Wednesday, Feb 16, 2011

Ken Sanders Rare Books ispleased to announce a presentation and book signing with author Logan Hebner and photographer Michael L. Plyler, collaborators on the new book Southern Paiute: A Portrait, on Wednesday, February 16^th at 7:00 p.m. at our downtown bookstore (268 South 200 East). Copies of Southern Paiute (34.95, hardcover) will be available for purchase and signing at the event. 

Southern Paiute territory once extended from the Mojave to the San Juan River and from the Sevier to the Colorado River. Paiute still live in small communities across this vast expanse, having survived as a people widespread enslavement, virulent diseases, unjustified blame for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, invasion and displacement, unfounded termination of government services, and more. Listening to them, Logan Hebner, was able to record stories that exist nowhere else in print, interviewing elders who remember tales told to them by their grandparents—taking us right back to the nineteenth century. We listen to the full sweep of tragedy and restoration in the life of this often-neglected Southwestern tribe.

Logan Hebner moved to the Zion National Park area in 1981 and opened the Bit and Spur, a renowned restaurant and bar, and has written about the American West for the High Country News, Writer's on the Range, Best of Writer's at Work, Wild West Magazine, Boatman's Quarterly Review, Catalyst and others.  He has recorded oral history projects on river runners and seniors who chose to work, resulting in an exhibit, also with photographer Michael Plyler, called Working Wonders: Seniors in the Workplace. His work with the Southern Paiute began while writing about a hazardous waste incinerator offered to the Kaibab Paiute Tribe of Arizona.  Impressed that they turned down millions of dollars to preserve their land, Hebner produced an oral history project, interviewing Southern Paiute elders in Utah, again with photographer Plyler. 

Michael L. Plyler has been photographing for over thirty years. In 1993, he was awarded a Visual Artist Fellowship from the Utah Arts Council. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, has won awards, and is held in numerous collections. Plyler was the photographer for the books Pioneer Voices of Zion Canyon and Zion Canyon: A Storied Land. He presently is director of the Zion Canyon Field Institute.