04 2025

Jacques Seronde

Memories with Helen Lau Running

I knew Helen from our work with the Dine farms, back in the 1980s, out in the Little Colorado River valley east of Flagstaff. I was out there often, on the Farm Project at Beaver Farm and Sandsprings, North Leupp and Birdsprings, helping with fruit tree planting, or setting drip irrigation lines, lugging parts for a tractor or pump, celebrating the potato harvest, or checking in with the Farm Board meeting under a shade cha’a’oh (arbor) at the edge of a corn field.

Often Helen would come too, trucking with Farm helpers from Flagstaff to photo-document the work. She loved the bright spare Dine land; she loved the women and men, youth and elders and children of the farm families working together – the sparkling sweet water from new wells nourishing corn and squashes, melons and peaches ... I remember Helen tucked in among smiling mom and grandmas, grandpas and children at the feasts of mutton stew, blue corn mush and fry bread we shared… I remember her among corn tasseling high over her head, composing another vivid frame…

Helen’s beautiful photography and words held and honored and shared the heart and truth of those bright moments. She was gentle and loving, wise and keenly observant; she was so respectful -- and so well respected and beloved by the Dine fam families, by all of us. Her photos luminous, clear and deep like her. Reverent.

"Soft prayer on the July breeze, she blesses us still."

JACQUES SERONDE

TOLANI LAKE FARMS

1984