Thanksgiving: One Navajo’s Perspective

The students in China were interested in learning about the American Thanksgiving. So last week their American teacher, my friend Bianca, set up a Skype call between her Chinese students

and a real live Native American (yours truly!). The questions were basic; we talked about my Navajo culture and what Thanksgiving means to Americans. Then a cute little Chinese girl who was even too shy to show her face to the camera asked me a question that made me think.

“What do the Navajo people think about Thanksgiving?” 

Huh. That’s a thinker.

The immediate answer that comes to mind is that we love it. For many, it means time off of work to gather with family and to eat good food.

But Thanksgiving feels a bit different to me this year.

This is due to the time I have spent on the Navajo Reservation this semester. I have been working at a chapter house as a Health and Wellness Educator and have taught tennis to Navajo children in schools, a chapter house, and a foster home. I have taken Navajo Language 111 at the local community college and embarrassed

Tennis just outside of the Navajo Reservation

myself over and over trying to speak it with other Navajo people. And I have taken advantage of every opportunity to listen to the stories, thoughts, and feelings of the Navajo and other Native American people around me. After five months of immersing myself in the Navajo culture more than I ever have before, I feel differently about Thanksgiving. It feels…..dirty. It feels as though good Native Americans aren’t supposed to be happy about Thanksgiving.

This feeling was brought to the surface by the circulating Facebook memes that compare the acceptance of Syrian refugees by modern Americans to the acceptance of British refugees by Native Americans in the 1600s. These memes assert the idea that the Europeans were more dangerous to the Native American population than Syrians could ever be to Americans today.

I must admit that the Navajo part of me gets satisfaction from the underlying messages that these memes seem to send. I hear, “Those immigrants didn’t belong here” “They destroyed Native America” and “They were unwelcome intruders that never should have come”.

Perhaps all of these statements are true. Perhaps Europeans had no business on the North American continent. But they came anyway. And that caused havoc on the Native American population. Their foreign diseases alone wiped out over 80 percent of the Native population. That’s millions upon millions of people. This was followed up by centuries of war, genocide, culture stripping, and broken promises. We Native Americans have every reason to be angry. I have every reason to feel hatred and bitterness toward the “intruders” who intentionally or unintentionally tried to either kill or change every one of my Navajo ancestors. I am angry that the

A Navajo Codetalker monument in
Window Rock, AZ

government tried to eradicate the Navajo language in boarding schools, then used the Navajo tongue as a means to win their war. I am angry about The Long Walk. And my head throbs with anger when I think about the Anglo religious leaders who convinced my great aunts to give up our traditional Navajo medicine bundle- a bundle of everything that was once held sacred in our family- in exchange for a promise of protection from their deity. Even as I did research for this article, I found myself wishing that I could go back in time and punch Christopher Columbus in his special place. Kit Carson, too. Fuck him. My heart breaks to think what my great, great Navajo grandparents endured when the settlers reached our part of the country in the 1800s. War. Displacement. Being hunted like animals. They watched their world get burned to the ground. They froze. They starved. Their friends and loved ones died around them as they watched, helpless and terrified. And the small percentage of people who survived were surely broken and traumatized. As modern-day Native Americans, we are descendants of those broken-hearted survivors. We still feel the effects of what

Horseback riding in Canyon de Chelly,
the motherland of the Navajo

happened. We were told the stories as children and we took field trips to the sites of those atrocities. We have stood where our ancestors fell. Oh yes, it’s personal.

Historical trauma is real and it lives on the reservations. It lives where there is poverty, racism, abandonment, suicide, domestic violence, sexual and drug abuse, alcoholism, disease, and general hopelessness. It lives where the people have been lied to and mistreated so many times that trust is a distant memory. These are the symptoms of generations of brokenness. It is reality for many Native Americans today.

We have every right to hate.

I have every right to hate.

But I don’t.

I can’t.

See, as an American with German and Dutch roots, my mother descends from those “intruders”. Her great grandparents immigrated from Germany and Holland with high hopes of finding
a good life in a new world. Decades later, their great granddaughter ran away to New Mexico and married a Native American- a Navajo man whom I call “Dad”.

Because of this, I am not filled with hate toward those European intruders. I am filled with gratitude. Because of them, I exist. Because of them, my German-American mother, my German/Scottish-American best friend, and my English/Scottish-American boyfriend are here. Maybe others don’t feel this way, as

Attending a Kinaalda (a rite of passage
ceremony for girls) near Tuba City, AZ
 January, 2014

that seems like a lot of trouble to produce little ‘ol me. But I sure appreciate it, for without that grotesque history, I wouldn’t be here to have much of an opinion at all. Many of us wouldn’t.

In addition to my gratitude, I feel indescribably saddened when I think about the history that led us here. I am burdened by the brokenness that I witness every day at work on the Navajo Reservation. I am distraught from the deep and pervasive heartache I see in the eyes of many Native children whom I teach. We still have gaping wounds that must be tended to. We still hold burning resentment in our hardened hearts that can only be soothed and softened with forgiveness.

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday. He suggested that we use this holiday as an opportunity to “heal the wounds of the nation.” He wasn’t talking about the sad history of the Native Americans. But it’s time to. This is the original wound of our nation. It has been bleeding for 400 years. We all know what happened and as Americans we each carry the results in our very DNA. None of us were there. But the story belongs to all of us. The responsibility to heal this wound belongs to all of us. We have to forgive each other. We have to actively participate in the conversation, bringing compassion and understanding to the table. Then, and only then, will the wounds of our nation begin to heal.

Virginia

My heart is happiest in the desert. The beautiful landscape is just the beginning of the reasoning behind my love affair. The majesty of a Saguaro cactus and the intoxicating smell of sage in the rain also make the short list. When I got back to the desert after spending a year in the tropical weather of southern China, the dry heat seemed to wrap itself around me like a favorite

 broken-in jacket. My love of the desert goes generations deep. We are from here. According to Navajo legends, we were created here. According to my parents, I literally was created here. Gross. While I was in China, I didn’t just miss cacti and green chile. I missed my roots. I missed the force that pulls me deep into the earth- the one that allows me to fly through the clouds without floating into orbit. And I was hit with the sickening realization that I didn’t know my roots as intimately as I wanted to. I hadn’t fully explored the part of me that is buried deep under layers of sand and rich clay. So I did something about it. My college roommate, Natalie and I made a drive from Phoenix to Kayenta, Arizona, a small town in the heart of the Navajo Reservation. There, we met my parents and Virginia, my dad’s aunt. I had with me a notebook, a pen, and a drive to learn as much as I could about Blackwater history. Here is Virginia’s story.

Our small café table was filled to capacity and littered with crumpled, empty packets of sugar and Sweet n’ Low. Five coffee cups left trails of steam as we lifted them to our lips in-between questions and answers. Spirits were high. This was the first time I had seen my father since Christmas the previous year. It was the first time I’d seen my mother since our Beijing adventure a month prior. And it was the first time I’d seen Virginia since I was a little girl. Virginia had no problem talking about her life. Like my dad, she does

The man, the myth, the legend

not harbor the common Navajo trait of introversion. Stories flowed out of her- a babbling creek of precious information that I scribbled down vigorously in my burlap journal.

“looks like dad” I noted. As I studied them, I noticed that they have the same face shape and those same mean brows that lift high as they put hot coffee delicately to their lips. Virginia is my grandfather’s sister. She is somewhere around the age of 70 and has short salt and pepper curls on her head and beautiful Navajo turquoise jewelry adorning her neck, wrists, and fingers. She is quick to laugh and before she says something funny, she has an ornery look on her face, as if she holds an important secret that she may or may not disclose. Her story began in a hogan (the octagon-shaped traditional Navajo dwelling that always faces east, toward the gods) in Utah. Virginia is the youngest of 7 siblings, one of which died at birth. She never knew her father and her mother died when Virginia was just 4 years old. For days before her death, Virginia's mother had been complaining of a pain in the back of her neck, but the nearest hospital was in Flagstaff, hours away by horse. One day the pain was terrible, and young Virginia was sent to play outside. When she came back in, her mother was unconscious on the floor.

“Get up, mom! Get up!” Virginia cried. But she didn’t get up. When Virginia’s older sisters arrived, they took her away from her mother’s body and transported her to Flagstaff. Virginia cried every day and watched the sun. Her mother always came home when the sun was at a certain spot in the sky. The sun rose and fell, but her mother didn’t come. Virginia’s sisters didn’t tell her that her mother had died because they thought that she was too young to understand. As Virginia watched the sun in Flagstaff, her sisters were busy closing up the hogan in Utah. It is Navajo tradition to abandon a hogan where someone has left this world for the next. The body stays inside and nobody is ever to go there again. Not long after Virginia’s mother died,

my desert

she started seeing shadows on the walls. Her mother’s unrest, she thought. She believed that the devil came to sit on her bed each night. She would throw something at the darkness and it would disappear. This was a very unbalanced time for the family of orphans.

Eventually, Virginia was sent to the Chemewa Indian School in Salem, Oregon. She stayed there for five years, only going back to the Navajo Reservation when it was absolutely necessary. After five years at the boarding school, she was sent to work at a hospital in Tacoma, Washington for two years. There, she learned to cook, and soon took a job in Colorado Spring, CO at a psychiatric hospital. She didn’t like it there. The patients who weren’t allowed to use silverware or have Styrofoam on their meal trays frightened her. Virginia bounced around to various jobs including a stint in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She loved it there. Currently, she lives back at home in Kayenta, Arizona. She spends her time attending Christian revivals and taking care of her oldest living sister, Betti. Despite, or possibly because of, the rocky beginning to Virginia’s life, she has become a strong, spunky, and independent woman.

After speaking to Virginia for over an hour, we left the café with excitement in our bellies. I had gold in my notebook and caffeine in my system. Virginia jumped into the red Subaru with my parents and my dog, Kai. Natalie and I jumped back into her 4Runner. We got back on the main road and took a left, pointing ourselves north toward Utah. As much as I loved hearing Virginia’s perspective, she is not who I came for. Virginia was about to play a very important role- the role of a translator for Betti, another one of my father’s aunts. She is a 93-year-old weaver who only speaks Navajo and lives deep on the ‘rural rez’ near Douglas Mesa, Utah. As we drove, my excitement built. Finally, I saw a clear sign that my life was on the right track:

“Welcome to Utah”

to be continued...

The Land of Enchantment

Culture shock’s a bitch. When you dive into a new culture, everything is new and unfamiliar and a blur of faces and names and symbols seem to blow past your peripheral in the first few days of being abroad. It’s exciting, but exhausting. You know what’s even more exhausting? Reverse culture shock (the term used for re-adjusting to home after being abroad); it sneaks up on you, luring you home with love and warmth, then cutting your well-traveled feet out from under you, making you wish for the familiar, distant world of ulcer-causing food and constant misunderstandings. I’ve heard it described as a U-curve. At first, being home is exciting as you parade around, seeing all the people you’ve missed, eating at your favorite restaurants and catching up on the important news and gossip. Then starts the suck. You don’t fit into the box you once fit into. Strange words pop into your head, and sometimes a foreign phrase fits a situation so much better than English. But you can’t say that phrase without seeming like a pretentious asshole. You miss people and events from your ‘other life’ on the other side of the world. Time zones and international calling fees don’t help the fact.

In the 13 months I’ve been away, very little has changed in Farmington, New Mexico. In the 13 months I’ve been away, everything has changed.

It was the supermarkets that first took me off guard. I spent my first couple days back in America walking around various supermarkets and convenience stores in awe of the selections, flavors, and new products. There are SO many!!!! It’s a lot to process when your mind has been in survival mode for so long. “Okay, I think I saw a crinkled bag of chips in the back of that supermarket. If we borrow some cheese from the café and put them in the toaster oven, we’ll have something that resembles nachos. OMG I’m excited!”

I know, I know. Anyone who has traveled the distance with me knows that my incessant whining about missing the comforts of home while in China cannot possibly result in any sympathy for the struggles of adjusting to home. After all, Zhongshan and Farmington can’t be THAT different, can they? I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, where the hell is Farmington, anyway?

When I go somewhere unfamiliar in this world, New Mexico is known only as “the meth place” thanks to the popular Albuquerque-set TV series, Breaking Bad. But let me tell you- it’s not just “the meth place”. It’s the meth place and so much more.

Farmington, New Mexico is a town of just under 50,000 people and lies 15 minutes east of the Navajo reservation. If you drive an hour north or west, you’ll find yourself in a new state. This is an oil field town with high desert landscapes and old money. It’s home to the Pinion Hills golf course, which amazingly stays green in the middle of the desert. We have our own “Harvard on the hill”, San Juan College, where I’m signed up for two classes this fall.

Farmington hasn’t been completely stagnant since I left. This little town has imported a few more chain restaurants, including a Freddy’s Steakburger fast-food joint and a Buffalo Wildwings, a new place to grab a brew and watch a game. This adds to the two other bars in town, 3 Rivers Brewery and the regional airport bar where once, in college I took my shirt off in order to win a competition and $250 (I won……..and lost).

Coming back to a place like Farmington is kind of like going back 20 years to a time when leaving the country was abnormal and you couldn’t say ‘fuck’ in public without getting dirty looks. There are no taxis and you have to make the hour drive north to Colorado if you want to talk to someone who believes that organic farms and recycling are beneficial to the earth.

Yes, Farmington is a gem of a place. And it’s my home again for the next year. Again, I know what you’re thinking- But, Darrah, aren’t you going to that pretentious school for brilliant people out west because you were accepted for this fall because of your brilliance?

What I’m learning, slowly but surely, is that life doesn’t tend to bend over backwards to grant our every wish. I know…this shocked me, too. The humbling truth is that I need rest. My body and mind have been pounded into concrete for so long that I hit my final wall upon returning home. It took two trips to the emergency room for me to finally get the message that my body is sending: rest.

These days when people ask me what I do, the answer is complicated. “I just got back from a year in China” I hear myself neurotically justify. Then, in an attempt to be seen as a legitimate human being who just happens to live with her parents at the age of 24, I explain how I was PLANNING on going to graduate school but it didn’t work out. “So I’ll go next fall. Believe me! I WILL!! I’ll go….You JUST WATCH! I WILL!!!” I scream, as the stranger I just met uncomfortably wishes she hadn’t asked.

Despite my neurosis, I know being here is the right choice for me right now. And I know epic things will happen this year….eventually. So here I am. In good ol’ Farmington…..resting and breathing the desert air into my nostrils (a nice change from China smog). For now, it’s an enchanting place to be.

NM sunset. Photo cred https://lookingglassstories.wordpress.com