Tenaya Stone Spa and Cultural Appropriation

[TP2000]

We're called geologists.

Anyone got a photo of this mischievous rock? It's more likely to have come from the side of the northbound 605 at the Santa Fe dam than up north. Modern imagineers don't even have the knowhow to venture to the Sierra's for cultural research so I doubt they would for a rock.

Lower and mid-level Imagineering executives assigned a project only travel for research to locations where there's a Ritz-Carlton they can stay at on their corporate card.

See: any and all of Joe Rohde's "cultural research trips" for his E Tickets of the last 20 years.

The Awhanee is gorgeous, but quite frankly old and a bit rickety. And impossible to get into.

The newest/nicest hotel within an hour of Yosemite is a place called... wait for it... The Tenaya Lodge.

But even then, it's just a solid 3 star hotel. Not quite up to the Ritz-Carlton standards of a mid-level WDI exec and their small team equipped with corporate cards and a subtle yet noticeable sense of entitlement.

Yosemite lodging – Accommodations – Tenaya at Yosemite

Tenaya Lodge is a full-service resort nestled in the Sierra National Forest, just 2 miles from Yosemite National Park.

www.tenayalodge.com

 

[truecoat]

We're called geologists.

Anyone got a photo of this mischievous rock? It's more likely to have come from the side of the northbound 605 at the Santa Fe dam than up north. Modern imagineers don't even have the knowhow to venture to the Sierra's for cultural research so I doubt they would for a rock.

 

[MoonRakerSCM]

View attachment 632550

What on earth??? This is much worse than I could have possibly imagined. I was expecting a small palm sized smooth/rounded stone... something reminiscent of the type of stones the fancy schmancy spas... set on you when you're doing the spa thing... ya know? Not this thing. I'm not one to call any rock ugly, but this thing ain't winning no pageants.

OK, SO... my firm does a fair amount of legal consulting, so this is my opinion and mine alone... but I'm pretty willing to stake my entire education on this.

This rock is in NO way from Lake Tenaya. At all.

1) This this is not huge, but it's not small. This isn't something one or even a few people could easily pick up and set in a truck and 'sneak' out of Yosemite without notice. This took a piece of machinery to pick it up and move it (palette fork lift etc.).

2) This is not granite (granodiorite if you want to be specific) that is found in and all around Tenaya Lake. Whatever this is... it looks to be find grained and altered quite a bit. In fact, on the left side in this photo... it has what appears to be flow banding. I think this thing is a huge chunk of crappy obsidian. If that is the case then in NO way did it come from Lake Tenaya. Has Disney actually said it is from the lake? If so, there are certainly a fair amount of geologists who would LOVE to get a look at it and study it (let alone archaeologists as the only tiny flakes of obsidian found in Yosemite are from native american hunting and trading routes from Owens Valley and further north etc.).

I am willing to bet a chunk of money on this rock having been picked one mid morning from a local building materials yard (Thompson etc.) and delivered to Disney on a palette. If anything, maybe a mid level imagineer took a payed vacation up to Mammoth to go fishing for a week and had some fun with some personal or rented toys (equipment) and picked up a sizable boulder from Obsidian Dome. There's fine obsidian to be had there but a ton of altered material like the thing they have in their lobby-

 

[BuzzedPotatoHead89]

This rock is in NO way from Lake Tenaya. At all.

1) This this is not huge, but it's not small. This isn't something one or even a few people could easily pick up and set in a truck and 'sneak' out of Yosemite without notice. This took a piece of machinery to pick it up and move it (palette fork lift etc.).

2) This is not granite (granodiorite if you want to be specific) that is found in and all around Tenaya Lake. Whatever this is... it looks to be find grained and altered quite a bit. In fact, on the left side in this photo... it has what appears to be flow banding. I think this thing is a huge chunk of crappy obsidian. If that is the case then in NO way did it come from Lake Tenaya. Has Disney actually said it is from the lake? If so, there are certainly a fair amount of geologists who would LOVE to get a look at it and study it (let alone archaeologists as the only tiny flakes of obsidian found in Yosemite are from native american hunting and trading routes from Owens Valley and further north etc.).

I am willing to bet a chunk of money on this rock having been picked one mid morning from a local building materials yard (Thompson etc.) and delivered to Disney on a palette. If anything, maybe a mid level imagineer took a payed vacation up to Mammoth to go fishing for a week and had some fun with some personal or rented toys (equipment) and picked up a sizable boulder from Obsidian Dome. There's fine obsidian to be had there but a ton of altered material like the thing they have in their lobby-

Found an interesting quote/snippet from the OC Register article from upon when the spa opened that seems to imply that Disney had originally messaged the stone was gifted from a Miwok elder implying it’s authenticity. Sharing for reference.

<<“There was a really natural connection between the Craftsman storyline and honoring the spirit of nature and the indigenous thinking and intention around the way they really live their life and that universal thinking of honoring the spirit of nature,” Walt Disney Imagineering art director Katrina Mosher said during an online video interview. “It was a natural partnership.”…..

“We kept things really raw and really natural,” Mosher said.

An actual Tenaya stone donated by a Miwok elder who is a descendant of Chief Tenaya in the Yosemite Valley serves as a focal point in the spa’s nature-themed brush arbor.>>

Disney’s Tenaya Stone Spa inspired by California nature, architecture and indigenous cultures

The new Tenaya Stone day spa at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa opens on Thursday, Sept. 16.

www.ocregister.com

 

[Vegas Disney Fan]

Why does everything have to be so complicated now a days.

And people wonder why Disney has gotten so lazy and instead of creating new themes story areas we now get copies of toy story this toy story that.
It’s probably the safest route now to use their own properties as to not make some kind of foolish mistake that will create controversy.
Even then it still might, all we need to do is look at the changes for Snow White. that had people upset because of a kiss

I had a similar thought when I first saw this article, we are dooming ourselves to a very bland vanilla world. If everything is offensive the only choice left is boring generic storytelling.

Everyone says they want more cultural representation, but if you attempt it (even hiring “experts” to guide you) and get it wrong you better be prepared for a massive backlash.

Safer just to slap an IP on it and call it a day.

 

[Phroobar]

Sounds like the imagineers took that rock for granite.

 

[Dear Prudence]

Found an interesting quote/snippet from the OC Register article from upon when the spa opened that seems to imply that Disney had originally messaged the stone was gifted from a Miwok elder implying it’s authenticity. Sharing for reference.

<<“There was a really natural connection between the Craftsman storyline and honoring the spirit of nature and the indigenous thinking and intention around the way they really live their life and that universal thinking of honoring the spirit of nature,” Walt Disney Imagineering art director Katrina Mosher said during an online video interview. “It was a natural partnership.”…..

“We kept things really raw and really natural,” Mosher said.

An actual Tenaya stone donated by a Miwok elder who is a descendant of Chief Tenaya in the Yosemite Valley serves as a focal point in the spa’s nature-themed brush arbor.>>

Disney’s Tenaya Stone Spa inspired by California nature, architecture and indigenous cultures

The new Tenaya Stone day spa at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa opens on Thursday, Sept. 16.

www.ocregister.com

The laugh react was not directed at you, but at the fact that those words from Disney mean absolutely nothing and anyone who knows anything about Native-related cultures, laws, etc., knows this reads like Hollywood hokey BS. Like I said before, the mere suggestion that someone would give their passed down cultural items to Disney is ABSURD. The fact that they have not named this person and that it is just some rando Miwuk elder is a dead give away. One of the other red flags is the mentions of the deceased; many Native people, the Miwuk included, have incredibly stringent rules about referring to the deceased, and for many, to this day, speaking of or about the deceased is strictly forbidden. Now I understand that not everyone keeps Traditional ways, which could be the case, but it also falls into a larger pattern of just being completely sus in general.

Aside from the cultural issues, there are also pretty strict laws in place.

 

[waltography]

I had a similar thought when I first saw this article, we are dooming ourselves to a very bland vanilla world. If everything is offensive the only choice left is boring generic storytelling.

Everyone says they want more cultural representation, but if you attempt it (even hiring “experts” to guide you) and get it wrong you better be prepared for a massive backlash.

Safer just to slap an IP on it and call it a day.

I think you're putting too much blame on the "backlash" (which even now I think is only insulated within the Disney community - it's definitely not really being picked up outside) and not enough on Disney's negligence.

I don't think Disney attempted to represent Miwuk culture faithfully, not when there are such clear gaps in their design research process. They should take this as a learning experience, apologize, and take steps to add sanity checks in the process in the future (we both know they won't though, so the cycle continues).

WDAS seems to have figured out how to represent cultures with their story trusts (and they're always improving too), why can't WDI?

 

[CaptinEO]

Found an interesting quote/snippet from the OC Register article from upon when the spa opened that seems to imply that Disney had originally messaged the stone was gifted from a Miwok elder implying it’s authenticity. Sharing for reference.

<<“There was a really natural connection between the Craftsman storyline and honoring the spirit of nature and the indigenous thinking and intention around the way they really live their life and that universal thinking of honoring the spirit of nature,” Walt Disney Imagineering art director Katrina Mosher said during an online video interview. “It was a natural partnership.”…..

“We kept things really raw and really natural,” Mosher said.

An actual Tenaya stone donated by a Miwok elder who is a descendant of Chief Tenaya in the Yosemite Valley serves as a focal point in the spa’s nature-themed brush arbor.>>

Disney’s Tenaya Stone Spa inspired by California nature, architecture and indigenous cultures

The new Tenaya Stone day spa at Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa opens on Thursday, Sept. 16.

www.ocregister.com

An elder wanted to gift this heirloom to a corporation?

Wow. I thought their time traveling shop keeper story was bad.

 

[TP2000]

An elder wanted to gift this heirloom to a corporation?

Wow. I thought their time traveling shop keeper story was bad.

The time-traveling Puerto Rican young lady of incredibly vast wealth who inexplicably settled in small town Missouri circa 1905 to run a Christmas holiday shop is really bad. Laughably bad. Painfully bad.

But this Tenaya Spa storytelling! mess is not just bad, it's sacrilegious and potentially criminal.

 

[CaptinEO]

The time-traveling Puerto Rican young lady of incredibly vast wealth who inexplicably settled in small town Missouri circa 1905 to run a Christmas holiday shop is really bad. Laughably bad. Painfully bad.

But this Tenaya Spa storytelling! mess is not just bad, it's sacrilegious and potentially criminal.

I think this is my problem with badly made "diverse" content. Instead of celebrating cultures they add them inappropriately to the point where it's actually offensive.

So you have a woman from Puerto Rico who visited Israel before it was even a country running a Christmas store with lesbian ice skaters.

I agree this is quite a mess.

 

[truecoat]

What on earth??? This is much worse than I could have possibly imagined. I was expecting a small palm sized smooth/rounded stone... something reminiscent of the type of stones the fancy schmancy spas... set on you when you're doing the spa thing... ya know? Not this thing. I'm not one to call any rock ugly, but this thing ain't winning no pageants.

OK, SO... my firm does a fair amount of legal consulting, so this is my opinion and mine alone... but I'm pretty willing to stake my entire education on this.

This rock is in NO way from Lake Tenaya. At all.

1) This this is not huge, but it's not small. This isn't something one or even a few people could easily pick up and set in a truck and 'sneak' out of Yosemite without notice. This took a piece of machinery to pick it up and move it (palette fork lift etc.).

2) This is not granite (granodiorite if you want to be specific) that is found in and all around Tenaya Lake. Whatever this is... it looks to be find grained and altered quite a bit. In fact, on the left side in this photo... it has what appears to be flow banding. I think this thing is a huge chunk of crappy obsidian. If that is the case then in NO way did it come from Lake Tenaya. Has Disney actually said it is from the lake? If so, there are certainly a fair amount of geologists who would LOVE to get a look at it and study it (let alone archaeologists as the only tiny flakes of obsidian found in Yosemite are from native american hunting and trading routes from Owens Valley and further north etc.).

I am willing to bet a chunk of money on this rock having been picked one mid morning from a local building materials yard (Thompson etc.) and delivered to Disney on a palette. If anything, maybe a mid level imagineer took a payed vacation up to Mammoth to go fishing for a week and had some fun with some personal or rented toys (equipment) and picked up a sizable boulder from Obsidian Dome. There's fine obsidian to be had there but a ton of altered material like the thing they have in their lobby-

View attachment 632638

If any Native Americans want to set up a culturally significant rock store, you know where to find the rocks.

Also, put a sign on the door, no geologists allowed.

 

[drizgirl]

This stuff is pure gold. My new favorite thread.