From Erik W

Our week with the Navajo people was an incredible experience for me, one of the highlights of my life so far.

There was this one kid I will always remember at the Tuba City Boarding School. His name was Justin, and he had been somewhat put down by the teacher. He hadn’t been putting much effort into the class, it seemed, because he would always get the answer wrong. I sat down with him, and explained, as best as I could, the concepts which she had neglected to get him to understand - interpreting the data, (fun fun fun), but the thing which got to him was that I was spending the time on him. That day, and after, he resumed his work with a slight bit more vigor, eventually volunteering to answer questions in our class’s jeopardy game.

There was a wonderful man we met named James Bilagody (a Navajo storyteller who came to tell us many things about the Navajo). He said that he was a migrant worker as a child. He saw some of the misery and oppression that society could offer. But sometimes, a group of kids like us would come and talk to him, and he said that this, the kindness and humanity shown him by these kids, greatly changed his life. I hope we have had this kind of effect on the kids we worked with.

James Bilagody’s stories made me think of the beautiful world around us, and it seemed to me that there were some stories about the Navajo people in the land itself.

The harsh, almost alien landscape, made every turn in the road a new sight. But it’s not just the odd beauty of looking out into the eternal openness that moved me; it is the things that seem to spring out of nothing, It’s the blot of cloud on the canvas sky that gives it life. The saguaros grew from strong, tree-like trunks, sprouting tumorous growths at odd angles. The tumbleweeds bit desperately at everything they came in contact with, using their nasty little thorns that got stuck everywhere. The sagebrush throughout the area was clearly undernourished. And everything weaker was killed by the freezing snows that came in like a horde from the mountains.

Yet the sage and the saguaro survive. Somehow, they find the strength to pull through both the freezing cold and intense heat , dust and clay, and lack of water. Just think what they could do with a little less hostile environment and a little more water.

As I thought about this, it seemed that the Navajo are, in a way, like the sagebrush– hardy and tough and surviving and beautiful, but struggling to thrive with quite a bit of adversity. Sagebrush can reach with its roots to enough water to survive, but struggles hard in order to grow. Weeds, invasive species, heat and cold choke out the sagebrush’s efforts to reach water and sunlight, keeping it from growing bigger. Like the sagebrush, the Navajo have learned to pull through even the toughest of times. They endured a near extinction, took back their land, became the largest tribe in our country, and are developing into the modern age. But they, like the sagebrush, are struggling with adversities that include poverty, diabetes and alcoholism, and loss of their young people to easier living off the reservation…

During our time with the Navajo people at Tuba City, we had the opportunity to see their incredible strength and learn about their endurance and love for their land and culture.

If the Navajo are like the sagebrush, I hope that we were perhaps like a thin reed, added to the end of the Navajo roots, pulling up a bit more nourishment for them, like water for the sagebrush. By doing so, the reed also becomes nourished.

We have taken draughts of knowledge about their culture, experience, and friendship, and we are better for it. We hope we added a bit of enrichment to the lives of the individuals we encountered as well.