Klee Benally (born October 11, 1975) is the lead

vocalist Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

and

guitarist A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselv ...

Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...

punk rock band Blackfire."Klee Benally Awarded the 2010 Livable Community Award."
''Friends of Flagstaff.'' (retrieved 28 Nov 2010) Benally is also an activist, artist, silversmith, and filmmaker. He also performs traditional Navajo dances
''Anartist Films.'' (retrieved 28 Nov 2010) and is a champion

fancy war dance Fancy dance, Pan-Indian dancing, Fancy Feather or Fancy War Dance is a style of dance some believe was originally created by members of the Ponca tribe in the 1920s and 1930s, in an attempt to preserve their culture and religion. It is loosely bas ...

Background

Benally was born in 1975 in

Flagstaff, Arizona Flagstaff ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Coconino County, Arizona, Coconino County in northern Arizona, in the southwestern United States. In 2019, the city's estimated population was 75,038. Flagstaff's combined metropolitan area has ...

. His parents are Jones, a traditional

medicine man A medicine man or medicine woman is a traditional healer and spiritual leader who serves a community of Indigenous people of the Americas. Individual cultures have their own names, in their respective languages, for spiritual healers and ceremo ...

, and Berta Benally, a

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fol ...

singer and songwriter born to

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

parents. His sister is Jeneda and his brother is Clayson. They belong to the Bitter Water Clan. Together they grew up on Black Mesa, Tusayan, and Flagstaff but their father is from Black Mesa,

Navajo Nation The Navajo Nation ( nv, Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), also known as Navajoland, is a Native American reservation in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah; at roughly , the ...

. Benally was featured as a model in contract photographer John Running's work from the 1990s to 2000s. Benally and his family have been photographed by Running as part of an agreement with

Canyon Records Canyon Records of Phoenix, Arizona is a record label that has produced and distributed Native American music for 56 years. History Canyon was founded in 1951 by Ray and Mary Boley, who had opened the first recording studio in Phoenix, Arizona ...

that distributes music by their band Blackfire. Klee now lives with his wife, Princess, in Flagstaff.Dunaway and Beer 202 He is an

anarchist Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...

Music

Klee, Jeneda, and Clayson formed the punk band, Blackfire in 1989. They have toured internationally. They incorporate aspects of traditional

Navajo music Navajo music is music made by Navajos, mostly hailing from the Four Corners region of the Southwestern United States and the territory of the Navajo Nation. While it traditionally takes the shape of ceremonial chants and echoes themes found in Din ...

in their songs. They were also influenced by bands such as

Ramones The Ramones were an American punk rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens, in 1974. They are often cited as the first true punk rock group. Despite achieving a limited commercial appeal in the United ...

Dead Kennedys Dead Kennedys are an American punk rock band that formed in San Francisco, California, in 1978. The band was one of the defining punk rock, punk bands during its initial eight-year run. Dead Kennedys' lyrics were usually political in nature, sa ...

, Subhumans,

Crass Crass were an English art collective and punk rock band formed in Epping, Essex in 1977, who promoted anarchism as a political ideology, a way of life, and a resistance movement. Crass popularised the anarcho-punk movement of the punk s ...

Bad Brains Bad Brains are an American rock band formed in Washington, D.C. in 1976. Originally a jazz fusion band under the name Mind Power, they are widely regarded as pioneers of hardcore punk, though the band's members have objected to the use of this ...

, and other punk bands. The name refers to the pollution, especially from

coal mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

, on the Navajo Nation.

Video and film

Benally has made many documentary shorts. He directed a documentary called "The Snowbowl Effect," which addresses proposed ski area development on Arizona's

San Francisco Peaks The San Francisco Peaks (Navajo: , es, Sierra de San Francisco, Hopi: ''Nuva'tukya'ovi'', Western Apache: ''Dził Tso'', Keres: ''Tsii Bina'', Southern Paiute: ''Nuvaxatuh'', Havasupai-Hualapai: ''Hvehasahpatch''/''Huassapatch''/''Wik'hanbaja'', ...

. He is currently in production of a feature film he wrote and directed called "Power Lines."

Community work

He was also the coordinator of the southwest

Native American Film and Video Festival The Native American Film and Video Festival was a noncompetitive showcase of film, video and audio productions. It was held biennially in New York City from 1997 to 2011. Each festival screened between 50 and 80 documentaries, short features and ani ...

at the

Museum of Northern Arizona The Museum of Northern Arizona is a museum in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States, that was established as a repository for Indigenous material and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau. The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist ...

in 2004 and 2005. He has co-founded grassroots projects such as the Taala Hoghan Infoshop, Indigenous Action Media, Outta Your Backpack Media Project, Flagstaff Activist Network and the Save the Peaks Coalition. "Our generation has a whole lot of anger," says Benally. "We can try to turn negative into positive, be productive."Spina 127 In May 2010, Klee was part of a

direct action Direct action originated as a political activist term for economic and political acts in which the actors use their power (e.g. economic or physical) to directly reach certain goals of interest, in contrast to those actions that appeal to oth ...

where he and 5 others locked down at Tucson Border Patrol Headquarters to protest border militarization on Indigenous lands and

Arizona SB 1070 The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (introduced as Arizona Senate Bill 1070 and commonly referred to as Arizona SB 1070) is a 2010 legislative Act in the U.S. state of Arizona that was the broadest and strictest an ...

Awards and recognition

He won numerous awards for his art at the

Heard Museum The Heard Museum is a private, not-for-profit museum in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. It presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibitio ...

in Phoenix and was the first student to win Best Show at the Navajo art show at the

in 1991. In 2010, Benally was awarded the Livable Community Award by a Flagstaff community group for his work for social and environmental justice.

Notes

References

* Dunaway, David King and Molly Beer
''Singing Out: An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals.''
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. . * Spina, Stephanie Urso, ed
''Some and Mirrors: The Hidden Context of Violence in Schools and Society.''
Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000. .