Angie keams
Fred Nez Keams had been quietly making Navajo flutes for about 15 years before his work gained statewide notice in 2019 with a seven-minute segment that aired on KET’s Kentucky Life television program and in 2020 with the traveling Native Reflections exhibit, an initiative of the Kentucky Arts Council and the Kentucky Heritage Council’s Native American Heritage Commission.
The exhibit featured works by Kentuckians who are enrolled members of a state- or federally recognized tribe or who are not currently enrolled or recognized.
The COVID-19 pandemic delayed the start of the Native Reflections tour, derailing a planned stop in Frankfort at the state Capitol in 2020, but in 2021, toward the end of its time on the road, the exhibit returned to Frankfort in November for Native American Heritage Month. The artists were invited to the Capitol for a reception, which included meeting Gov. Andy Beshear. Keams got to play one of his flutes at the reception.
“Wherever I go, I let the flute do the speaking for me,” Keams said while sitting in the garage of the rural Mercer County home he shares with his wife, Angie. “And then wherever I go, I talk about where it comes from, how I started from the beginning to now.”
Angie keams
LIVING IN THE NAVAJO NATION
Keams was born and grew up in the Navajo Nation of New Mexico in an area called Rabbit Rush, near New Mexico’s border with Arizona.
“We went to the post office on the Arizona side, but we lived and went to school in New Mexico,” he said.
Daily life in the Navajo Nation was regimented, dictated by things such as the distance from one’s home to the nearest water source or the number of daylight hours to tend to livestock and crops.
“We lived in a shack with a dirt floor. Our bed was made out of 2-by-4s, and our mattress was made out of old clothes,” he said. “All we had was government food, which is—you know—everything in a steel can, and it just said pork or chicken.”
He attended Crystal Boarding School in the Navajo Nation, a school run by the federal Bureau of Indian Education (BIE). Crystal was one of several BIE boarding schools with well-documented attempts to assimilate Native Americans to a white lifestyle. When Keams was there from 1978 to ’85, he said that practice was in full bloom. On weekends, he went home to visit family and help work the land. Sometimes, he visited his grandfather, who spoke to him in Navajo, and Keams picked up the language little by little. However, at the boarding school, Keams said the students were forbidden to speak anything other than English.
“They wouldn’t let us speak our language or sing our songs because if we did, then we would get disciplined,” he said. “Sometimes, they’d hit us with a ruler or else they would give us a dictionary to hold in the middle of the dorm.”
It was at the boarding school where Keams first heard the flute. “I didn’t know where it was coming from, but I heard it,” he said.
Keams left the boarding school and was enrolled in a middle school near his home, where he made new friends. One of them constructed a flute and played it for him, which was the impetus for him to start making and playing his own flute. He kept it for a while and then gave it to his cousin as a gift. Then he stopped thinking about flutes, at least for a while.
JOURNEY TO KENTUCKY
After attending culinary school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for two years, Keams volunteered at a hospital in Fort Defiance, Arizona, close to his home across the border. That hospital is where he met Angie, a native of Winchester.
“They talk about love at first sight, and you think that’s crazy, but I actually saw the back of him. He was sitting at his workstation doing something, and I walked in, and I saw the back of him,” Angie said. “And I instantly fell in love with him. I mean, he’s my whole world. I mean, he’s my everything.”
They don’t know exactly how long they’ve been married—“We don’t really keep up with it,” they said—but they do know they’ve been together about 20 years.
In 2010, Fred, Angie and her children moved to Kentucky to live closer to Angie’s family. They lived in Anderson County for several years before moving to their current home in Mercer County about three years ago.
The move to Kentucky inspired Keams to start thinking about flute making again. “I don’t know what happened; it just started speaking to me,” he said. “I just heard it in my head.”
Angie believes that, for the first time since leaving the Navajo Nation, Keams had time. He was no longer in those regimented days of racing against the sunlight.
Keams experimented with whatever materials he could. In one of his first attempts after moving to Kentucky, he fashioned a flute from a paper towel roll.
“I blew into it, and I made a noise, and that’s when it took off,” he said.
THE BIRTH OF A FLUTE MAKER
Keams’ curiosity took him to the internet, where he found information on how to make flutes out of materials such as PVC pipe. Eventually, he started attempting them with wood and found, through trial and error, that cedar was an ideal wood from which to make Navajo flutes.
It was serendipitous.
“Cedar is a traditional wood that we use [in the Navajo Nation],” Keams said. “We cook with it. We use it in ceremonies. We make cradle boards [for infants].”
Keams said the softness of cedar made it lightweight and easy to tool. And the scent comes through with each instrument. The holes in the flute, which a player would cover or uncover to change notes, are burned rather than drilled, and they put off a scent of burnt cedar. Burning the holes is a traditional practice that Keams hews to when making Navajo flutes.
Each flute Keams creates is imbued with Navajo symbolism. He includes a simple carving of a bear claw with an embellishment of turquoise at its center. In Navajo tradition, the bear is the one animal they do not hunt. The end of the flute resembles Navajo pottery. Keams forms the mouthpiece like the roof of a hogan—a Navajo dwelling with a domed roof tapering to a hole through which smoke can escape. On Keams’ flutes, four dots represent the Four Sacred Mountains of the Navajo Nation. Those are just some examples of how Keams gives a respectful nod to his heritage in his flute making.
RISE TO PROMINENCE
Keams’ participation in the arts council’s Native Reflections exhibit brought him to the attention of the council’s staff. When the time came for the staff to brainstorm artists to create the 2022 Governor’s Awards in the Arts, Keams’ name came up.
Each year, the arts council commissions an artist to create 10 awards—nine for the recipients and one for the arts council’s permanent collection. For the 2022 awards, Kentucky Arts Council Executive Director Chris Cathers contacted Keams to offer the commission. In the 47 years of the Governor’s Awards in the Arts program, only two artists have been commissioned to make musical instruments: renowned luthier Homer Ledford, who created dulcimers for award recipients in 2002, and Keams, who created Navajo flutes for the 2022 awardees.
Cathers said Keams’ craftsmanship was only part of the reason he received the commission.
“Each time we were around Keams, he was always so genuine,” Cathers said. “The way he described his process for making his flutes—how they connected so deeply to his heritage and how they represented his culture were inspirations of his creativity as an artist. He has a very reverent and sacred process to his art form.”
Keams described the commission as “a great honor.” As the award creator, he was invited to play, once again, in the Capitol rotunda, this time during the Governor’s Awards ceremony.
“I was full of joy, and I was actually kind of nervous, too, because of all the [media] cameras,” Keams said. “But I was very proud of who I am, and to stand there and represent our people, our Navajo people. I kept looking at [the award on its podium], and I said, ‘Wow, that’s my work, and I can’t believe it. And the governor’s here, and I can’t believe all these people are here just to get a flute.’
“It’s good medicine, and I was feeling so much joy. I was proud of how far I’ve come in my life, and how far the flute has brought me. And I know it’s going to go even farther.”
The arts council launched a second iteration of Native Reflections, which also included one of Keams’ flutes, in October 2024. The exhibit ended its tour of Kentucky in late May.