Stone Lions

The Pajarito Plateau in New Mexico was densely settled by Ancestral Pueblo people from the 12th into the 16th centuries CE. The weathered figures in the center of a ring of elk antlers were carved in the likeness of crouching mountain lions before European contact. The place remains part of the ceremonial life of several tribes; the nature and meanings of those ceremonies are tribal secrets. Antlers and offerings come and go with the rhythm of that ceremonial cycle. The site is closed to outsiders during the ceremony, but can be visited at other times by those willing to make the ten-mile hike from the nearest trailhead.

This photograph records only the static physical presence of the site, as seen through the eyes of an outsider. The lions, in stone, felt like guardians of a threshold, inviting and protecting, and also reminders of the line between witness and trespass. 

Kim Weston’s photographs, also installed in the Atrium at the Yale School of Management, offer a complementary vision: images that evoke movement, spirit, and ancestral presence. Weston, an Afro-Indigenous artist, captures contemporary powwow dancers whose motion bridges tradition and the present, embodying continuities of identity, ceremony, and survival. Through her lens, dance becomes both an act of remembrance and renewal, carrying forward lineages that resist erasure. Together, these works ask us to consider not just what is visible, but how presence endures beyond the literal frame.