobody wanted to stay in town and deliver the
two last trucks except the film crew, so I volunteered. I was the
only one who volunteered, besides two local women. So there I was
with a 22-foot and an 18-foot Mercedes Benz box truck.
I delivered the 22-footer first. Everywhere I went, I would stop and
women and kids and men would come running out and unload the truck,
and then their organizations could take the aid out to the rural
areas.
This is in the city of San Salvador? Right in the middle of a war
zone? Seems like one could get killed just for driving a Mercedes
Benz in most cities of this country, much less there! Lisa, you're so
daring! Weren't people really hungry by then... trucks full of food?
Not just food, but building supplies, medical supplies, clothes,
wheelchairs, and sewing machines and tractors. You name it; I had
everything in there, corrugated steel, books, bicycles!
All by yourself? Did you get scared?
(Pause) I was exhilarated! Because I was the only one driving, and I
was documenting at the same time. I'd jump out of the truck and start
shooting. In fact a government spy was sent out to watch what we were
doing. A woman who was helping told me, "see that man over there
behind the tree, who's one of the government agents that's been
spying on us."
So I just turned and walked over to him, shooting, and he just stood
there and just about lost it! And I was fearless! I was just...
click click, click click click, right up in his face with my camera.
Lisa, didn't it occur to you that you could get killed?
The next stop was the worst. The two young girls are helping unload
the 18-footer. And there I am driving around the suburbs, these tiny
streets with an inch on each side to spare, with this huge truck.
Did driving the Hippie Bus all those years help you Iearn to drive like
that?
I learned how to double clutch! The Grateful Deadhead even said, "not
bad sheeefting!" I loved it. I loved getting up with the light, loved
the driving and logging my videotape every night. I loved it! I
recommend it to everyone.
So here I was delivering outside this school, and I started painting
these flowers on the truck, you know, and somebody had seen boxes
being unloaded from the truck, and they thought they were filled with
arms; so they called the military, the air-force, actually. The air
force were the ones who had just killed the Jesuit priests.
And I had just photographed the actual location where they were
assassinated. And where their graves were. And where the bullets in
the beds were. The rooms where the gardener's daughter and wife were
killed. And I had just finished photographing that, and I turned the
corner and was held up by ten men with machine guns.
They said, "Let's see your papers, Senor!" And I said, "Senora!" They
checked the back of truck and said, "What did you deliver?" And I
said,
"Books, and art supplies". . I had just been to a school. And
(laughing) shampoo and conditioner. I brought 6,000 bottles of John
Paul Mitchell Awapuhi Shampoo and The Conditioner down there with me!
They, meanwhile, go back and search eve single box of shampoo that I
had left.
I called J.P. that night, and told him, "J.P., you know, they went
through all your boxes of shampoo and conditioner." He got all shook
up... "Well why, why would they do that?"
And I said, "They thought there were bullets in there, and ammunition."
And he said, "Well, it's only shampoo! And conditioner!"
I said "I know, but they didn't know that." He told me to get out of
El Salvador, right now. He was afraid I'd get killed.
It probably blew his mind. It does mine. Were you afraid when you saw
those machine-guns?
No not really, not until I got back in the truck, and the two girls
with me asked me that and I said no, and they well you should have
been. That was the very same group that just killed the Jesuit
priests."
I had to do a lot of sneaky photographing because they were always
watching and you didn't want them to see you shooting. But I didn't
think the El Salvadorian military was going to kill any of us. They
just couldn't afford to do that. I didn't think they would kill an
American.
Don't count on it, Lisa. You truly are daring and it's contagious;
your activism gives me courage.
What I learned from the trip was that you can hear about a situation
on the news, like Israel and Palestine. You can hear it, but you
don't understand it until you're in the middle of it. We made a
devastating documentary. We sent that video to Congress, and we were
out of there within a year.
I learned how these people had to survive a war, and it made me
stronger. We get complacent in the U.S. Don Juan said you have to
change the direction you're looking in to change your life. El
Salvador did that for me.
We, in our country, have not experienced a thing compared to what
those women are going through. Nothing. Even in Guatemala, they went
right into the villages because they wanted the land that the Indians
had. The Indians own the land in Guatemala and they work part of the
day and the rest of the time they sit back and talk to their families
and hang out, because they don't have to kill themselves to go out
and earn property. They own it. Well, the Guatemalan government
didn't like that. They wanted that land. They wanted to grow stuff on
that land, so they went in there and just wiped those villages out.
They smashed the villagers up against trees, sliced the necks of the
old people, and stabbed the young men. They left only women, and a
lot of times they didn't even leave women. They just obliterated
them, to get the land. Pure and simple genocide. They're shooting
orphans in the street in the gutter. They see an orphan and they
shoot him. These people have been going through incredible hardships.
That's why I think I have the strength that I have to do as much as I
do, because I have seen other people's work to do things to survive,
and I have no complaint. I've never complained really about anything.
I just do it.
How can other women find commonality with your experience? Any woman
could do this, couldn't she? The human spirit is strong enough.
In 1966, 1 lived with the Mazatecan Indians of Huautla de Jimenez,
Oaxaca, Mexico. I ate the food they ate and helped them sell their
fruit in the market place. I wore the hand made Huipils of the Indian
women. Indian women have always been my teachers. I took the sacred
mushrooms with a Curandera and had a vision of mountains and valleys
filled with smiling faces of native women with their hair in colorful
braids. met and photographed an old woman in the plaza, which became
my photo, "Mushroom Lady," that I sent you. It was also a very
colorful poster in the Sixties. So for me to experience other people
and what they're going through, I become like them, sort of like a
chameleon.
Do you want to know the secret to in life? When I was little, I used
to be ridiculed for day dreaming even by my mother, which was a
shame. A lot of people don't understand daydreaming. I dream awake
what it is that I want to accomplish. And then go and do it. When you
see little kids out there daydreaming, don't interrupt them! Those
are the artists, those are the dreamers, and those are the doers.
And I don't let anything get in the way. I might have struggles. The
energy that I have is not something [some people] understand, so they
put it down and they try to squash it and act like it's unimportant,
it's worthless. I know that what I'm producing is very worthwhile,
and people who do not have that same energy want to make you feel
worthless to make themselves feel better. I think there are a lot of
women out there who have an immense amount of strength, who don t do
anything because they're afraid of what people will think of
them-what their husbands will think of them, what their relatives
would think of them. It's important to surround yourself with people
who think you can do what you want to do, and get away from the
people who put you down or think you can't do it. You have to change
whom you hang out with and whom you relate to.
The deal is, for women, to daydream what it is that would be
exciting, different, and helpful, to their society. I always feel
that not only do I do things for myself eve day, but also I have to
think about others every day. And even if I'm building a house and
preparing something for me, it's in an anticipation of having the
time to write a book that will then help others. So if you
incorporate helping people in your everyday life, every week life,
every month live, and you also take care of yourself, and you
daydream what it is that you want to do, you can actually daydream up
the story that you then follow, and it becomes real.
Every thin g that I do is daydreamed first-build g houses, doing
books and videos. You just have to believe that you can do it. Don't
let anybody say you can't, because everybody said, all along, that I
couldn't. Every thing I did, they said I couldn't do it.
Imagining and magic ... those words are a lot alike.
I used to be called the white witch of Truchas because I used to heal
people, and I was a herbalist. For a time I was doing a lot of
magic, in a certain part of my life. I don't do that so much any
more. I think we go through phases of certain types of things that we
do.
Imagining is a kind of magic. Maybe that's all you really have to do
now.
Lisa Law's children, Solar, 29; Pilar, 27; Sunday, 24, and
Jesse 22, are spread from California to Miami. They're bilingual,
activists, and humanitarians; eat all natural food, grow gardens, and
dance to the same music as Lisa. The apple hasn't fallen far from the
tree.
Lisa's newest endeavor is being a partner in a telecommunications
business in Santa Monica, so she has each leg in one world. One day
you can find her at home in her vegetable garden in the mountains of
New Mexico, and the next day she'll be working with twelve
customer service employees in her office on the ninth floor
of a building overlooking the Pacific Ocean with her friend Steven
Kalish, who believes she can do anything she sets her mind to.
Simone Lazerri Ellis served as art critic for PASATIEMPO at
the Santa Fe New Mexican, Crosswinds, The Magazine, The
Albuquerque Journal, and others.
Intermountain Woman, Volume 1, Number 6, July 1997
By Simone Lazerri Ellis
Lisa Law celebrated her 31st year as a professional photographer in
1993 with the release of her award-winning documentary Flashing on
the Sixties in the home video market. Flashing on The Sixties won the
GoId Plaque Award at the l99I Chicago International film Festival,
was invited for a special screening at the 1991 Woman's in Film
Festival in Los Angeles, and won a Silver Award at the 1992 Worldfest
Houston. Lisa's book of the same title sold out two printings,
Her career as photographer began in the early sixties. Camera in
hand, and working, assistant to a manager in the rock and roll scene,
she began taking pictures, Whether she was back stage with The
Beatles, Peter Paul and Mary the Kingston Trio, Otis Redding, The
Lovin' Spoonful, The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, taking
promotional photographs of Janis Joplin and Big Brother, or at home
making dinner for house guests like Bob Dylan or Andy Warhol, her
passion for photography grew into a profession.
Since that time, Lisa has specialized in documenting history as
she has experienced it. As a mother, writer, photographer and social
activist, her work reveals distinctive communities of people,
including the homeless of San Francisco, the El Salvadorian
resistance against military oppression, and the Navajo and Hopi
nations struggling to preserve their ancestral religious sites,
traditions and land. She continues to document any musical events and
the musicians of today as well as current political activists. She
plans to publish three follow-up books of the subsequent decades in
scrapbook form like her book, Flashing on the Sixties.
Lisa's work has been published in over 50 books and on 22 record
albums, CDs and tapes. Her editorial credits include Time, Newsweek,
The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, Rolling Stone, High
Times, Vogue, Esquire, and National Geographic.
The night I caught up with Lisa, she was in the bathtub. She was
known for using the tub as an office, after a long day of whatever
she might have been doing, almost always something physically active.
"Who's this?" she teased when I said hello. We'd been friends and a
co-media team, as well as neighbors in Santa Fe, where Lisa's made
home base for some 25 years, and where I lived for seven years before
moving to Montana. I started with my usual line; "You're going to
electrocute yourself that way." hearing the waves splashing around
her, referring to the cordless phone. Lisa laughed and assured me
that she is using the "old fashioned" kind with a cord these days.
I'd found her at home, in between her many documentary outings,
ensconced in her adobe "get away" on top of a mesa in New Mexico. As
one of the most sought after activist photographers and the media,
Lisa is always on the road. This woman never stops. At 54, she runs
circles around everyone who knows her, which is a lot of people, most
of them in the famous category. This isn't surprising, considering
her and position of being in demand to shoot from the hip with one
phone call, or to add the definitive photo to a project from stills
that she's shot year around for three decades.
Known especially for her photographs of the sixties (and the fact
that she and Hog Farmer Bonnie jean Romney headed up the team running
the communal kitchen at the original Woodstock), Lisa Law didn't stop
shooting when the American M16s stopped in Vietnam. She is also known
for her ceaseless activism today in the nineties. She has at her
fingertips one of the largest archives of images from America's
subculture sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, and when that
millennial clock ticks a moment into the 21st century, you can be
sure that Lisa will be somewhere on this earth doing something from
dawn until midnight that really needs doing in the most whole earth
way.
Lisa-The most inspirational woman in my life? When I was six, my
mother hired a black woman to take care of my brothers and me. Her
name was Cora Lee Waller. She was from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. And
she would always say to me, (falsetto) "Lisa, you're so daring!" So
when I'm out there doing something bold, I always say, "Lisa, you're
so daring!'"
Simone-You really are so fearless. Do you think that quality has
given you the edge in your art? l'm thinking of a photo shoot I saw
you doing of the Native American trick riders, at Indian Market, and
you were right up there with those horses pounding past you, and
some times riders flying over your head, and you were just click ,
click, You loved it when one of the horses Reared up, right over
your head! Click click click click.
Can you tell me about your first camera?
I got my first camera from Frank Werber, the manager of the Kingston
Trio. My first good camera, Frank gave me.
Didn't you take pictures when you were a little girl?
Oh, you mean my first camera. I had a little box camera. When I was a
young girl I was always shooting with a little Brownie. So I was
photographing all my friends in school, and the parties we used to
put on in high school, and all my boyfriends, and we'd go to the
beach and I'd shoot ... I've got pictures of me standing next to my
Ford Fairlane, in a bathing suit, down by Malibu.
And then I became the photographer for Galileo high school, for the
newspaper. I have a picture of myself walking around the football
field with a camera on my shoulder, shooting for the newspaper.
That's really grueling, do you think that's where you started to
learn about your discipline?
I learned that I liked capturing special moments. I went to College
of Marin and took a course in photography, and learned about setting
up people for portraits. But I think one of the best teachers I ever
had
was Guy Cross. He taught me how to photograph large groups of people
and get them to look at you, how to excite them and get them to do
things that is fun. He also taught me how to deal with people when I
was doing their portraits, how to touch them so that they got softer.
You touch them on the shoulders, straighten them up a little, brush
their shirt or whatever it is you do. A personal touch that makes
them relax a little. What I like doing is really capturing the
moment. It's a challenge. It's like Janis Joplin leaning up against
the wall with Tommy Masters. I was kind of scared to take pictures of
Janis. I hadn't shot pictures of her in three years. I didn't want
to interrupt a private moment, but I picked up the camera and did a
few shots. Well, that shot of Janis Joplin leaning up against the
wall is one of my more famous shots of her. She is sitting on the
ground after spending the night with her mountain man that she found.
She'd come to New Mexico looking for a mountain man while she was
doing a cigar commercial. She said, "Lisa, you can help me. Help
me! I want me a mountain man. I'm tired of these city men!' And, I
said, "I know of one, he's up at Truchas, " and she came up and he
happened to be visiting, and she went off with him for the night.
The next morning she came back and she was wearing sandals with heels
and a feather boa and her paisley madras outfit, smiling and carrying
on and very, very pleased with herself. In the photograph she's
talking to Tommy Masters, who's Dylan's driver now; he's a horse
trainer. And it was a special moment.
Photography is a wonderful, wonderful thing, you know. I mean look,
you have a little, tiny little hole in the camera, and in comes the
image through this tiny little hole. And it comes through the lens
and goes to the back, where there's film. And the details of that
person contact the emulsion of that film. And then you go in
reverse, because of the light and the darkness coming off the image.
Then you print it and it makes a positive on paper. I mean this is
an unbelievable process, that you can get that image of that person
on film through this little tiny hole. Can you believe it? It's an
amazing process.
Big Mountain
In the late '70s I was asked to photograph the strip mining of Black
Mesa in Arizona for Rebel Magazine, which was published by Larry
Flynt. I made some contacts and ended up staying with Woody
Kedenihii and his family in Tuba City. He took me for a tour of
Black Mesa and showed me the process of strip mining. Then he showed
me where his parents lived and how they lived. That's when I learned
about the austere lifestyle of the Navajos. I was hooked. I love
helping people; now I could take on an entire tribe.
The U.S. government-it was Ford that did it, President Gerald Ford.
He signed into law Public Law 93-531 in 1972, during his
administration. This divided a joint use piece of land that was
occupied by the Navajos and Hopis into two sections. That section of
Big Mountain was where 10,000 Navajos lived.
It just so happened that Big Mountain was sitting on top of a huge
vein of coal. These Navajos were being asked to leave their land and
relocate, the excuse being a dispute between them and the Hopis.
The real dispute was, and continues to be, between traditional
Indians who are opposed to land and mineral development on their
lands, and their tribal councils and outside forces that support
development. Seven thousand Navajos relocated. Their lives were
permanently destroyed, for the Navajo language there is no word for
relocation. To relocate is to die.
Three thousand residents of Big Mountain decided not to move, to
resist the relocation. These were the people I chose to help, and I
wasn't the only one. 'There were hundreds of volunteers who lived
with the Navajos and supported their resistance.
I started working with Big Mountain Defense in Flagstaff, and ended up
being the am contact in Santa Fe, working together with other
wonderful, dedicated volunteers. I helped organize marches,
demonstrations, and lectures; collected donations, bought groceries
that were then distributed among the resistors to the relocation. We
delivered Choro sheep-that's the kind of sheep with more lanolin in
their wool, the original sheep that they had before their herds were
polluted with other kinds' Once we delivered Choro sheep in the
middle of the night. My daughter Pilar helped during one of these
deliveries. It was almost like a Tony Hillerman mystery. We drove in
tandem, twelve miles in the dark on a dirt road to meet the truck
hauling sheep from Utah Navajos would pull their trucks up to the
side of the semi, tie the legs of the sheep so they wouldn't move and
we would load three to four sheep into each truck.
Pilar and I documented this, me in black and white and she in color.
We only had one power pack with two cords, so we had to move together
as we photographed the event, almost like Siamese twins connected to
each other by umbilical cords. It was a special moment of bonding
between Pilar and me.
Tory Mudd directed an Oscar-winning film called Broken Rainbow a bout
the plight of the Dine (Navajo) on Big Mountain, and the fact that
the BIA put up a fence to divide the two pieces. It was moving
documentary, but seemed to have little effect on the government's and
the BIA's position. We were at a loss as what to do next.
Some of the members of the Big Mountain Defense got involved with a
weaving project that was helping many Dine resist relocation by
remaining self-sufficient. The ones I worked closely with were Goose,
Hidden Mountain, Arlene Hamilton and Martha Bourke.
You brought in J. R Dejoria. How did t that work? Because it's one
thing to just hand money over to a resistance camp...
He backed my documentary, Flashing on the Sixties, and that's how I
first met him. He gave me money the first time he met me. He liked my
book, Flashing on the Sixties, which is be g published for the third
time August of this year, and he thought if he were to make a movie
on the'60s he'd make it just like I did, so he backed me. So after
wards, he
Was sort of wedded to me; there was no way he could get rid of me. I
was in his house; I drove his cars. We were pals. This was when he
was first starting to make his fortune.
He makes J. P. Mitchell hair products, right?
He's the CEO of Paul Mitchell Hair Systems. He's got about twelve other
businesses. He's nonstop, this guy. It comes from being actually a
very poor Harley biker. Very poor. Poorer than I ever was.
How did he help the resistance?
He said to me, 'You said you wanted to do another project; you wanted
to do a movie on the Native Americans." And I said, "Actually the
movie's already been done, and I've been thinking, I'd rather help
them first hand, because a movie's not going to help them personally.
It only helps people understand what's happening, and then nothing
happens to them. They're still in the same situation." So I said,
"Let's help with the weaving project." That's a project I really
like, because you bring out the weavings and you bring back 90
percent of what they're worth, rather than taking them to a trading
post and getting only 40 to 60 percent of what they're worth. That
way you support the independence of the women who are weaving and
their families; you support their struggle by getting them
financially able to resist. And then you support them in any other
way they ask for help. Rather than doing something for them, you do
what they want.
He said, "I'll give you $10,000 to start with." I went to the weaving
project and asked them what they would do with $10,000. They said,
"We don't know", and I said, "Well you better have the answer by
tomorrow morning, because I'm going to give you ten thousand
dollars." Martha Bourke and Arlene Hamilton were helping the weaving
project.
Martha said, "We would make a color brochure. Right now we just have
a blue and white one and it just doesn't do it."
So I said, "That's what you need to do, you need to get the word
out." So I said, "Here's $10,000. I'll watch and keep track of the
money, and you let me know what you're doing with it so I can tell
him." He's ended up giving them probably $250,000 so far, plus we got
Discovery to come out and I produced the shoot for a special on the
Discovery channel. He's put that Discovery tape into his own videos
that show him working with the Navajo. And we were able to bring out
lots and lots and lots of rugs and to support the resistance through
his donations.
What's happening right now?
They still want to ensure that the last resistors leave. They want
them to sign a piece of paper that says that the land does belong to
the Hopis. They want the Din to admit that it doesn't belong to them,
whereas the resistance says it does belong to them because their
treaty says it does. And it does belong to them. Their treaties were
broken, and the deeds to their land are there, and the government is
not acknowledging them.
Something I'll never forget, you said that their umbilical cords for
1000 years are there.
They're buried under certain bushes on their sacred places on the land.
It's just like going in and asking you to get out of your house. If
someone said "Just leave, it no longer belongs to you," you'd say,
"You're crazy, get the hell out of here."
And they're saying, "No, you're a dumb Indian savage, get out.
You have no rights; you're stupid, you're dumb, you live out here on
this nothing piece of land. They put them on this godforbidden place
that has no water and nothing growing and no grass and no anything,
and what's happened is the richest coal deposits, the richest uranium
deposits and natural gas deposits in the country are right there,
underneath them in this godforsaken land. Now they're saying, "Let's
move them again." They're continually moving them, and it's genocide,
because by moving them to tract homes and taking their sheep away,
you've taken their livelihood, their lifestyle away. Th e kids are
going to go out drink. They have to pay for gas and electric, whereas
before they didn't. They lose their cars because they can 't make
their payments, they end up drinking and the old people die. They die
right off, because they're heartbroken. So we're kill g off these
beautiful natives, from the land that we've raped and pillaged.
Who are also incredible artists. Who are creating magic every time they
weave.
Every time they make a fire, they pray. Every time they do something
with water, they pray. Every time they eat, they pray. They pray for
everything.
Do you do that in your life? Is that one way you keep your courage up?
Praying? I pray every day, at every meal. And I give thanks all the
time. When I go to my garden, and I stand there and look at the
little seedlings coming up, I give thanks. Because to me, to be able
to walk outside, to see things grow that I have cultivated and that
will nourish me, I give thanks all the time. And that's what I try to
tell my children, if they're worried about this or that, what
they need to do is think about what they are thankful for, and just
be
Thankful that they have what they have.
In the middle of that, I went to El Salvador.
How did that happen?
LISA GOES TO EL SALVADOR
I was at the Hog Farm anniversary.. Wavy Gravy's place in California,
and I was baking in the mud with Milan Melvin and his lovely wife,
Georgeanne. They turned to me and said, "Would you like to go to El
Salvador and take food and other aid to the people there, especially
the women and children?" They wanted me help them to do their video
documentary to show what was going on down there.
And I said, "Ha ha, sure." Like, this is never going to happen, but
boy it sure did and fast. They were supposed to drive down with me,
and we'd shoot all the way but about three days before, they couldn't
go, so they said they'd meet me there.
Well, hadn't shot anything but still photography since the Woodstock
footage. So three nights before I left, my son Solar had to learn how
to use the equipment and teach me I just don't learn any other way..
I have to have "hands on" experience, and hear and most of all, say
it out loud. I had never shot with a video camera before! The
Woodstock footage was shot with film.
Oh man, they are really different mediums, too!
Yeah, that's right. But a camera is a camera when it comes to
politics. So I flew t San Antonio where there were trucks coming in
from all over. There were 14 trucks with aid. Pastors for Peace
organized it, and they were aimed at San Salvador.
The people were trapped in a civil war between the Arena government
and guerrilla forces of the FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation
Front-Ed.). The United States had sent, over a 13-year period, 400
billion dollars in aid to El Salvador's military forces and
government. Over these
same thirteen years, more than 75,000 civilians had been killed or
had disappeared. Thousands more were tortured. Human rights
violations gripped the nation, and we were supporting the regime that
was waging low intensity warfare on its own citizens. Women were
raped daily, and threatened that if they said a word they would be
killed, or their families
would be killed as well. When they wouldn't cooperate or admit their
collaboration with the FMLN, they would torture them.
They were "disappearing" a lot of politicos right then too.
Wasn't that around the early '90S?
Yes, in 1990. J.P. Dejoria backed my trip. You have to pay to help.
Thank god for JP's sponsorship. I had to fly down to Texas and back
from San Salvador and pay$500 for food too.
Is it unusual to have to pay to go on an activist trip?
No, it is the norm... but there are people like J.P. and churches and
organizations that are ready to do that. Always remember that.
So, when we got down to Central America we met with the women whose
brothers had been killed, whose fathers had been killed, whose
husbands had been killed (Lisa's characteristically strong voice
cracked at this point).
There were just the women and children left in some villages.
The crew showed up at that point, so I became the assistant cameraman
We went to a dump where five hundred people were living in, God,
these little shacks they'd built out of two-by-fours and cardboard.
We brought them corrugated roofing, because when a rain came their
entire house would disintegrate, they'd be left just sitting on two
little fold-
up chairs with all their possessions soaking wet, disintegrating
around them. I mean that's how they were living! Things got so bad
the rural part of the country that these people had come into the
city to live.
But, of course there is no room in the inn when they get there, right?
Right. There were at least 500 people living in all that filth in the
dump. The city wouldn't let em get water, so they dug a hole down to
the main water pipe and connected their own water. We were
interviewing them, and they served us Iunch. They had no money, no
homes, and yet they served lunch! On the way do to San Salvador we
stopped in Guatemala, and I took a photograph of some women in the
market. They were wearing Huipils from their area. I asked them why
they were so far away from their home. They said their tribes were
being wiped out and they had to run. They let me take their
photograph only after I told them I was shooting for Mothering
magazine.
Guatemala is the worst war zone now, I hear.
Anyway, we got stopped at the border and they wouldn't let us across.
A year before, Pastors for Peace were turned away at the border, went
all the way back to D.C. and protested; drove back down and were
finally let through. And here the El Salvador government was going to
do it again. They took away the visas of our three main people.
What did this border patrol look like? Lots of guns? Rude shoving?
They were little short people, wearing white (she laughs), but that's
not the point; they were using whiteout on our people's visas! And
you're not supposed to white out people's visas! So we said 'Wait a
minute, if those three people don't go with us we don't know what
we're doing. We've got fourteen trucks full of aid and we don't know
what to do with it without them. We're just the drivers."
They [Pastors for Peace group] decided to have a stand-in, instead of
a sit-in. So I got out my trusty video and started to record every
move this little pip-squeak was making. He got furious and came
running out of little cage and came up to me. Just at that moment my
co-driver, Keith, a very large Grateful Deadhead, his arms crossed,
stood right behind me staring at this little guy. Here I am, filming
away, and the border patrol guy says, "Who are you making the film
for?" I kept filming and said, "The President of the United States."
At that point we were the ones that were backing the army. Two more
Americans had just been killed down there, and the army couldn't
afford any more mistakes like that, or they would lose all our
support.
So, we went back outside and were ready to continue the stand-in, but
he came out and threw our visas at us and said, "Go." We got in our
trucks and left.
They didn't want us to go into the countryside to witness. See you're
supposed to witness whenever you are a mission like this. And they
didn't want us to see the devastation of what they were doing to the
villages.
Or help anyone in the rural areas with aid, right?
Right. Even the people who met with us told us not to go to the
country, that there were army blocks every where, and that we
couldn't go. But that's what we'd come down there to do: deliver aid.
They finally said that there was one village that we could get to.
Everyone wanted to go. Nobody wanted to stay in town and deliver the
two last trucks except the film crew, so I volunteered. I was the
only one who volunteered, besides two local women. So there I was
with a 22-foot and an 18-foot Mercedes Benz box truck.
I delivered the 22-footer first. Everywhere I went, I would stop and
women and kids and men would come running out and unload the truck,
and then their organizations could take the aid out to the rural
areas.
This is in the city of San Salvador? Right in the middle of a war
zone? Seems like one could get killed just for driving a Mercedes
Benz in most cities of this country, much less there! Lisa, you're so
daring! Weren't people really hungry by then... trucks full of food?
Not just food, but building supplies, medical supplies, clothes,
wheelchairs, and sewing machines and tractors. You name it; I had
everything in there, corrugated steel, books, bicycles!
All by yourself? Did you get scared?
(Pause) I was exhilarated! Because I was the only one driving, and I
was documenting at the same time. I'd jump out of the truck and start
shooting. In fact a government spy was sent out to watch what we were
doing. A woman who was helping told me, "see that man over there
behind the tree, who's one of the government agents that's been
spying on us."
So I just turned and walked over to him, shooting, and he just stood
there and just about lost it! And I was fearless! I was just...
click click, click click click, right up in his face with my camera.
Lisa, didn't it occur to you that you could get killed?
The next stop was the worst. The two young girls are helping unload
the 18-footer. And there I am driving around the suburbs, these tiny
streets with an inch on each side to spare, with this huge truck.
Did driving the Hippie Bus all those years help you Iearn to drive like
that?
I learned how to double clutch! The Grateful Deadhead even said, "not
bad sheeefting!" I loved it. I loved getting up with the light, loved
the driving and logging my videotape every night. I loved it! I
recommend it to everyone.
So here I was delivering outside this school, and I started painting
these flowers on the truck, you know, and somebody had seen boxes
being unloaded from the truck, and they thought they were filled with
arms; so they called the military, the air-force, actually. The air
force were the ones who had just killed the Jesuit priests.
And I had just photographed the actual location where they were
assassinated. And where their graves were. And where the bullets in
the beds were. The rooms where the gardener's daughter and wife were
killed. And I had just finished photographing that, and I turned the
corner and was held up by ten men with machine guns.
They said, "Let's see your papers, Senor!" And I said, "Senora!" They
checked the back of truck and said, "What did you deliver?" And I
said,
"Books, and art supplies". . I had just been to a school. And
(laughing) shampoo and conditioner. I brought 6,000 bottles of John
Paul Mitchell Awapuhi Shampoo and The Conditioner down there with me!
They, meanwhile, go back and search eve single box of shampoo that I
had left.
I called J.P. that night, and told him, "J.P., you know, they went
through all your boxes of shampoo and conditioner." He got all shook
up... "Well why, why would they do that?"
And I said, "They thought there were bullets in there, and ammunition."
And he said, "Well, it's only shampoo! And conditioner!"
I said "I know, but they didn't know that." He told me to get out of
El Salvador, right now. He was afraid I'd get killed.
It probably blew his mind. It does mine. Were you afraid when you saw
those machine-guns?
No not really, not until I got back in the truck, and the two girls
with me asked me that and I said no, and they well you should have
been. That was the very same group that just killed the Jesuit
priests."
I had to do a lot of sneaky photographing because they were always
watching and you didn't want them to see you shooting. But I didn't
think the El Salvadorian military was going to kill any of us. They
just couldn't afford to do that. I didn't think they would kill an
American.
Don't count on it, Lisa. You truly are daring and it's contagious;
your activism gives me courage.
What I learned from the trip was that you can hear about a situation
on the news, like Israel and Palestine. You can hear it, but you
don't understand it until you're in the middle of it. We made a
devastating documentary. We sent that video to Congress, and we were
out of there within a year.
I learned how these people had to survive a war, and it made me
stronger. We get complacent in the U.S. Don Juan said you have to
change the direction you're looking in to change your life. El
Salvador did that for me.
We, in our country, have not experienced a thing compared to what
those women are going through. Nothing. Even in Guatemala, they went
right into the villages because they wanted the land that the Indians
had. The Indians own the land in Guatemala and they work part of the
day and the rest of the time they sit back and talk to their families
and hang out, because they don't have to kill themselves to go out
and earn property. They own it. Well, the Guatemalan government
didn't like that. They wanted that land. They wanted to grow stuff on
that land, so they went in there and just wiped those villages out.
They smashed the villagers up against trees, sliced the necks of the
old people, and stabbed the young men. They left only women, and a
lot of times they didn't even leave women. They just obliterated
them, to get the land. Pure and simple genocide. They're shooting
orphans in the street in the gutter. They see an orphan and they
shoot him. These people have been going through incredible hardships.
That's why I think I have the strength that I have to do as much as I
do, because I have seen other people's work to do things to survive,
and I have no complaint. I've never complained really about anything.
I just do it.
How can other women find commonality with your experience? Any woman
could do this, couldn't she? The human spirit is strong enough.
In 1966, 1 lived with the Mazatecan Indians of Huautla de Jimenez,
Oaxaca, Mexico. I ate the food they ate and helped them sell their
fruit in the market place. I wore the hand made Huipils of the Indian
women. Indian women have always been my teachers. I took the sacred
mushrooms with a Curandera and had a vision of mountains and valleys
filled with smiling faces of native women with their hair in colorful
braids. met and photographed an old woman in the plaza, which became
my photo, "Mushroom Lady," that I sent you. It was also a very
colorful poster in the Sixties. So for me to experience other people
and what they're going through, I become like them, sort of like a
chameleon.
Do you want to know the secret to in life? When I was little, I used
to be ridiculed for day dreaming even by my mother, which was a
shame. A lot of people don't understand daydreaming. I dream awake
what it is that I want to accomplish. And then go and do it. When you
see little kids out there daydreaming, don't interrupt them! Those
are the artists, those are the dreamers, and those are the doers.
And I don't let anything get in the way. I might have struggles. The
energy that I have is not something [some people] understand, so they
put it down and they try to squash it and act like it's unimportant,
it's worthless. I know that what I'm producing is very worthwhile,
and people who do not have that same energy want to make you feel
worthless to make themselves feel better. I think there are a lot of
women out there who have an immense amount of strength, who don t do
anything because they're afraid of what people will think of
them-what their husbands will think of them, what their relatives
would think of them. It's important to surround yourself with people
who think you can do what you want to do, and get away from the
people who put you down or think you can't do it. You have to change
whom you hang out with and whom you relate to.
The deal is, for women, to daydream what it is that would be
exciting, different, and helpful, to their society. I always feel
that not only do I do things for myself eve day, but also I have to
think about others every day. And even if I'm building a house and
preparing something for me, it's in an anticipation of having the
time to write a book that will then help others. So if you
incorporate helping people in your everyday life, every week life,
every month live, and you also take care of yourself, and you
daydream what it is that you want to do, you can actually daydream up
the story that you then follow, and it becomes real.
Every thin g that I do is daydreamed first-build g houses, doing
books and videos. You just have to believe that you can do it. Don't
let anybody say you can't, because everybody said, all along, that I
couldn't. Every thing I did, they said I couldn't do it.
Imagining and magic ... those words are a lot alike.
I used to be called the white witch of Truchas because I used to heal
people, and I was a herbalist. For a time I was doing a lot of
magic, in a certain part of my life. I don't do that so much any
more. I think we go through phases of certain types of things that we
do.
Imagining is a kind of magic. Maybe that's all you really have to do
now.
Lisa Law's children, Solar, 29; Pilar, 27; Sunday, 24, and
Jesse 22, are spread from California to Miami. They're bilingual,
activists, and humanitarians; eat all natural food, grow gardens, and
dance to the same music as Lisa. The apple hasn't fallen far from the
tree.
Lisa's newest endeavor is being a partner in a telecommunications
business in Santa Monica, so she has each leg in one world. One day
you can find her at home in her vegetable garden in the mountains of
New Mexico, and the next day she'll be working with twelve
customer service employees in her office on the ninth floor
of a building overlooking the Pacific Ocean with her friend Steven
Kalish, who believes she can do anything she sets her mind to.
Simone Lazerri Ellis served as art critic for PASATIEMPO at
the Santa Fe New Mexican, Crosswinds, The Magazine, The
Albuquerque Journal, and others.
Intermountain Woman, Volume 1, Number 6, July 1997