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— And I'd like to begin with a prayer.

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Creator, Holy Mother Earth,

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holy people all around. It's me.

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I'm coming before you on this holy day

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reaching out to you,

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reaching out to my ancestors,

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reaching out to the ancestors to come.

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May I ask that you be the ones to,

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to speak here.

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Show us the truth.

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Show us what real love is

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and may all of the stories

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serve to show us the way forward.

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Reaching out to the ancestors
to come, I just ask you to,

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to call out to us and to sing to us

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because we're headed your way.

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Walking that beauty way pathway.

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Let this storytelling be a part of that.

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All my relations

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— As children, we were told

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you don't cry

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for any reason.

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You fight and you hold back those tears.

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Why?

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Historical trauma

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has really tested us as a people.

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A lot of the memories we've
become so good at suppressing.

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We've become experts at it,

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and we've become comfortable with that,

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comfortably sick.

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— Why did we go through this?

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Why is it ignored today?

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Why is it not written in history books?

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Why is it put under the rug?

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Why can't the new generations of Americans

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learn the truth so they can
better understand their history?

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— From the beginning,
here in the Navajo land

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k'é was the first thing,

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K'é is the shortest word
and so simple, k'é,

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but it is the seedling of who we are.

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Relationship and kinship,

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love,

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belonging.

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— The clan system is very important,

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and it extends beyond just blood.

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You know, this is establishment
of relationship, of family,

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of kinship

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that goes through our matriarchal side,

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it goes through the women's lineage.

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— Our four clans that
make us a whole person,

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which is our mother and father

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and our grandparents,
our paternal grandparents,

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maternal grandparents.

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They are who we are.

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— They wouldn't call me by an
English name or a given name.

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They would say, "Hey, shiyáázh."

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And shiyáázh, just that simple
word means my child,

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or you belong to me,

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you are mine.

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"Can I talk with you?"

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That's how it is.

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You're rooted.

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You know, you belong here.

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— Just imagine being a child

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and being called "my child".

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To every child,

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"Good morning, my child."

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"Good morning, my little one."

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We're part of one another.

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— A Navajo child, they're not
born to just parents,

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they're born into a family.

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They're born into a community,

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and they all have a role
in bringing up a child.

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— And so every time we speak of k'e

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the smallest thing, clanship,
relationship, kinship,

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all rolled up in one.

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When we express that,

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we are in contact with all our relatives,

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even the ones that go beyond

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into the next world.

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That's the spirit

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of who we are.

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Our songs, our prayers,

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our expressions,

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and how we speak

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is who we are.

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— Our language evolved
from spiritual beings,

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like the talking god,
what we call Hastseyalti.

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And then Hastsehogan,

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the spirit of the home.

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That's where our language developed.

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That's where it caught a spirit.

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— You have to hear it from

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when you're a child, a little baby.

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Your little gugu and gagas

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are the most sacred sounds

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that were given to us by the holy people.

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— My childhood was in a hogan,

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a traditional home made out of mud and logs.

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That's where I recognize home as.

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The round home is what it's translated to.

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Being in our traditional home,

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we always feel that sense of belonging,

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a sense of nurturing feeling,

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a sense of family.

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— Here's one rare photo

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of my grandpa in his ceremony.

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I grew up with a grandfather

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who was a medicine man,

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a part of my childhood involved rhythm.

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And the songs were a big part of that.

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And they were very sacred.

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They were not for everyone.

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They were for those who

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were in need.

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People would come from
all parts of the reservation

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to see my grandpa who offered those songs.

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I, as a curious little girl,

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with so many questions,

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I wanted to hear,

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the songs.

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And so I would sneak by the hogan.

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My grandma and I had this little pact.

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I would tell her,

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I promise to cut two bags of potatoes

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if you only open the window this much,

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because I want to sit under it.

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And of course, grandma's going to like,

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okay, yeah, two bags of potatoes,

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you know, let's... I'll open the window.

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— Your story is through these songs.

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It was passed on from generation

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to generation to generation.

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He prays through the earth,

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he prays through the air,

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he prays through the water,

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he prays through the sun,

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the moon, the stars, the universe.

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— They were songs to restore
a broken self.

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You hear the songs,

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but you also hear of the struggle

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and you are aware of the struggle.

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— As a child, I remember when

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you know, people first started
coming into our region.

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You kind of start to see this mentality of

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you're poor.

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You know, you don't have anything,

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you have a dirt floor hogan that's not...

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By the standards of value
in American society like

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like, you have nothing.

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But for me,

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it felt like we had everything

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that we were maybe the
richest people in the world.

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All of our cultural things
that we still carry on,

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all those just are so
beautiful and rich that

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I really thought we were millionaires.

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— What's really important is
how we reframe

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our traditional life ways,

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because so many people
see it in this colonized sense

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as being poverty.

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When in fact it is not poverty.

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There is an incredible richness

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that we have in our own
Indigenous identities

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with our language, our culture,
our foods, our ceremony,

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our song, our prayer, and our
connection to Mother Earth.

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— For me, there's a very
important significance

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with the hair.

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When I was a child,
I've always had long hair

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and mom had to fight my father,

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to ensure that I was able
to keep my hair long

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—part of my identity.

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They say this represents
the rain, the moisture.

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We live in one of the most dry,
arid environments.

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At a young age

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you know, I was bullied and

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even held down in a
locker room and branded

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where they heated up a lighter

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and burned me and scarred me

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and would call me TROG

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which means Total Reject Of God,

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prairie n****r,

184
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all kinds of just hurtful, spiteful things

185
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because of having long hair,
having pierced ears,

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having a darker skin,

187
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and coming from the Navajo reservation,

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the Diné nation.

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The way that we tie hair
is as it connects us

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with our universe.

191
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So from Yádiłhił,
from the sky, father sky,

192
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the way that our jish,
our sacred mountain soil bundles

193
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are wrapped and prepared.

194
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This is way of bringing all
those thoughts

195
00:16:23,399 --> 00:16:25,943
in nitsáhákees, our thought processes,

196
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everything into a harmonious
place of balance.

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You're prepared for

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all the challenges in life.

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But it's more in the,

200
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the beauty way and the blessing way.

201
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— We always talk about
the beautiness of being Diné.

202
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We talk about our culture,

203
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we talk about our language,

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we talk about the art

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and the land, how beautiful it is.

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But I think we never talk about the darks,

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the dark paths of

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what, what really, who we are.

209
00:17:10,863 --> 00:17:14,366
— Our people experienced oppression

210
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through and through.

211
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They didn't know

212
00:17:18,871 --> 00:17:20,748
what was coming for them.

213
00:17:26,253 --> 00:17:27,921
— At that time,

214
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the US government says

215
00:17:30,883 --> 00:17:32,676
annihilate the Navajos.

216
00:17:38,432 --> 00:17:40,184
— In the mid 1800s, we were told

217
00:17:40,225 --> 00:17:42,227
that any male member of our people

218
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could be captured or killed

219
00:17:44,646 --> 00:17:46,440
if they didn't
turn themselves in

220
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to the US military.

221
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— Kit Carson

222
00:17:52,321 --> 00:17:54,865
did the Scorched Earth Campaign where they

223
00:17:55,240 --> 00:17:56,992
didn't wanna waste their bullets.

224
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You know, they would murder
women and children

225
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and elders with the backs of their guns.

226
00:18:01,872 --> 00:18:04,249
That was to save bullets

227
00:18:04,374 --> 00:18:07,252
as they forcibly removed our
people from their homelands.

228
00:18:09,630 --> 00:18:13,258
— Using the same tactics that
they used in the Civil War,

229
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burn down homes,

230
00:18:15,260 --> 00:18:17,387
burn down fields.

231
00:18:19,556 --> 00:18:21,975
— Go back into our history...

232
00:18:23,477 --> 00:18:24,812
The Long Walk.

233
00:18:28,607 --> 00:18:30,567
We were taken to a concentration camp

234
00:18:30,609 --> 00:18:32,402
in the southern part of New Mexico,

235
00:18:32,444 --> 00:18:33,987
which is about a 400 mile walk.

236
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Very, very cruel walk.

237
00:18:36,198 --> 00:18:38,992
You know, there's stories of
pregnant women who couldn't walk

238
00:18:38,992 --> 00:18:42,412
were shot and left by
the side of the road.

239
00:18:44,498 --> 00:18:46,333
We were taken down to,

240
00:18:46,375 --> 00:18:47,376
they called it Fort Sumner.

241
00:18:48,085 --> 00:18:50,045
And we have our own name for it,

242
00:18:50,087 --> 00:18:51,839
which was Hwéeldi,

243
00:18:52,131 --> 00:18:53,924
which means the place of suffering.

244
00:18:56,885 --> 00:18:58,595
And they say that they didn't give us even

245
00:18:58,637 --> 00:19:00,264
anything to build shelter with.

246
00:19:00,305 --> 00:19:02,474
So we were living in holes
that we dug in the ground

247
00:19:02,474 --> 00:19:04,143
with a blanket put over the top.

248
00:19:04,309 --> 00:19:06,728
We were given government rations,

249
00:19:06,770 --> 00:19:08,939
and that was food that was
completely foreign to us.

250
00:19:08,981 --> 00:19:11,733
We didn't really know exactly
what to do with it right away.

251
00:19:11,775 --> 00:19:13,610
We were trying to eat
coffee beans like beans.

252
00:19:13,777 --> 00:19:16,780
And it was a time of, of great suffering

253
00:19:16,947 --> 00:19:19,241
and a lot of our people perished.

254
00:19:21,285 --> 00:19:23,745
Initially, the plan was

255
00:19:23,787 --> 00:19:25,706
out and out, you know, murder

256
00:19:25,706 --> 00:19:28,959
like every single one of us was to be

257
00:19:28,959 --> 00:19:30,210
exterminated, you know

258
00:19:30,210 --> 00:19:31,170
and that's what they say

259
00:19:31,170 --> 00:19:32,337
about the whole continent, right,

260
00:19:32,337 --> 00:19:35,257
that 9 out of 10 of the
inhabitants were exterminated.

261
00:19:39,845 --> 00:19:41,597
So, I don't really know at what point,

262
00:19:41,638 --> 00:19:42,848
like this conscience grew,

263
00:19:42,890 --> 00:19:44,516
or I don't know if it was conscience

264
00:19:44,516 --> 00:19:46,727
or what, what was it that happened where,

265
00:19:46,768 --> 00:19:48,896
I mean, I guess what
I'd like to think is that

266
00:19:48,896 --> 00:19:50,772
it was our prayers and our ceremonies

267
00:19:51,023 --> 00:19:53,483
that shifted just that, that place

268
00:19:53,483 --> 00:19:57,029
of just outright slaughter of
every single Indigenous person

269
00:19:57,696 --> 00:20:01,116
to a place of, of wanting to negotiate.

270
00:20:05,954 --> 00:20:08,081
It was proposed that we sign a treaty

271
00:20:08,916 --> 00:20:10,334
and in that treaty,

272
00:20:10,709 --> 00:20:13,086
it said that we would send our children

273
00:20:13,420 --> 00:20:14,671
to their schools.

274
00:20:15,547 --> 00:20:18,717
So this is when the, we shifted from just,

275
00:20:18,759 --> 00:20:21,511
you know, outright genocide to

276
00:20:21,678 --> 00:20:23,347
Kill the Indian, Save the Man

277
00:20:23,430 --> 00:20:26,058
— that was the name of the campaign.

278
00:20:47,454 --> 00:20:49,289
So, they signed the treaty, you know,

279
00:20:49,289 --> 00:20:51,166
and then we were allowed to walk back

280
00:20:51,541 --> 00:20:54,628
400 miles again, a lot of people
didn't make it there either.

281
00:20:54,920 --> 00:20:58,966
And then when we got back home, our
territory was greatly, greatly reduced.

282
00:21:02,970 --> 00:21:07,266
— They estimate that our tribe
was down to maybe 3,000 people.

283
00:21:07,307 --> 00:21:12,604
There's a historical photo that
Edward Curtis had taken

284
00:21:12,646 --> 00:21:13,981
in that time period

285
00:21:14,147 --> 00:21:16,441
and he titled it Vanishing Race

286
00:21:16,692 --> 00:21:20,153
because we were expected to go extinct.

287
00:21:25,826 --> 00:21:28,537
The way the reservation was designed,

288
00:21:28,537 --> 00:21:33,250
we were viewed as wards of the
United States government,

289
00:21:33,917 --> 00:21:35,252
as prisoners of war,

290
00:21:36,878 --> 00:21:39,798
because we had been
engaged in warfare against

291
00:21:40,007 --> 00:21:41,300
the United States government.

292
00:21:41,800 --> 00:21:44,678
The federal government says
that we're sovereign, yet

293
00:21:44,720 --> 00:21:47,014
all the land is held in trust.

294
00:21:47,764 --> 00:21:50,225
So we don't have ownership of the land.

295
00:22:01,945 --> 00:22:03,447
— In the 1930s, they did a...

296
00:22:03,447 --> 00:22:05,073
there's a program called the

297
00:22:05,073 --> 00:22:07,034
Navajo Livestock Reduction Program.

298
00:22:08,410 --> 00:22:11,496
My dad was just a child

299
00:22:11,580 --> 00:22:12,998
when they came through and they

300
00:22:13,165 --> 00:22:16,168
slaughtered every single living animal.

301
00:22:16,710 --> 00:22:19,504
They were saying that we were
overgrazing the land

302
00:22:19,546 --> 00:22:21,757
and that it was creating desertification.

303
00:22:22,674 --> 00:22:24,092
And as my dad recalls, you know,

304
00:22:24,092 --> 00:22:25,719
it's like we were self-sufficient,

305
00:22:26,094 --> 00:22:29,264
had everything that
you need for our people.

306
00:22:29,973 --> 00:22:31,975
It wasn't necessary for them to work

307
00:22:32,017 --> 00:22:36,355
or to, you know, go off the
reservation for anything

308
00:22:36,438 --> 00:22:40,734
and everything that they needed
was there on the land.

309
00:22:42,277 --> 00:22:45,697
— It led to our people
becoming impoverished

310
00:22:45,822 --> 00:22:49,534
in a sense that we hadn't ever known,

311
00:22:49,785 --> 00:22:54,122
because so much of what
sustains our people as Diné

312
00:22:54,164 --> 00:22:57,209
comes from these beautiful creatures.

313
00:23:00,962 --> 00:23:01,963
— It's hard. It's not easy.

314
00:23:01,963 --> 00:23:04,049
There's no economy on the reservation.

315
00:23:04,091 --> 00:23:06,551
So, to survive and sustain,

316
00:23:06,593 --> 00:23:08,595
you know, especially with
the prices of gas,

317
00:23:08,720 --> 00:23:10,430
when you have to haul water.

318
00:23:10,639 --> 00:23:12,099
They really make it difficult

319
00:23:12,099 --> 00:23:15,685
for you to, to live and exist
on the reservation.

320
00:23:16,645 --> 00:23:21,900
The way that they've designed it
is for people to flee, to leave.

321
00:23:22,609 --> 00:23:25,779
And that's in the end, you know, the way

322
00:23:25,779 --> 00:23:30,700
of the United States government
kind of finalizing the,

323
00:23:30,742 --> 00:23:33,829
the Indian wars and
abolishing the reservations

324
00:23:33,870 --> 00:23:36,373
and terminating us as a people.

325
00:23:44,214 --> 00:23:47,759
— I felt like I was in another
land, another country.

326
00:23:48,385 --> 00:23:50,554
I had worked with other cultures

327
00:23:50,554 --> 00:23:53,849
and this felt like a place other than

328
00:23:54,349 --> 00:23:56,101
anything I had ever seen.

329
00:23:58,562 --> 00:24:03,066
I knew that I wanted to go to work
with an Indigenous people

330
00:24:03,066 --> 00:24:05,610
that was still living on their land.

331
00:24:09,531 --> 00:24:11,700
The trauma was everywhere.

332
00:24:14,744 --> 00:24:19,291
Here I was, inspired by
Indigenous people and cultures,

333
00:24:19,416 --> 00:24:22,586
but in many ways,
there was no sign of that.

334
00:24:22,794 --> 00:24:25,130
There were only the signs of

335
00:24:25,881 --> 00:24:28,508
generations of trauma.

336
00:24:31,678 --> 00:24:35,307
I didn't come there because
I felt sorry for them.

337
00:24:35,515 --> 00:24:37,476
That wasn't what called me.

338
00:24:38,185 --> 00:24:41,354
What called me was my admiration

339
00:24:41,563 --> 00:24:44,691
for what I had learned about these people,

340
00:24:46,067 --> 00:24:50,864
and yet here, what I was
encountering was so much lost,

341
00:24:51,156 --> 00:24:56,453
so much being passed on
in the way of pain and hurt.

342
00:25:03,460 --> 00:25:04,461
— Shake my hand.

343
00:25:04,544 --> 00:25:05,545
There you go.

344
00:25:23,813 --> 00:25:27,192
— Our people have really gone through

345
00:25:27,192 --> 00:25:29,528
so many historical afflictions.

346
00:25:29,569 --> 00:25:34,407
You have the influenza, the tuberculosis.

347
00:25:34,908 --> 00:25:40,539
You have the the land dispute that forced

348
00:25:40,539 --> 00:25:43,750
families away from their homelands.

349
00:25:46,002 --> 00:25:49,214
You have the, the boarding school era.

350
00:25:53,969 --> 00:25:55,470
— Any native child you saw,

351
00:25:55,470 --> 00:25:57,055
anybody could pretty much just grab them

352
00:25:57,222 --> 00:25:59,641
and say, "Hey, you gotta go
to one of these schools."

353
00:26:03,228 --> 00:26:04,229
That was the law.

354
00:26:07,107 --> 00:26:09,401
— We were sent everywhere,

355
00:26:09,442 --> 00:26:13,655
California, Utah, Washington.

356
00:26:15,282 --> 00:26:17,450
— I went to Leupp boarding school.

357
00:26:17,492 --> 00:26:20,078
I was six years old.

358
00:26:21,162 --> 00:26:22,581
When we walked in,

359
00:26:22,581 --> 00:26:25,584
I was clinging onto,
hanging onto my mom's skirt,

360
00:26:25,584 --> 00:26:28,753
and I said, you guys aren't gonna
leave me here, you know?

361
00:26:29,129 --> 00:26:32,465
And she says, yeah,
we'll come back for you.

362
00:26:33,550 --> 00:26:35,176
But they didn't.

363
00:26:35,218 --> 00:26:36,469
I remember that night,

364
00:26:36,511 --> 00:26:40,557
just little girls crying like,
"my mom, my dad."

365
00:26:41,808 --> 00:26:45,854
I think that was the very first time
that we were ever away from home.

366
00:26:47,647 --> 00:26:50,775
— They came to my house,
they took me away from my parents.

367
00:26:51,610 --> 00:26:53,486
I fought to get away.

368
00:26:53,695 --> 00:26:55,655
As much as I could, I fought,

369
00:26:56,156 --> 00:26:58,241
trying to get out of their grip.

370
00:26:59,451 --> 00:27:00,910
I couldn't do it.

371
00:27:01,077 --> 00:27:02,203
I fought, I fought

372
00:27:02,203 --> 00:27:05,957
until I was locked up
in a room for two days,

373
00:27:09,169 --> 00:27:11,212
and then I gave in.

374
00:27:14,049 --> 00:27:17,218
— When I got to five years old,
they took me to

375
00:27:17,969 --> 00:27:20,972
Leupp boarding school

376
00:27:21,389 --> 00:27:24,351
and they separated me from my grandmother,

377
00:27:25,143 --> 00:27:28,355
put you in school and cut your hair.

378
00:27:29,689 --> 00:27:32,442
—  They were told to take away our,

379
00:27:32,651 --> 00:27:35,570
our culture, our way of life.

380
00:27:35,820 --> 00:27:38,907
— We have the Navajo,
as we find him in the desert,

381
00:27:39,324 --> 00:27:42,535
yet, through the agencies
of the government,

382
00:27:42,744 --> 00:27:47,040
they are being rapidly brought
from their state of comparative

383
00:27:47,082 --> 00:27:50,877
savagery and barbarism
to one of civilization.

384
00:28:02,806 --> 00:28:04,599
— When we first went into

385
00:28:04,683 --> 00:28:06,393
the boarding school,

386
00:28:07,227 --> 00:28:08,978
we didn't talk English.

387
00:28:09,562 --> 00:28:11,147
We only talked Navajo.

388
00:28:12,524 --> 00:28:15,276
— My voice was Diné,

389
00:28:15,527 --> 00:28:17,654
my language was Diné,

390
00:28:23,451 --> 00:28:29,249
— Their goal was to make our own
culture so repulsive to us

391
00:28:29,749 --> 00:28:32,127
that we would never
think about going back.

392
00:28:33,378 --> 00:28:36,339
Any part of the way that they acted,

393
00:28:36,339 --> 00:28:39,342
that could be construed as being Diné

394
00:28:39,384 --> 00:28:42,262
was ridiculed and shamed.

395
00:28:44,180 --> 00:28:47,100
— We were really penalized

396
00:28:47,726 --> 00:28:49,769
when we talked Navajo.

397
00:28:50,103 --> 00:28:54,858
We were, we had to be,
they'd tell us to eat soap.

398
00:28:55,233 --> 00:28:56,276
We were spanked,

399
00:28:57,485 --> 00:28:59,154
they would pull our hair.

400
00:28:59,237 --> 00:29:00,864
They really abused us, you know

401
00:29:01,156 --> 00:29:02,866
in different ways.

402
00:29:05,285 --> 00:29:07,454
— They had a board in the office,

403
00:29:08,204 --> 00:29:11,040
and it's called Board of Education.

404
00:29:11,499 --> 00:29:15,879
That thing was that long, that wide,
and you got a spanking,

405
00:29:16,588 --> 00:29:20,091
and you could just close your eyes and ears

406
00:29:20,133 --> 00:29:23,219
and hear the screaming of the girls.

407
00:29:28,224 --> 00:29:30,727
I was ashamed of who I was.

408
00:29:31,144 --> 00:29:34,481
I was ashamed about,

409
00:29:34,564 --> 00:29:36,733
you know, being Indian, I guess.

410
00:29:39,027 --> 00:29:41,780
— The sexual abuse, the physical abuse,

411
00:29:41,821 --> 00:29:45,408
such a violent process
of trying to separate

412
00:29:46,159 --> 00:29:50,163
and ensure that the parents
had no influence on their children.

413
00:29:50,622 --> 00:29:53,333
That none of the language
was gonna be passed on,

414
00:29:53,333 --> 00:29:55,210
none of the ceremonies,
all of that.

415
00:29:55,460 --> 00:29:57,545
They were trying to break
that connection.

416
00:30:02,801 --> 00:30:04,844
— This is someplace where church and state

417
00:30:04,886 --> 00:30:07,347
really came together to cooperate

418
00:30:07,347 --> 00:30:10,683
and collaborate on
kidnapping these children.

419
00:30:14,395 --> 00:30:18,358
— Every Wednesday and every
Sunday we had church services.

420
00:30:18,733 --> 00:30:21,444
We were mandatory to go to those services.

421
00:30:21,986 --> 00:30:26,199
So we can forget our traditional ceremonies

422
00:30:26,199 --> 00:30:27,492
or traditional culture.

423
00:30:30,662 --> 00:30:32,580
— We weren't allowed to be kids.

424
00:30:33,206 --> 00:30:36,125
I think our childhood was severed.

425
00:30:36,751 --> 00:30:38,253
That's the way I felt.

426
00:30:39,003 --> 00:30:41,256
And to this day, I still feel the,

427
00:30:41,381 --> 00:30:44,133
the pain of boarding school,

428
00:30:44,133 --> 00:30:45,134
what has happened.

429
00:31:02,986 --> 00:31:05,613
— God is in our midst no matter what.

430
00:31:05,905 --> 00:31:08,199
You know, that's one, one thing that

431
00:31:08,658 --> 00:31:11,661
no one can take away from us.

432
00:31:12,412 --> 00:31:14,873
No trouble, no hardship,

433
00:31:15,248 --> 00:31:20,336
no problems of this world can overcast and

434
00:31:20,545 --> 00:31:23,673
override the biblical fact

435
00:31:23,673 --> 00:31:25,925
that God is with us.

436
00:31:30,638 --> 00:31:34,183
— I consider myself raised traditionally.

437
00:31:36,769 --> 00:31:39,188
I would ask questions and I'd say,

438
00:31:39,314 --> 00:31:40,940
"Why are you guys doing this?"

439
00:31:41,065 --> 00:31:42,775
"How come you don't allow
the kids over there?"

440
00:31:42,859 --> 00:31:44,652
"The hogan's where the
ceremony is happening."

441
00:31:45,445 --> 00:31:48,448
So, a lot of it was not answered.

442
00:31:48,948 --> 00:31:52,327
So somewhere along the way,
I just came to my own conclusions:

443
00:31:52,493 --> 00:31:54,913
Okay, that's not for me. That's not for me.

444
00:31:58,917 --> 00:32:01,920
So, by the time I met my husband,

445
00:32:02,211 --> 00:32:06,007
he was the one that turned to Christianity

446
00:32:07,175 --> 00:32:10,053
and I was kind of like
caught in the middle.

447
00:32:10,094 --> 00:32:12,847
You know, I have my whole
family here that's traditional

448
00:32:12,847 --> 00:32:15,642
Then I have my husband
just by himself over here.

449
00:32:15,767 --> 00:32:19,520
So, and then it was kind of
creating conflicts between us.

450
00:32:22,649 --> 00:32:25,151
Finally, I just had to think,

451
00:32:25,193 --> 00:32:27,111
I'm gonna go with my husband.

452
00:32:29,322 --> 00:32:31,199
My family was kind of like

453
00:32:31,449 --> 00:32:32,909
"you betrayed us."

454
00:32:33,076 --> 00:32:35,370
You know, like, you're turning against us.

455
00:32:36,037 --> 00:32:38,247
And it's like, no, it's not like that.

456
00:32:38,247 --> 00:32:39,624
It's not like that.

457
00:32:43,127 --> 00:32:44,337
— Of my siblings,

458
00:32:44,379 --> 00:32:47,882
I was the first to attend
church with my dad.

459
00:32:49,342 --> 00:32:54,180
It presented in a sense
of spiritual inquiry of

460
00:32:54,222 --> 00:32:55,974
where do we come from?

461
00:32:57,100 --> 00:32:58,559
Where am I going?

462
00:33:00,603 --> 00:33:05,400
And then you have the traditional side

463
00:33:05,441 --> 00:33:08,528
where you already knew the answer to that.

464
00:33:12,031 --> 00:33:13,866
It was a beautiful blend

465
00:33:13,908 --> 00:33:17,537
because they shared morals,

466
00:33:18,121 --> 00:33:22,166
they shared values.

467
00:33:24,210 --> 00:33:28,548
My faith really just reinforced

468
00:33:29,716 --> 00:33:34,095
my identity, my cultural identity.

469
00:33:36,639 --> 00:33:39,350
— I was raised in the Dutch
Christian Reformed Church myself,

470
00:33:39,517 --> 00:33:42,103
and then when I finally
decided to leave it,

471
00:33:42,270 --> 00:33:44,230
when I got sent to East
Coast boarding school,

472
00:33:44,230 --> 00:33:45,648
and I realized nobody was watching,

473
00:33:45,648 --> 00:33:47,942
nobody knew if I was at church or not,

474
00:33:48,276 --> 00:33:49,861
you know, it was terrifying.

475
00:33:50,319 --> 00:33:53,072
It was terrifying to not go to church.

476
00:33:53,239 --> 00:33:56,743
I mean, I had deeply
instilled in me the fear of hell

477
00:33:56,868 --> 00:33:57,994
and damnation, you know?

478
00:33:59,328 --> 00:34:02,790
So it was, it was a very big move
and moment for me.

479
00:34:08,755 --> 00:34:12,383
There's a lot of judgment among
Indigenous peoples around,

480
00:34:12,633 --> 00:34:14,427
you know, why would you be Christian?

481
00:34:14,552 --> 00:34:17,638
You know? But I think,
you know, as a small child

482
00:34:18,639 --> 00:34:20,558
being torn out of your family,

483
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:23,227
being torn away from your
grandparents, being stripped

484
00:34:23,227 --> 00:34:26,230
of all the beautiful things that
they made to adorn you

485
00:34:26,230 --> 00:34:28,649
because they loved you,
and having those just be stripped

486
00:34:28,649 --> 00:34:30,610
and thrown in the fire in front of your eyes.

487
00:34:30,860 --> 00:34:35,073
If you decide to hold onto Jesus,
that's all right with me.

488
00:34:37,241 --> 00:34:38,659
That's all right with me.

489
00:34:40,495 --> 00:34:43,706
Whatever you need to do, you know,
whatever you need to do.

490
00:34:49,545 --> 00:34:50,922
— I feel love

491
00:34:51,589 --> 00:34:54,383
and I feel... hope

492
00:34:54,801 --> 00:34:56,052
when people pray.

493
00:34:58,679 --> 00:35:01,474
If people are praying and,

494
00:35:01,516 --> 00:35:03,518
and looking for their
spiritual self

495
00:35:03,893 --> 00:35:06,062
out of a place that is

496
00:35:06,437 --> 00:35:07,522
of goodness

497
00:35:08,356 --> 00:35:09,607
and kindness,

498
00:35:10,149 --> 00:35:11,192
compassion

499
00:35:11,567 --> 00:35:12,568
and love,

500
00:35:13,861 --> 00:35:15,363
then that prayer

501
00:35:15,488 --> 00:35:17,490
can be said in any language.

502
00:35:17,907 --> 00:35:19,617
It could be said from a book,

503
00:35:19,826 --> 00:35:21,744
it could be said from the heart.

504
00:35:22,078 --> 00:35:24,831
It could be said from
your ancestral wisdom.

505
00:35:26,916 --> 00:35:29,127
But I don't feel any animosity.

506
00:35:32,463 --> 00:35:35,091
The only time that I felt grief or loss

507
00:35:35,341 --> 00:35:37,927
or pain from

508
00:35:38,386 --> 00:35:40,471
organized religions

509
00:35:41,139 --> 00:35:42,265
is when

510
00:35:42,932 --> 00:35:46,018
we're hated as traditional people.

511
00:35:46,686 --> 00:35:50,982
When we're misconstrued as
being something that is evil.

512
00:35:58,447 --> 00:35:59,574
— My grandmother

513
00:35:59,615 --> 00:36:01,367
my understanding was that

514
00:36:01,367 --> 00:36:04,453
she was the one who was home
when the missionaries came,

515
00:36:04,453 --> 00:36:06,164
and her siblings were not home.

516
00:36:06,372 --> 00:36:08,249
So she was the only one that was taken

517
00:36:08,457 --> 00:36:09,709
from her family

518
00:36:09,917 --> 00:36:13,296
and her siblings all
remained traditional Diné.

519
00:36:14,338 --> 00:36:18,342
Her version of Christianity was to not

520
00:36:18,342 --> 00:36:20,303
denigrate the people around her.

521
00:36:23,931 --> 00:36:26,559
When we used to go visit
her traditional sister,

522
00:36:26,726 --> 00:36:28,644
they would just weep
when they saw each other

523
00:36:28,936 --> 00:36:31,939
with just joy and
such a deep feeling.

524
00:36:32,148 --> 00:36:35,026
That was a totally
foreign world to me,

525
00:36:35,067 --> 00:36:38,279
a very traditional woman living
in a traditional circumstance.

526
00:36:39,739 --> 00:36:41,532
I didn't know anything about it,

527
00:36:41,574 --> 00:36:43,367
and I didn't know what to do there

528
00:36:43,743 --> 00:36:45,620
and it caused problems,

529
00:36:46,037 --> 00:36:51,417
because in Diné way, there is a
way to do absolutely everything.

530
00:36:51,792 --> 00:36:53,878
Like there's a way to do it, you know,

531
00:36:53,920 --> 00:36:55,213
and I had no idea.

532
00:36:58,007 --> 00:37:00,718
I didn't understand the foods that we ate.

533
00:37:01,260 --> 00:37:05,848
And I rejected them and
that was a huge problem.

534
00:37:08,142 --> 00:37:12,271
So, eventually, what happened on those
visits was I got to sit in the corner

535
00:37:12,647 --> 00:37:14,982
with a thermos of milk and some crackers.

536
00:37:15,024 --> 00:37:17,318
Like, you just sit over here while we,

537
00:37:17,818 --> 00:37:20,446
basically I think the way I
interpret is, while we be Diné

538
00:37:20,738 --> 00:37:23,741
because you're not one of us and
you're never gonna be one of us.

539
00:37:24,242 --> 00:37:29,080
And that message, that went
so deep, so, so deep.

540
00:37:29,330 --> 00:37:31,958
And somewhere along the way,
when I was very young, I thought

541
00:37:31,999 --> 00:37:34,043
If I ever have a chance to avoid my people,

542
00:37:34,210 --> 00:37:38,172
I'm gonna avoid my people
because it's rough, man. It's mean.

543
00:37:39,298 --> 00:37:40,883
My father ended up, you know,

544
00:37:40,883 --> 00:37:43,010
working on his PhD
at Stanford University.

545
00:37:43,094 --> 00:37:45,596
My brother went to Stanford,
even carried on

546
00:37:45,596 --> 00:37:48,224
to my daughter going to Stanford,
my niece and nephew.

547
00:37:48,641 --> 00:37:51,978
Many of my relatives are
very highly educated in

548
00:37:52,061 --> 00:37:54,105
you know, American school systems.

549
00:37:54,438 --> 00:37:56,941
My father's full blood Diné,
my mother's full blood Diné,

550
00:37:57,149 --> 00:38:00,361
I'm as native as you can
be blood wise, right?

551
00:38:00,820 --> 00:38:03,489
But I was sent into
American school systems.

552
00:38:04,073 --> 00:38:06,200
So, I have the mannerisms of

553
00:38:06,242 --> 00:38:08,369
basically rich, white, educated people.

554
00:38:10,037 --> 00:38:13,374
That's when the light bulb finally
went on and I went, wait a second.

555
00:38:14,166 --> 00:38:18,587
If I'm not native, you know,
then who is?

556
00:38:20,047 --> 00:38:23,134
The events of history led to
me being here like this.

557
00:38:23,551 --> 00:38:27,221
So, I accept this place but

558
00:38:30,725 --> 00:38:32,810
there's been a cost, let's just say

559
00:38:33,269 --> 00:38:34,854
for me to sit here like this.

560
00:38:46,782 --> 00:38:51,329
— Intergenerational trauma, to me,

561
00:38:51,370 --> 00:38:55,708
we can understand or interpret
it in the English language,

562
00:38:55,958 --> 00:39:00,046
but in the Navajo language,

563
00:39:00,171 --> 00:39:03,341
the one thing that I can possibly

564
00:39:05,009 --> 00:39:06,302
describe

565
00:39:06,677 --> 00:39:08,929
back into English from mine:

566
00:39:09,972 --> 00:39:12,600
sorrow and hurt.

567
00:39:14,393 --> 00:39:18,356
— We were never allowed a time to heal

568
00:39:18,814 --> 00:39:23,235
because year, decade after decade
after decade after decade,

569
00:39:24,904 --> 00:39:26,405
our people were

570
00:39:27,490 --> 00:39:29,408
affected by something new

571
00:39:29,658 --> 00:39:31,952
and so, as spiritual people,

572
00:39:32,828 --> 00:39:37,291
what does our lives require?
a time of healing.

573
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:39,418
But that never happened.

574
00:39:40,169 --> 00:39:43,339
And so what happens
to our physiological self?

575
00:39:43,381 --> 00:39:48,552
Well, then the cells in our body,
because they don't heal,

576
00:39:49,136 --> 00:39:51,972
they carry that burden.

577
00:39:53,432 --> 00:39:55,309
— So you saw a lot of

578
00:39:56,102 --> 00:39:58,062
problems with alcoholism.

579
00:39:59,271 --> 00:40:01,649
My children were learning Navajo

580
00:40:02,066 --> 00:40:05,444
and my daughter asked me one day,

581
00:40:05,444 --> 00:40:09,865
"Mom, what are the earliest words
you remember in your childhood?"

582
00:40:10,783 --> 00:40:15,788
And instantly, instantly my mind,

583
00:40:15,830 --> 00:40:20,626
the term Nayila popped up.

584
00:40:20,918 --> 00:40:22,378
It was like instant.

585
00:40:23,587 --> 00:40:27,967
I was like, of all the words
in our Navajo vocabulary,

586
00:40:28,092 --> 00:40:32,221
why did the word "passed out" come to mind?

587
00:40:34,932 --> 00:40:38,602
As a child, I remember going to town

588
00:40:41,021 --> 00:40:42,606
in the back of the pickup truck.

589
00:40:44,984 --> 00:40:48,362
As we would drive to town, in the back,

590
00:40:48,779 --> 00:40:50,781
there were liquor bottles

591
00:40:51,407 --> 00:40:54,076
set up along the roadside.

592
00:40:54,577 --> 00:40:56,162
And then you get to town

593
00:40:56,787 --> 00:40:59,874
and you see those same
bottles being carried

594
00:41:00,249 --> 00:41:01,750
by our people.

595
00:41:04,044 --> 00:41:07,381
We had family members walking the alleys

596
00:41:07,840 --> 00:41:09,592
and you'd have to

597
00:41:11,385 --> 00:41:12,470
beg them,

598
00:41:14,054 --> 00:41:15,306
"Get in the truck"

599
00:41:16,599 --> 00:41:17,933
"let's go home."

600
00:41:24,148 --> 00:41:26,525
We are in an era of

601
00:41:27,151 --> 00:41:29,195
escalated problems

602
00:41:29,487 --> 00:41:31,030
with substance abuse.

603
00:41:32,364 --> 00:41:35,743
It has gone beyond alcoholism.

604
00:41:36,535 --> 00:41:41,207
It has now gone into the use of

605
00:41:42,625 --> 00:41:44,251
dangerous drugs.

606
00:41:58,307 --> 00:42:01,519
— I went pretty deep into
alcohol and drug use.

607
00:42:01,727 --> 00:42:04,104
I was using hard alcohol
when I was 11 years old.

608
00:42:04,313 --> 00:42:06,524
I mean, I look at 11-year-olds
now, and I think about

609
00:42:06,649 --> 00:42:10,569
trying to picture them drinking 151
Bacardi like I was when I was 11.

610
00:42:10,569 --> 00:42:12,488
And I'm just like, wow.

611
00:42:14,865 --> 00:42:17,034
Poor dear one, like,

612
00:42:17,868 --> 00:42:19,495
wow, you know?

613
00:42:21,121 --> 00:42:24,250
And that, that was a godsend
to me at that time.

614
00:42:24,250 --> 00:42:26,418
I'll just never forget the relief of

615
00:42:26,544 --> 00:42:30,047
feeling that feeling coming on
and just being like, oh, thank God,

616
00:42:30,381 --> 00:42:33,050
there's some kind of way
to make it just stop.

617
00:42:34,802 --> 00:42:39,640
I overdosed twice in
two weeks when I was 16,

618
00:42:40,975 --> 00:42:44,061
on Quaalude and
Southern Comfort, I think it was.

619
00:42:46,397 --> 00:42:49,233
So later, I came to a crisis point.

620
00:42:49,275 --> 00:42:51,777
I had two, three small children

621
00:42:52,152 --> 00:42:54,822
and I realized I was gonna
self-destruct right in front of them,

622
00:42:54,863 --> 00:42:58,033
and I had had other elders
around me, self-destruct,

623
00:42:58,367 --> 00:43:01,120
and it's very confusing
to watch that happen.

624
00:43:03,789 --> 00:43:05,457
And I thought, I can't.

625
00:43:05,457 --> 00:43:07,001
I can't do that in front of these kids.

626
00:43:07,001 --> 00:43:09,878
So, you know, I called out to something.

627
00:43:11,130 --> 00:43:13,674
I didn't know what I was calling out to.

628
00:43:13,966 --> 00:43:16,427
I was very ashamed for

629
00:43:17,219 --> 00:43:18,721
resorting to that,

630
00:43:19,346 --> 00:43:22,182
but I did it because I love my kids,

631
00:43:23,017 --> 00:43:25,144
and I just said,
if there's anything out there,

632
00:43:25,185 --> 00:43:27,396
I'm telling you I could use
some help right now

633
00:43:27,438 --> 00:43:29,315
because if I don't get some kind of help,

634
00:43:29,523 --> 00:43:31,275
I don't think I'm gonna make it.

635
00:43:32,026 --> 00:43:34,862
And what came back to me was

636
00:43:35,070 --> 00:43:37,865
getting invited to my
first native ceremony,

637
00:43:38,032 --> 00:43:40,034
and it was a Lakota ceremony,

638
00:43:40,659 --> 00:43:42,703
and I got invited into my first

639
00:43:42,703 --> 00:43:44,872
sweat lodge ceremony.

640
00:43:52,713 --> 00:43:56,717
There is no deeper resetting
of the nervous system

641
00:43:57,384 --> 00:44:00,846
than being in that ceremony or
being in any of our ceremonies.

642
00:44:02,723 --> 00:44:05,976
It pushes the mind all the
way to the back of the line

643
00:44:06,226 --> 00:44:10,606
and what comes forward first is
the body, because of the heat,

644
00:44:11,106 --> 00:44:13,067
but then the emotions,

645
00:44:13,067 --> 00:44:14,902
then the spirit.

646
00:44:16,528 --> 00:44:18,364
I was screaming and

647
00:44:18,447 --> 00:44:20,449
crying and clawing the earth in there

648
00:44:20,532 --> 00:44:24,912
to try to get rid of whatever it was,

649
00:44:24,912 --> 00:44:27,915
you know, that was, that was in me.

650
00:44:31,502 --> 00:44:35,339
I was reconnected to

651
00:44:36,423 --> 00:44:37,841
this Mother Earth,

652
00:44:39,385 --> 00:44:41,595
and I was reconnected to

653
00:44:42,763 --> 00:44:44,181
spiritual help.

654
00:44:47,434 --> 00:44:48,519
One of my elders says,

655
00:44:48,560 --> 00:44:53,190
"You were born into beauty, as beauty,
for joyful life. That's the truth. "

656
00:44:53,399 --> 00:44:56,110
So, to start from that origin

657
00:44:56,902 --> 00:45:01,115
is a place of great strength for me

658
00:45:03,033 --> 00:45:05,119
and a fountain to, to heal from.

659
00:45:15,295 --> 00:45:16,338
— When you look at

660
00:45:16,714 --> 00:45:20,175
the whole process,
a community is coming together,

661
00:45:20,384 --> 00:45:24,555
there's medicine, herbs,
there's sometimes sand paintings.

662
00:45:25,055 --> 00:45:31,270
There's a whole reset of mental,
physical, and spiritual being and

663
00:45:31,437 --> 00:45:34,314
your community is there to support you,

664
00:45:34,565 --> 00:45:38,026
where in Western ways
you go into isolation,

665
00:45:38,026 --> 00:45:40,988
you go into a hospital,
you're very alone in that process.

666
00:45:41,280 --> 00:45:45,576
The patients, they're processing
the trauma or whatever occurred

667
00:45:45,826 --> 00:45:47,828
but then addressing it and thinking of it

668
00:45:47,828 --> 00:45:50,664
in a more positive, hopeful way.

669
00:45:50,831 --> 00:45:52,166
So that they will,

670
00:45:52,666 --> 00:45:54,501
you know, they see themselves recovering,

671
00:45:54,543 --> 00:45:56,795
yhey see themselves
getting well or healing,

672
00:45:57,087 --> 00:45:59,214
and they see that support from loved ones.

673
00:46:00,549 --> 00:46:04,219
My father, who's traditional Hatááłii
is what we refer to them,

674
00:46:04,261 --> 00:46:06,138
or medicine practitioners,

675
00:46:11,101 --> 00:46:13,228
My dad actually got to work in a hospital

676
00:46:13,228 --> 00:46:14,938
using our traditional medicine.

677
00:46:15,898 --> 00:46:19,026
It took a long time to kind of get
to that place of recognition.

678
00:46:19,401 --> 00:46:23,530
It was supposed to be just
a very short period just

679
00:46:23,530 --> 00:46:26,450
to test it out, a trial for six months.

680
00:46:26,658 --> 00:46:29,203
And they kept renewing it
because it was so successful.

681
00:46:30,579 --> 00:46:34,082
There were so many cases where
they'd call him in, they'd be like,

682
00:46:34,500 --> 00:46:37,211
Our patient didn't return,
What did you do to them?

683
00:46:37,461 --> 00:46:39,046
And the patient would say,

684
00:46:39,379 --> 00:46:42,925
after 30 years of taking your
medications, I never got well

685
00:46:42,925 --> 00:46:44,802
but a cultural practitioner,

686
00:46:45,052 --> 00:46:46,887
he actually fixed me and healed me

687
00:46:46,887 --> 00:46:48,430
and I don't need your medication.

688
00:46:50,599 --> 00:46:52,309
Our ceremonies, our culture,

689
00:46:52,392 --> 00:46:54,937
the teachings that we
receive from the holy ones

690
00:46:55,062 --> 00:46:56,104
are just

691
00:46:56,438 --> 00:46:58,398
a way to communicate
with the Earth.

692
00:46:59,274 --> 00:47:01,485
The things that the Earth is affected by,

693
00:47:01,568 --> 00:47:03,946
all those things, also affect us, so

694
00:47:04,196 --> 00:47:07,866
in order to heal those things, the Earth

695
00:47:08,283 --> 00:47:10,452
has always had remedies for us.

696
00:47:12,079 --> 00:47:14,540
The Earth, this is our pharmacy.

697
00:47:15,707 --> 00:47:19,044
My dad, he does diagnostics

698
00:47:20,546 --> 00:47:25,217
my sister as well, and there's
different methods that we use.

699
00:47:28,554 --> 00:47:31,181
— I started learning traditional medicine

700
00:47:31,473 --> 00:47:33,433
and our traditional sciences.

701
00:47:33,976 --> 00:47:36,770
There was no direct education or school.

702
00:47:36,895 --> 00:47:38,897
It was just, it is.

703
00:47:40,607 --> 00:47:46,363
Understanding that sacred relationship
between plant, mineral, animal,

704
00:47:46,488 --> 00:47:49,366
water, sky, and human

705
00:47:50,075 --> 00:47:51,952
is just like breathing.

706
00:47:56,623 --> 00:47:59,001
My daughters are learning
traditional medicine.

707
00:48:01,211 --> 00:48:05,215
Being a mom, and understanding
traditional medicine,

708
00:48:05,340 --> 00:48:08,677
my role is to support them

709
00:48:09,261 --> 00:48:12,014
so they feel comfortable, confident,

710
00:48:12,222 --> 00:48:15,350
and empowered to continue

711
00:48:15,392 --> 00:48:18,604
to utilize traditional medicine,

712
00:48:18,812 --> 00:48:23,567
to have it be as natural as
breathing for them as well.

713
00:48:24,234 --> 00:48:25,611
— You wanna take a sprig of it.

714
00:48:26,194 --> 00:48:29,489
Take a piece of it,
but don't take the root,

715
00:48:29,615 --> 00:48:33,368
because the root needs to continue to grow.

716
00:48:36,455 --> 00:48:39,917
In our traditional Diné perspective,

717
00:48:39,958 --> 00:48:42,336
illness is a disharmony.

718
00:48:42,377 --> 00:48:45,547
It's a dis-ease, not a disease.

719
00:48:45,839 --> 00:48:48,467
Dis-ease that exists.

720
00:48:49,384 --> 00:48:53,555
We don't treat the symptoms,
we go to the root cause

721
00:48:54,348 --> 00:48:58,936
and then we look for a
path forward towards healing.

722
00:49:01,313 --> 00:49:04,024
— Being a traditional practitioner
is not an easy road,

723
00:49:05,609 --> 00:49:07,110
but it's a beautiful road

724
00:49:07,110 --> 00:49:09,488
because it means that
you get to help people.

725
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:12,449
You get to see families be whole.

726
00:49:14,242 --> 00:49:15,243
And that's,

727
00:49:16,536 --> 00:49:17,663
that's a gift.

728
00:49:22,584 --> 00:49:24,628
— There's so much knowledge

729
00:49:24,795 --> 00:49:27,422
and wisdom that come from our elders

730
00:49:27,589 --> 00:49:29,091
in those, those teachings.

731
00:49:30,676 --> 00:49:32,344
Every time we lose an elder,

732
00:49:32,886 --> 00:49:34,888
it's like a library is just,

733
00:49:35,263 --> 00:49:37,975
you know, just erased from our people.

734
00:49:52,781 --> 00:49:55,784
— Little Singer was my great-grandfather.

735
00:49:57,911 --> 00:50:00,455
I was an infant when he passed,

736
00:50:01,790 --> 00:50:03,208
so I never knew him.

737
00:50:04,459 --> 00:50:06,586
I knew him through stories.

738
00:50:15,512 --> 00:50:16,555
— Oh man.

739
00:50:21,476 --> 00:50:24,396
— She is saying he used to
sit around when he was free,

740
00:50:24,813 --> 00:50:27,399
when he didn't have like
any ceremony schedule,

741
00:50:27,691 --> 00:50:31,111
he would be home and he would sit there.

742
00:50:31,319 --> 00:50:34,156
"Come on, you, let me teach
you how to sing."

743
00:50:34,281 --> 00:50:36,575
"Let me teach you this,
let me teach you that."

744
00:50:37,075 --> 00:50:38,994
But they just were too busy.

745
00:50:39,161 --> 00:50:41,872
They didn't really,
nobody really took the time

746
00:50:41,872 --> 00:50:44,332
to actually listen to him.

747
00:50:44,624 --> 00:50:46,918
But he sat there,
"Let me teach you this."

748
00:50:47,127 --> 00:50:48,628
"Let me teach you how to sing."

749
00:50:48,754 --> 00:50:52,382
The horse song, the sheep
song, all of these songs.

750
00:50:56,344 --> 00:51:00,223
— During that blizzard of,
what was it, '69?

751
00:51:00,474 --> 00:51:02,392
When my uncle got lost.

752
00:51:03,935 --> 00:51:09,191
So he went to round up
the sheep on horseback and

753
00:51:09,608 --> 00:51:13,236
he lost his sense of direction
because there was snow everywhere.

754
00:51:15,322 --> 00:51:17,449
Visibility was zero.

755
00:51:19,409 --> 00:51:23,288
And so instead of heading home, he
just started heading the other way.

756
00:51:23,830 --> 00:51:27,417
It was getting dark and my
grandmother was getting worried.

757
00:51:27,584 --> 00:51:30,754
And then Little Singer
was just sitting there like,

758
00:51:30,796 --> 00:51:33,256
"he'll be back," you know?

759
00:51:37,511 --> 00:51:38,762
was kind of getting impatient,

760
00:51:38,762 --> 00:51:40,639
was getting after my grandpa.

761
00:51:40,639 --> 00:51:44,810
So, then my grandpa says,
"Okay, get me a basket."

762
00:51:44,851 --> 00:51:48,522
And so they gave, they got him
a big wedding basket, like,

763
00:51:48,647 --> 00:51:50,315
you know this big, and

764
00:51:50,357 --> 00:51:53,110
if you look at the wedding basket,
there's an opening.

765
00:51:53,360 --> 00:51:57,030
You're supposed to always put
that basket to the east.

766
00:51:59,866 --> 00:52:01,535
And then he said, "Go to his house

767
00:52:01,618 --> 00:52:05,747
and get the clothes that
he changed, you know, out of."

768
00:52:05,872 --> 00:52:07,541
And he put it in the basket,

769
00:52:07,999 --> 00:52:09,501
and he started chanting.

770
00:52:10,460 --> 00:52:13,171
When he went so far,
he would move the,

771
00:52:13,213 --> 00:52:16,133
the basket like a quarter,
then he would, you know,

772
00:52:16,133 --> 00:52:17,259
start chanting again.

773
00:52:17,509 --> 00:52:19,803
And then he would turn it again.

774
00:52:21,555 --> 00:52:24,850
When he got the basket all
the way around, facing back

775
00:52:24,850 --> 00:52:28,186
to the east, when he finished
his chant, guess what?

776
00:52:28,645 --> 00:52:30,272
He comes walking in.

777
00:52:30,981 --> 00:52:34,860
He had frostbites on
his fingers, his toes,

778
00:52:34,985 --> 00:52:36,695
and he was just cold.

779
00:52:37,112 --> 00:52:39,531
And so we asked him,
"how did you come home?"

780
00:52:40,157 --> 00:52:41,950
He said, "I saw a light."

781
00:52:43,743 --> 00:52:46,788
"Four times," he said, "There
was a light way over there."

782
00:52:46,830 --> 00:52:48,248
"I got to that light."

783
00:52:48,540 --> 00:52:51,376
"And when I got there," he says,

784
00:52:51,376 --> 00:52:53,086
"the light would move this way again."

785
00:52:53,503 --> 00:52:56,590
"And then I'd get to that light again.
It would move again."

786
00:52:57,257 --> 00:52:59,926
"The fourth light led me home," he said.

787
00:53:00,010 --> 00:53:02,929
That I will never understand.

788
00:53:02,971 --> 00:53:06,975
I was like, wow, that
overwhelms me to this day.

789
00:53:07,058 --> 00:53:11,313
Like how, just by his chance
did he lead, you know,

790
00:53:11,354 --> 00:53:12,772
lead him home?

791
00:53:13,982 --> 00:53:15,567
All his grandchildren,

792
00:53:15,567 --> 00:53:17,944
they all were, you know,
hauled to the boarding school.

793
00:53:18,486 --> 00:53:20,572
So he found himself

794
00:53:20,947 --> 00:53:24,117
alone with my grandmother.

795
00:53:25,202 --> 00:53:28,371
And so that's where a lot of
this, you know,

796
00:53:28,371 --> 00:53:30,540
like bring the children home, you know,

797
00:53:30,790 --> 00:53:32,542
I need to hear the laughter.

798
00:53:32,626 --> 00:53:34,961
I need to communicate
with my grandchildren.

799
00:53:35,253 --> 00:53:37,589
I want to be able to tell stories.

800
00:53:37,881 --> 00:53:40,342
I want to be able to share what I have,

801
00:53:40,425 --> 00:53:43,428
the songs, the prayers, I want them here.

802
00:54:13,500 --> 00:54:16,086
— The medicine man and the community,

803
00:54:16,127 --> 00:54:19,256
their first goal was to
bring their children home.

804
00:54:22,968 --> 00:54:25,512
And because of that, the community said,

805
00:54:25,595 --> 00:54:27,973
let's start our own school here

806
00:54:28,181 --> 00:54:30,225
so we can hear them again

807
00:54:30,475 --> 00:54:33,478
when they come back from
school that same day.

808
00:54:50,287 --> 00:54:51,413
— His school,

809
00:54:51,746 --> 00:54:56,418
it was a school built on
the hope that children

810
00:54:57,252 --> 00:55:01,506
would never lose sight of who they are.

811
00:55:21,901 --> 00:55:24,529
At that time, this was
just a desert in here.

812
00:55:24,696 --> 00:55:29,993
There's nothing, just... Little Singers'
little hogan was the only one sitting here.

813
00:55:32,579 --> 00:55:37,334
— I was working here when the
school first opened the door,

814
00:55:38,918 --> 00:55:43,465
and we had 23 students that came on bicycle

815
00:55:43,465 --> 00:55:45,383
that came running,

816
00:55:46,968 --> 00:55:48,595
that came on horseback.

817
00:55:53,516 --> 00:55:55,477
You were overwhelmed with excitement.

818
00:55:55,477 --> 00:55:58,271
Like, wow, this is actually
happening, you know,

819
00:55:58,396 --> 00:56:01,900
out here where there's no
electricity and no running water.

820
00:56:01,941 --> 00:56:03,318
And here we are.

821
00:56:09,657 --> 00:56:11,534
— So Little Singer was

822
00:56:11,951 --> 00:56:15,288
committed to bringing the
culture back to the children

823
00:56:15,538 --> 00:56:17,248
and to have them

824
00:56:17,999 --> 00:56:20,585
planted well in the culture.

825
00:56:21,002 --> 00:56:24,339
Their teaching staff are Navajo,

826
00:56:25,006 --> 00:56:27,425
their bus drivers, their cooks,

827
00:56:28,009 --> 00:56:31,304
their coaches, they're Navajo.

828
00:56:31,679 --> 00:56:37,185
And so when there is that
common ground in identity,

829
00:56:37,477 --> 00:56:41,815
these children already know
who they are, who they belong to.

830
00:56:45,944 --> 00:56:49,531
— I am the principal here at
Little Singer Community School.

831
00:56:49,823 --> 00:56:52,951
Little Singer's wish is to

832
00:56:53,451 --> 00:56:57,497
continue with the language,
really make the language strong,

833
00:56:57,997 --> 00:57:00,375
and to keep the kids happy,

834
00:57:02,377 --> 00:57:06,089
with happy voices, happy noises,

835
00:57:06,381 --> 00:57:09,259
happiness is what he wanted for the kids.

836
00:57:09,342 --> 00:57:12,470
And so here it's the same,

837
00:57:12,554 --> 00:57:15,640
the same thing that
Little Singer wanted for the kids.

838
00:57:25,358 --> 00:57:28,069
Our Navajo, our Diné education

839
00:57:28,319 --> 00:57:31,114
is very different from the Western world.

840
00:57:40,957 --> 00:57:42,667
We don't call this a class,

841
00:57:43,084 --> 00:57:47,547
this is our home, just a place of
learning and gaining knowledge.

842
00:57:59,642 --> 00:58:03,813
The Western education is very linear,

843
00:58:08,318 --> 00:58:10,862
and it feels like they don't wait for you.

844
00:58:12,030 --> 00:58:13,740
You will be left behind.

845
00:58:14,949 --> 00:58:18,953
In our way, nobody leaves anybody behind.

846
00:58:21,873 --> 00:58:23,583
Why? K'é.

847
00:58:24,250 --> 00:58:26,336
We belong to each other.

848
00:58:29,881 --> 00:58:34,219
— The school has really
helped in a sense of

849
00:58:35,261 --> 00:58:37,222
preserving our language.

850
00:58:40,141 --> 00:58:43,269
They have such a desire to,
to sing these songs,

851
00:58:44,187 --> 00:58:45,396
and they know them by heart.

852
00:58:47,023 --> 00:58:48,733
Had that school not been there,

853
00:58:52,153 --> 00:58:55,990
I think that their sense of self
wouldn't be as strong.

854
00:58:58,243 --> 00:59:01,329
— I got to witness the culture returning,

855
00:59:01,704 --> 00:59:04,457
coming back, and being called out of them.

856
00:59:07,585 --> 00:59:12,006
I could see how different the children
were when they were in the classes

857
00:59:12,173 --> 00:59:15,510
with their language and with their culture,

858
00:59:17,387 --> 00:59:22,100
how differently their bodies
responded to those teachings.

859
00:59:25,103 --> 00:59:27,939
— We always say that we're a unique school,

860
00:59:28,022 --> 00:59:31,150
so we have an alternative discipline.

861
00:59:31,359 --> 00:59:34,862
We don't expel, we do peacemaking.

862
00:59:38,408 --> 00:59:41,160
Peacemaking is in the Navajo courts.

863
00:59:41,160 --> 00:59:43,997
If you decide not to go to court,

864
00:59:44,205 --> 00:59:46,249
you can choose to have peacemaking.

865
00:59:51,296 --> 00:59:57,093
— Peacemaking is entirely different than
the majority culture justice system.

866
01:00:05,727 --> 01:00:08,313
I had already learned
about restorative justice.

867
01:00:08,855 --> 01:00:12,191
Didn't know how related it
was to peacemaking.

868
01:00:12,567 --> 01:00:14,986
It's not often mentioned that

869
01:00:15,570 --> 01:00:20,366
this has been sourced from peacemaking and

870
01:00:20,491 --> 01:00:26,331
pretty much in particular
Navajo, Diné peacemaking.

871
01:00:29,709 --> 01:00:34,964
Peacemaking doesn't even
have a word for offender.

872
01:00:34,964 --> 01:00:38,134
It only has a word for
broken relationship.

873
01:00:38,468 --> 01:00:42,555
When something happened,
the relationship is broken.

874
01:00:42,555 --> 01:00:44,307
So there is "k'é" again.

875
01:00:44,682 --> 01:00:47,101
You repair the relationship,

876
01:00:47,393 --> 01:00:50,438
you bring the relationship
back together again.

877
01:00:50,938 --> 01:00:54,192
And then you have
what they call hózhó,

878
01:00:54,275 --> 01:00:57,445
then you have beauty again,
you have balance.

879
01:00:57,445 --> 01:01:00,948
Hózhó means a lot of things,
it's not just beauty.

880
01:01:01,449 --> 01:01:05,328
It means balance and connection,

881
01:01:06,704 --> 01:01:08,164
harmony.

882
01:01:09,832 --> 01:01:11,417
And it wouldn't just be a parent,

883
01:01:11,417 --> 01:01:12,794
it would be an aunt,

884
01:01:12,794 --> 01:01:15,546
it would be a grandmother
sitting in this circle.

885
01:01:18,007 --> 01:01:22,136
At some point the aunt would say,

886
01:01:23,971 --> 01:01:25,640
I wanna tell you

887
01:01:27,392 --> 01:01:30,645
why I'm responsible for this happening.

888
01:01:31,354 --> 01:01:33,314
I haven't been paying enough attention.

889
01:01:35,358 --> 01:01:41,406
And then the grandmother would
say why she's responsible too.

890
01:01:42,407 --> 01:01:44,867
And each person in the circle

891
01:01:45,368 --> 01:01:48,871
would share how this had happened

892
01:01:48,871 --> 01:01:52,041
because they had not
been there in the right way.

893
01:01:53,418 --> 01:01:56,254
And it would very soon go into Navajo

894
01:01:56,254 --> 01:01:59,924
because the English language
doesn't have the language

895
01:01:59,966 --> 01:02:03,594
for the emotion that was
shared in that circle.

896
01:02:04,178 --> 01:02:08,641
And I always felt I could
understand it, you know, somehow

897
01:02:08,933 --> 01:02:12,979
my heart could understand the
language right from the start.

898
01:02:19,485 --> 01:02:21,988
There's not only generational trauma,

899
01:02:22,071 --> 01:02:24,031
there's generational culture.

900
01:02:28,745 --> 01:02:31,831
Not only trauma affects us,

901
01:02:32,457 --> 01:02:35,042
but healing affects us

902
01:02:35,126 --> 01:02:36,961
and we have generations

903
01:02:36,961 --> 01:02:39,505
that we can call on and remember from.

904
01:02:40,631 --> 01:02:42,550
And you can't miss it.

905
01:02:42,759 --> 01:02:44,218
It's, it's there.

906
01:02:45,052 --> 01:02:50,183
— It is the spirit of what
was prayed for, what was sung for,

907
01:02:50,224 --> 01:02:54,479
what was believed, and in the
Diné way is moving, still.

908
01:03:13,372 --> 01:03:15,917
— There are so many young people,

909
01:03:15,917 --> 01:03:18,419
not only in my community,

910
01:03:18,461 --> 01:03:21,923
but other communities that
are constantly searching.

911
01:03:29,013 --> 01:03:32,225
Some of them don't have the same
support system that I did.

912
01:03:32,725 --> 01:03:35,144
Some just continue to wander.

913
01:03:35,895 --> 01:03:40,233
I met a group of  young men who

914
01:03:40,483 --> 01:03:43,736
have such a sad story.

915
01:03:46,823 --> 01:03:48,699
— Our mother is all of our mother,

916
01:03:48,991 --> 01:03:50,785
but our father, we have different fathers,

917
01:03:50,868 --> 01:03:54,831
and my dad was the brother to their dad.

918
01:03:58,251 --> 01:04:00,920
My dad ended up passing away
and then my mom passed away.

919
01:04:03,339 --> 01:04:05,258
I found a way to mentor them.

920
01:04:12,557 --> 01:04:14,559
Maybe if they know

921
01:04:15,935 --> 01:04:17,228
of a hope

922
01:04:18,729 --> 01:04:20,523
that I carry,

923
01:04:21,482 --> 01:04:23,526
maybe they'll see it,

924
01:04:23,568 --> 01:04:25,444
maybe they'll hold onto it.

925
01:04:26,153 --> 01:04:29,365
— I dream of myself being in other places,

926
01:04:29,365 --> 01:04:31,617
meeting with people, talking with people.

927
01:04:32,869 --> 01:04:34,245
My dream, honestly,

928
01:04:35,496 --> 01:04:36,622
is to leave this place.

929
01:04:44,630 --> 01:04:47,675
— Financially, it's just a struggle

930
01:04:47,675 --> 01:04:52,430
'cause not most of us are working,
there's not that much jobs out here.

931
01:04:53,097 --> 01:04:55,349
So, we have to go out and get jobs.

932
01:04:55,600 --> 01:04:57,852
Not much out here to do.

933
01:04:59,437 --> 01:05:03,691
You can't really make a life out here if
you really don't got nothing, you know?

934
01:05:05,610 --> 01:05:08,613
We don't have no ride, we don't got
nothing, so we can't go to work

935
01:05:08,779 --> 01:05:10,865
and with that, it's just
another financial problem

936
01:05:10,865 --> 01:05:12,783
too where we can't buy
our food and all that.

937
01:05:12,909 --> 01:05:17,580
And it's just...you know, it gets tiresome
doing the same thing over and over,

938
01:05:17,580 --> 01:05:19,498
having the same struggles over and over.

939
01:05:19,540 --> 01:05:21,042
You know, it'd be better...

940
01:05:22,043 --> 01:05:24,795
it'd be better with
somewhere different.

941
01:05:29,050 --> 01:05:30,718
— They're young men.

942
01:05:31,385 --> 01:05:33,262
Had them for over a decade

943
01:05:35,097 --> 01:05:37,558
and I call them my sons,

944
01:05:39,310 --> 01:05:43,731
and... they're still with me.

945
01:05:46,567 --> 01:05:48,444
— You know, a prayer I've been making,

946
01:05:48,945 --> 01:05:52,448
asking the ancestors,
what was our love like?

947
01:05:56,160 --> 01:05:58,496
What was our love like before

948
01:05:58,663 --> 01:06:00,206
all of this, you know?

949
01:06:01,123 --> 01:06:04,001
And I just think about us and our life

950
01:06:05,670 --> 01:06:08,714
with our ceremonies
and our prayers and our...

951
01:06:09,048 --> 01:06:11,717
the beautiful things that
we spent our time doing

952
01:06:12,093 --> 01:06:16,430
and the closeness of our
relationships, our clans.

953
01:06:18,891 --> 01:06:23,312
And I just think, you know, our love
must have just been so extraordinary.

954
01:06:23,980 --> 01:06:25,356
Like incredible.

955
01:06:33,406 --> 01:06:35,074
— When the ships arrive here,

956
01:06:35,116 --> 01:06:37,660
what do they describe that they see?

957
01:06:39,495 --> 01:06:42,540
Everything is flowering and
fruiting and flourishing.

958
01:06:45,710 --> 01:06:46,669
Game is plentiful.

959
01:06:46,711 --> 01:06:48,838
Water is sparkling, you know, gorgeous.

960
01:06:51,132 --> 01:06:54,093
And they even describe it as

961
01:06:54,176 --> 01:06:55,928
you know, they've come upon Eden.

962
01:06:58,514 --> 01:07:02,351
So, it implies that human beings
had not touched that place.

963
01:07:10,484 --> 01:07:13,904
When the truth of the matter was
there were millions of human beings

964
01:07:13,946 --> 01:07:15,781
occupying this continent.

965
01:07:17,199 --> 01:07:18,576
I think the logic is

966
01:07:18,784 --> 01:07:21,203
that if it had been
touched by human beings,

967
01:07:21,203 --> 01:07:23,289
it would look like where we came from

968
01:07:24,790 --> 01:07:26,292
and it doesn't look that way.

969
01:07:29,754 --> 01:07:31,255
— This world is fragile

970
01:07:31,255 --> 01:07:33,007
and the things that we do to it

971
01:07:33,424 --> 01:07:35,676
have very real consequences.

972
01:07:36,427 --> 01:07:41,015
That's something that we're suffering with,
we're afflicted by it today.

973
01:07:42,767 --> 01:07:45,895
Climate change, even tornadoes
coming back into our region,

974
01:07:45,936 --> 01:07:48,606
all these things are signs.

975
01:07:49,774 --> 01:07:51,108
If you think about

976
01:07:51,817 --> 01:07:54,820
all of the water, the fresh
potable water in this world,

977
01:07:55,112 --> 01:07:57,156
there are corporations,
there are politicians

978
01:07:57,198 --> 01:07:59,575
that are trying to steal

979
01:08:00,242 --> 01:08:02,620
the future rights of our water.

980
01:08:02,912 --> 01:08:05,873
So, this has happened
to our people in the past.

981
01:08:09,168 --> 01:08:13,547
The draining of our aquifer
from Peabody coal mine,

982
01:08:17,927 --> 01:08:22,139
these giant earth movers
destroying our landscape,

983
01:08:23,474 --> 01:08:27,603
removing, eating the earth,
you know, to access the liver,

984
01:08:27,686 --> 01:08:31,232
the liver of our earth, the coal.

985
01:08:42,118 --> 01:08:44,745
This world will continue
in some other form,

986
01:08:44,745 --> 01:08:46,997
but for us, we've talked
about this history,

987
01:08:47,081 --> 01:08:51,085
we know it because these
are things our ancestors

988
01:08:51,127 --> 01:08:54,505
or ancient ones, have
continued to teach us:

989
01:08:54,505 --> 01:08:57,091
Don't disturb the earth.
Don't remove these things.

990
01:08:57,508 --> 01:09:00,302
You know, if you take this out of
the earth, this is gonna harm you.

991
01:09:00,511 --> 01:09:04,932
Like uranium or other things
that have harmful impacts

992
01:09:05,057 --> 01:09:09,353
for generations upon
generations, far outliving us.

993
01:09:13,649 --> 01:09:14,984
— My grandpa

994
01:09:15,693 --> 01:09:18,028
was diagnosed with lung cancer,

995
01:09:18,696 --> 01:09:20,739
just like a lot of the elderly here.

996
01:09:21,157 --> 01:09:23,200
They had the downwinders

997
01:09:23,826 --> 01:09:26,370
where they poured the
radiation into the river

998
01:09:27,413 --> 01:09:30,541
and a lot of our families used the river

999
01:09:30,916 --> 01:09:33,919
for farming purposes.

1000
01:09:35,212 --> 01:09:38,299
But the pouring of that
radiation eventually caught up

1001
01:09:39,175 --> 01:09:42,845
years later and it manifested as

1002
01:09:43,179 --> 01:09:44,471
cancer.

1003
01:09:46,974 --> 01:09:48,434
— As humanity,

1004
01:09:48,976 --> 01:09:50,603
we have to protect what we have.

1005
01:09:50,603 --> 01:09:52,563
We have to preserve,
we have to ensure

1006
01:09:52,897 --> 01:09:56,025
that the water, the air,
all these things that are sacred,

1007
01:09:56,400 --> 01:09:58,694
they give us life, they sustain us,

1008
01:09:58,736 --> 01:10:00,529
that's continuance.

1009
01:10:01,155 --> 01:10:04,700
Money, fossil fuels, this greed,

1010
01:10:06,410 --> 01:10:10,873
that's the end of our
civilization as humanity.

1011
01:10:25,262 --> 01:10:27,932
— We have always carried ourselves

1012
01:10:27,932 --> 01:10:31,185
in a way of balance, of hózhó, of beauty.

1013
01:10:31,352 --> 01:10:33,229
Hózhó Hajaa, our beauty way,

1014
01:10:33,395 --> 01:10:36,273
is to ensure that
there's balance and harmony,

1015
01:10:36,607 --> 01:10:39,568
because we don't want to see
this world destroyed.

1016
01:10:43,781 --> 01:10:47,701
— Sustainability is the highest and most
sought after technology on the planet

1017
01:10:55,918 --> 01:11:00,256
but we actually have actual
human beings who understand

1018
01:11:00,422 --> 01:11:01,423
how to do that.

1019
01:11:04,468 --> 01:11:07,263
These are the premier
scientists of sustainability.

1020
01:11:19,316 --> 01:11:22,820
There's plants, there's insects,
the hummingbirds are coming.

1021
01:11:22,945 --> 01:11:25,531
All these things are happening out
there, and what are they doing?

1022
01:11:25,572 --> 01:11:28,617
Every single thing out there is doing
one thing: it's making more life.

1023
01:11:34,915 --> 01:11:38,877
So, how could we develop
so many institutions

1024
01:11:41,046 --> 01:11:44,800
creating health institutions, governance
institutions, economic institutions

1025
01:11:46,260 --> 01:11:47,803
and none of them

1026
01:11:48,220 --> 01:11:51,056
are constructed
placing life at the very center,

1027
01:11:51,724 --> 01:11:54,351
when the entire plan here is life.

1028
01:11:56,895 --> 01:11:59,023
Human beings are looking for

1029
01:11:59,606 --> 01:12:05,946
the kind of omnibeneficence
that Indigenous peoples have lived.

1030
01:12:09,408 --> 01:12:13,537
We need to understand collectively
what Indigenous people hold

1031
01:12:13,704 --> 01:12:16,832
for all of us and for the planet.

1032
01:12:18,417 --> 01:12:20,669
For me, that's very heartening

1033
01:12:20,711 --> 01:12:22,629
and it's also saying
we're not just dreaming

1034
01:12:22,629 --> 01:12:25,424
of some pie in the sky
that's probably impossible,

1035
01:12:25,632 --> 01:12:27,676
we have evidence that
we've already done it.

1036
01:12:29,845 --> 01:12:32,348
The understanding of how to
do it, the science of it

1037
01:12:32,389 --> 01:12:34,892
is in the cultures, is in the languages.

1038
01:12:51,784 --> 01:12:54,119
— Where I learned my weaving,

1039
01:12:55,245 --> 01:12:57,164
my grandmother, my mother,

1040
01:12:57,164 --> 01:13:00,876
anybody else in the family
that knew how to weave,

1041
01:13:01,335 --> 01:13:02,795
I just watched.

1042
01:13:09,259 --> 01:13:11,845
My favorite place to play was behind

1043
01:13:12,679 --> 01:13:15,224
because our homes are circular

1044
01:13:15,432 --> 01:13:18,977
so our looms would go across

1045
01:13:19,061 --> 01:13:23,232
and then it would have some room back there

1046
01:13:23,565 --> 01:13:26,151
and so that's where I would play.

1047
01:13:26,568 --> 01:13:28,695
I would see the strings

1048
01:13:28,695 --> 01:13:32,741
and the design beginning to build.

1049
01:13:32,783 --> 01:13:35,828
and I could see my grandmother's,

1050
01:13:35,911 --> 01:13:38,872
my mother's thoughts beginning to build

1051
01:13:39,206 --> 01:13:41,583
and the beauty that they were showing.

1052
01:13:44,962 --> 01:13:46,505
This is our thoughts.

1053
01:13:46,922 --> 01:13:48,632
It's not just an art,

1054
01:13:48,924 --> 01:13:51,885
but it's an expression, it's a love.

1055
01:13:54,638 --> 01:13:56,265
I lost my mom.

1056
01:13:56,432 --> 01:13:58,684
It's been... two years ago.

1057
01:14:00,644 --> 01:14:03,188
So, I just didn't feel like weaving

1058
01:14:03,856 --> 01:14:05,649
until now, just...

1059
01:14:06,358 --> 01:14:09,361
probably within two weeks or so,

1060
01:14:09,653 --> 01:14:12,948
I started feeling that
I need to come back to it.

1061
01:14:14,199 --> 01:14:18,704
Because I feel I'm connected with my
mom, my grandma, my great-grandma.

1062
01:14:22,875 --> 01:14:24,293
The new world

1063
01:14:24,793 --> 01:14:26,336
is very different

1064
01:14:28,046 --> 01:14:33,093
from the world that our
older generations have experienced,

1065
01:14:34,261 --> 01:14:38,807
but you can still have culture

1066
01:14:52,988 --> 01:14:55,991
— These people have survived largely

1067
01:14:56,450 --> 01:14:58,911
because they have a design of culture

1068
01:14:59,369 --> 01:15:03,832
that we no longer see, is rare to be seen.

1069
01:15:05,459 --> 01:15:07,377
The inclusiveness,

1070
01:15:07,794 --> 01:15:09,838
the generosity,

1071
01:15:13,967 --> 01:15:16,637
it's alive and it lives.

1072
01:15:22,601 --> 01:15:24,770
— In this colonized society

1073
01:15:24,770 --> 01:15:26,605
that exists throughout the world

1074
01:15:27,064 --> 01:15:31,193
there is an intense longing to reconnect

1075
01:15:31,568 --> 01:15:35,113
with all that exists that makes us.

1076
01:15:39,409 --> 01:15:42,079
People look at the Indigenous
peoples of the world

1077
01:15:42,996 --> 01:15:46,041
and are able to still see that connection.

1078
01:15:51,129 --> 01:15:55,759
And that is something that
Western colonized societies yearn for,

1079
01:15:55,759 --> 01:16:00,973
is that deep connection that
Indigenous peoples still have.

1080
01:16:04,810 --> 01:16:06,812
The global Indigenous community,

1081
01:16:07,145 --> 01:16:10,732
we're finally at a place where we're
respected and people are listening.

1082
01:16:12,067 --> 01:16:16,154
We're finally in a place as
humanity to have compassion

1083
01:16:16,363 --> 01:16:17,948
and not just try to

1084
01:16:18,574 --> 01:16:21,034
convert, Christianize or

1085
01:16:21,535 --> 01:16:24,871
destroy those cultures and erase them.

1086
01:16:26,832 --> 01:16:29,376
I think it's a turning point for

1087
01:16:29,668 --> 01:16:32,421
not just us as Navajo
in our region,

1088
01:16:32,421 --> 01:16:34,172
but traveling and going to

1089
01:16:34,172 --> 01:16:35,882
different other tribes

1090
01:16:35,882 --> 01:16:37,968
and seeing that their
ceremonies are coming back,

1091
01:16:37,968 --> 01:16:39,928
their songs and their learning.

1092
01:16:39,970 --> 01:16:42,639
Their youth aren't afraid
to speak their language.

1093
01:16:42,639 --> 01:16:45,809
Their youth aren't afraid to
sing their songs in public.

1094
01:16:47,185 --> 01:16:49,313
It's a beautiful place to be,

1095
01:16:49,438 --> 01:16:52,983
but we're, we're still very much
like those endangered species,

1096
01:16:52,983 --> 01:16:55,819
like the polar bear in the north.

1097
01:16:56,445 --> 01:16:58,405
We're struggling to survive.

1098
01:17:00,866 --> 01:17:03,619
— I feel like we can make it through.

1099
01:17:03,619 --> 01:17:07,164
We will make it through to find ourselves.

1100
01:17:08,540 --> 01:17:10,125
We won't be the same as we were,

1101
01:17:10,250 --> 01:17:13,962
but we can be that
expression of human being

1102
01:17:13,962 --> 01:17:16,048
that is omnibeneficent again.

1103
01:17:17,591 --> 01:17:20,636
— Many people today say
that there are two worlds that exist,

1104
01:17:20,927 --> 01:17:23,722
there's the traditional world
and there's the modern world,

1105
01:17:24,222 --> 01:17:26,099
and that you have to choose one.

1106
01:17:26,725 --> 01:17:29,603
No, you are both

1107
01:17:30,103 --> 01:17:34,483
and understand, feel grounded

1108
01:17:34,816 --> 01:17:38,278
in who you are in your identity

1109
01:17:38,779 --> 01:17:42,699
as a person of Mother Earth,
as a child of Mother Earth.

1110
01:17:47,537 --> 01:17:48,789
The rhythm

1111
01:17:49,665 --> 01:17:51,917
of those songs that

1112
01:17:52,876 --> 01:17:54,127
I grew up with,

1113
01:17:54,836 --> 01:17:56,213
they still echo

1114
01:17:57,172 --> 01:17:58,465
around here.

1115
01:18:00,258 --> 01:18:02,678
You can hear it, you know, in the wind.

1116
01:18:07,140 --> 01:18:12,229
You can hear it with just the sound
of the sheep and the sheep corral

1117
01:18:16,191 --> 01:18:18,735
and children and their laughter.

1118
01:18:21,655 --> 01:18:23,990
So, life is giving us these

1119
01:18:25,117 --> 01:18:26,785
savory moments

1120
01:18:28,620 --> 01:18:29,746
and so

1121
01:18:31,206 --> 01:18:33,834
we have to embrace them.

1122
01:18:36,044 --> 01:18:37,421
In our language,

1123
01:18:38,130 --> 01:18:39,673
to close things out,

1124
01:18:41,758 --> 01:18:46,221
whether in action, whether in life,
whether in song,

1125
01:18:46,430 --> 01:18:48,765
in gathering, the end

1126
01:18:49,474 --> 01:18:51,601
comes down to k'ad,

1127
01:18:52,060 --> 01:18:53,353
it is done.

1128
01:18:54,229 --> 01:18:56,064
We can't go back.

1129
01:18:56,857 --> 01:18:58,817
But it's also an invitation

1130
01:19:00,402 --> 01:19:02,154
to what is yet to come.

1131
01:19:03,739 --> 01:19:05,031
One day

1132
01:19:06,032 --> 01:19:07,826
k'ad will happen,

1133
01:19:07,868 --> 01:19:08,910
the end.