Do your grandkids go to the opera? MEETING WITH MARITA SWAZO HINDS

I don’t know whose idea it was to create Museum Hill in Santa Fe, but I think it’s a pretty good one - four museums and a botanical garden all in one picturesque location. We’re visiting the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. Marita Swazo Hinds, who serves on both the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council and the Santa Fe Opera board, is the Museum’s Director of Education; we’re here at her invitation. 

She gives us a tour which stalls pretty much immediately in the pottery room. Mel and I have both fallen completely in love with Pueblo pottery, and Marita is a potter herself, patiently answering all our questions.

The pottery collection shows examples from all the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona. Marita tells us about how the pots are made, and also about her work in an upcoming show that’s a Native American response to Georgia O’Keeffe’s art. She shares the Georgia O’Keeffe quote that acted as her inspiration: ‘God told me if I painted that mountain enough, I could have it.’ 

‘Except’, Marita says drily, ‘it’s not your mountain, Georgia.’ Her artwork in response will involve a series of teapots and tea cups; O’Keefe was a huge fan of tea and had an extensive teapot collection. I immediately imagine these two women sitting down to tea together. I’m pretty confident Marita would have no problem getting her point across.

Mel and I tour ‘Here, Now, and Always’, a beautifully educative exhibit using Native American art and cultural artefacts to outline tribal histories and culture, which inevitably deals with the impact of colonisation on Native American nations. We’re both shocked at the degree of resonance between Australia and New Mexico, even up to present-day struggles over water rights.

Mel, Marita & Sarah

Later, Marita meets us for coffee so I can learn more about the Pueblo Opera Program. She tells me that it was originally initiated by a group of women associated with the Santa Fe Opera who wanted to bring opera to the neighbouring Pueblos, and to Pueblo children in particular, in part as an acknowledgment of the opera being on Pueblo lands. The program began, says Marita, ‘as just signing up kids, putting them on a bus and going to the opera.’

While other forms of community engagement have developed since, Marita agrees that what really shifted things was the 2018 production of Doctor Atomic, composed by John Adams, with librettist Peter Sellars also directing at Santa Fe. Conversations began among the Pueblo participants around wanting the opera to do more,  to ‘see us’, Marita emphasises. ‘That was when we created the Pueblo Opera Cultural Council.’ Since then, the POCC has been full of ideas, from creating a Native American opera in a Native American language, to international cultural exchanges. 

Marita explains that the Pueblo communities look forward each summer to participating in the Pueblo Opera Program, geared toward youth and families and to introducing them to this experience of a different art form, music, song and performance. This is in contrast to their own songs and dances at their own Pueblos. It’s a cultural exchange, so to speak, honoring both expressions of music, storytelling and performances.

​Bringing reciprocity into the relationship is a significant part both of its success, and ensuring a respectful exchange rather than a colonialist one-way-street. Marita’s position on the Santa Fe Opera board, inviting board and staff members to Pueblo feast days, Santa Fe Opera musicians giving chamber music concerts at Pueblo community centres and aged care homes, creating and including a Land Acknowledgment pre-performance, and employing Native Americans backstage, as ushers, and as artists and designers, are all ways that the POCC and the opera are working to develop their relationship. There are also always scholarships available for Native American participation in the opera’s various music camps; the POCC has made sure of that.

However it might develop, the continuation of the Pueblo Opera Program is critical. ‘This is generational,’ Marita says. ‘We’ve been doing this for a while. We’re all very passionate about it. Our children have gone through the program ... It’s been going on now for 53 years. So it’s something we’ll continue to work on and continue to do what we can to bridge that relationship with each other.’

Marita agreed to a place on the Santa Fe Opera board provided she felt her role was active and not token. Soon after she joined, a year-long Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program was rolled out, which brought up a lot of uncomfortable questions and difficult conversations, all of which Marita feels was definitely necessary for the board to move forward. ‘We know with the POCC that there’s still a lot of work to be done, but we report at every board meeting, we let them know what’s going on, they support us, so that’s a really positive thing’, she says. ‘They’re open to hearing things that we’re suggesting.’

One suggestion which Marita hopes will be enacted involves her role at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. She’s suggested that, at the start of each season, new staff and artists come to the Museum for a tour as part of their induction process, so they understand the land on which they’re performing. Having just seen the Museum, and preparing to head back for more after our coffee, this seems like both a very generous and an extremely valuable offer. If I were performing, I’d sign straight up.

As part of her role as Director of Education, Marita often hosts interstate opera society tours at the Museum. With a cheeky grin, she says she enjoys introducing herself to them as a Santa Fe Opera board member and seeing their surprise. She’s well aware that both opera companies and their boards can be perceived as ‘kind of stuffy’, so for people to discover that Santa Fe Opera has a Native American board member is a surprise for them - a good surprise.

I’m curious about where the idea of a cultural exchange with Australia originated. ‘With Sydney, we see that big opera house, and it’s just like the Holy Grail,’ says Marita. What’s impressive to her about the Sydney Opera House is the building itself, but Marita points out that while Santa Fe’s building is pretty impressive too, it’s the setting that makes it both wildly beautiful and totally unique. 

‘There is not an opera house in the world like ours. So we can aspire to go to Sydney, but also, we have it really good over here too. Where can you see an opera like this?’

The answer is: nowhere. Our opera house in Sydney might be more famous, but there’s much about Santa Fe Opera that’s utterly unique, and that also includes the presence of the POCC itself - something from which we in Australia could learn a lot, while the POCC is equally keen to meet Indigenous Australian communities and artists, many of whom have unique and groundbreaking practices of their own.

At the end of the day, Santa Fe Opera’s willingness to engage with the people to whose lands it owes most of its impact and uniqueness, coupled with the generous and engaged response from members of the surrounding Pueblo nations, has created, and is co-creating, something that shows opera’s potential to exceed one of its greatest contemporary questions: the art form’s capacity not just to survive, but thrive.

And Marita is rightly proud of it.

‘I think, I can go all over the world and go to an opera and visit it, but it’s nothing like our opera. It’s very, very special.’