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In Diné (Navajo) culture, ikaah (sandpaintings) are created and then erased as part of sacred healing ceremonies lasting no more than a few days, but Diné hataałii (chanter, healer, cultural guide) Fred Stevens developed fixatives to preserve desacralized sandpaintings. While on a US-sponsored cultural ambassadorial trip in Europe and the Americas in the 1960s, Stevens produced several such sandpaintings and gave them to cultural institutions. This may seem in tension with the role of cultural ambassador—how could static objects authentically represent an inherently ephemeral and dynamic practice?—but such a view is itself overly object-focused and neglects how Stevens strove to convey exactly those characteristics of ikaah as a cultural practice.