Directed by Alexandre O. Philippe • 2021 • United States

This illuminating cinematic essay uses film scenes to tell of the forced cultural appropriation of a world-famous landscape. Monument Valley is one of the most recognizable vistas in the world. Its iconographic use in American westerns has had a lasting influence on stock photography, advertising, and tourism. The valley has been given mythical significance as an image of a “primitive West” firmly in the hands of white people and meant to be protected from intruders. The fact that Monument Valley is traditional Navajo territory has been obscured in the process. A radical examination of Monument Valley’s representation in cinema and advertising since John Ford’s STAGECOACH, THE TAKING examines how a site located on sovereign Navajo land came to embody the fantasy of the “Old West.”