On my drive down to Arizona a couple of weeks ago while traveling toward Moab in southern Utah, I began to wonder what in the world I was thinking in spending my entire spring and summer on the Navajo Nation instead of at my home in the green hills and trees of the Appalachian mountains. Driving directly through some of the most barren landscape in Utah did not help my loneliness and feeling of homesickness.
Yet, on the road, I spoke with my dear mother, and while traveling further and further south, I began to remember how I felt a gravitational pull or call toward Native American culture and life philosophy.
As a child, I remember my mother sharing with me her simple understanding of the Native American way of life, the history of genocide, oppression and racism on indigenous peoples, and the current situation on reservations. I distinctly recall telling her afterwards that I wanted to one day go live on a reservation for a while.
As an adolescent, I remember being deeply impressed upon hearing one of my dear friends and music teachers share simple Native American philosophies with me.
As a college student, I remember last summer going to a new church in Elizabethton, Tennessee for the first time, and the service being on a portion of the congregation’s experience with American Indians of the Pine Ridge reservation. Although a complete stranger to her, a kind lady loaned me her book, “The Wisdom of the Native Americans”. I went home and read it from cover to cover that evening.
Of course, I am oversimplifying things by only sharing a few stories. But these should be sufficient to show how I felt a pull toward Native Americans.
You may think I am silly, but I would ask you to tell me of a life story that hasn’t been led by more random and seemingly inconsequential occurrences.
Ironically, the majority of our lives are spent taking steps into the unknown. If it’s otherwise, there must be something we’re doing wrong.
To make a terribly long story short, one day last fall while walking down the classroom hallways looking at all of the flyers hanging on the bulletin boards as I normally do, I noticed a handout about a Navajo Nation field study. It surprised me that I hadn’t heard about the program since I am friends with the director of the international field study program at BYU. In fact, he was my faculty advisor for the Students for International Development Club of which I was currently co-president of.
A couple of days later, I went into the Kennedy Center to see Dave. Since he was out of the office, I spoke with one of his assistants who proceeded to tell me that the Navajo Nation field study really wasn’t a program yet but they were hoping to get it started sometime in the near future. I told her that I was very interested in participating in the field study and would even be willing to start it if need be. She scheduled an appointment for me to discuss the program with Dave, and I came back a couple of days later.
To cut to the chase, the BYU Field Study department sends students all over the world from India and Romania to Guatemala and Ghana. I had been planning to go on a field study since my first semester at college but never could make a decision on when and where to go. Dave wanted to begin a program in the states on the Navajo Nation but had not been able to due to a lack of time and resources. Not without my doubts in the beginning, I agreed to help facilitate the program and to find other students on campus interested in going with me for spring and summer. I became hired on the field study staff part-time and began working in October for recruitment of the program, finding professors to sit on a faculty committee, and establishing a partnership with the Diné Policy Institute (DPI) in Tsaile, Arizona on the reservation.
That is the story of how I became the first-year facilitator of the Navajo Nation field study program at BYU and intern for the DPI.
I left out many vital parts of the story such as why Dave trusted me with that position, the difficult time I had in deciding where to do my field study, and how I became an anthropology major, international development minor and interested in doing a field study in the first place.
Stay tuned for more.
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3 comments:
Mary, you wrote, "the state of the world today is due to greed and of course the other six deadly vices which are born out of an individualistic mind-set...I don’t believe we will ever experience peace in the world until we remember that we are all connected to one another at some deep transcendent level and we depend upon each being on earth to continue living as we know it."
Mary, I agree with this statement. I like what Ron Paul says in his book, The Revolution: A Manifesto , which relates to what you said. He says, "When we agree not to treat each other merely as means to our own selfish ends, but to respect one another as individuals with rights and goals of our own, cooperation and goodwill suddenly become possible for the first time."
I'm not sure if you have a political idealogy on how U.S. government should be set up, but I believe that individualism as opposed to collectivism is the best option for us as humans, since everyone including groups and communities enjoy freedom and individual rights. I hope to study this more in the future and expand on my thoughts.
Rachel,
Thank you for taking the time to read the musings of my blog. One of the things I am most passionate about is what you responded to in your comment.
Unfortunately, I haven't studied U.S. and world political theory and history adequatley enough to give an intelligent answer to your question. However, despite my lack of knowledge in this area, I do strongly believe that our current political and economic system is ludicrous.
I believe it goes against our human nature to be living in a system of governance that encourages "individualism" and not "cooperation" with other beings.
I will respond further soon.
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