Western Sky

The sunset in Arizona every night is beautiful. Here is a series of photos I took in the course of an hour driving from Ganado to Canyon de Chelly in Chinle. The last photo is during a different part of the day but shows more of the landscape and sky in Navajoland.

Horses Run Wild

Horses run wild all over the rez, and cattle, sheep and goats also graze free from within the fields. You must be cautious when driving because oftentimes when grazing on the sides of the roads, the cow may decide to cross the road. One night when I was driving home late, I slammed on my brakes to avoid running head-on into a cow crossing the road. I didn't come close to hitting it, but the car behind me was following too closely and had to swerve to avoid crashing into me. It was a close call.

On the dirt road surrounding Dine College in Tsaile, Arizona

In the pine forested area of Tsaile

On the side of the main road in Wheatfields, Arizona

Grazing freely

Cows in St Michaels grazing on the side of the gravel road; I've never gone to St Michaels, Windowrock or Chinle and not seen cows outside the fences next to the road and crossing the highway in some places.

Goats running off the dirt road in Nazlini, Arizona

Cattle in Windowrock, New Mexico next to the election signs. There are cattle guards on every road.

Some more wild ponies in Wheatfields

Planting White, Yellow, Blue, and Black Corn

At the end of May, we planted the corn in Ilene's fields. The planter on the tractor was broken so we followed behind it and dropped three to five corn seeds every foot.

On the tractor is my host mother's brother and standing beside him is her clan cousin

We planted about 12 acres...it took all morning and day

Their homestead is beautiful farmland; unfortunately it's infested with praire dogs and crows. Immediately after we planted through the next few weeks, the praire dogs went out and dug up all of our corn. Only a few acres nearest to Grandma's was untampered with. It's growing well and needs to be thinned. The praire dogs aren't only a pest for growing corn but their homes also can be troublesome when horseback riding because the horse will fall into their holes. I've never seen so many of one animal living in one place ever in my life. One day as I waited for Rachael outside a high school during her schoolboard meeting in Fort Defiance, I watched the praire dogs run around in this small one area (maybe a couple of acres in size) beside the parking lot and I counted nearly twenty praire dogs.

After we finished planting they set up the irrigation pipes. We irrigate the cornfields at least once a week depending upon the weather. It came a downpour last night and soaked the soil. That's the first hard male rain I've seen since being here, the rest have been soft gentle female rains which only cool down the earth but don't get into the ground and the plants' roots.

In addition to helping Uncle David plant the white, yellow, blue, and black corn, we planted all sorts of types of squash in the field closest to the house, zuchinni, yellow squash, watermellon, and more. We used seeds but those didn't come up either.

Monument Valley Sunset

One Saturday Rachael and I drove up to Tuba City, Arizona with our host mother for her eight hour rug weaving class at the Dine College. Afterwards, we decided to drive the extra hour and go up to watch the sun set at Monument Valley and eat some fry bread from the local vendors since we had driven so far North already. These landforms speak to the grand and majestic beauty of Navajo land.

These are the mittens - right and left hands

There are a lot of bikers out West

Sun setting lower and lower on the horizon

Road down below; if we had arrived to the park sooner we would have driven down there

Ilene, my Navajo mother, and me

Looking to the West direction

Mountains in the distance and RV campground

Mesas and land formations where old John Wayne movies were filmed

These are a few of the sacred and beautiful places on Dine Bikeyah (Navajo country).

Four Sacred Directions: East, South, West, North

Yá'át'ééh (a traditional Navajo greeting)

I hope you don't feel neglected. I have been terribly busy with out any spare moments to process my experiences in writing. In the lapse of time since I last wrote, a new world has been constructed before my eyes and I am presently at a loss to know where to begin even depicting a piece of it all. I deeply desire discussing some of my developing thoughts and philosophies of late but I also know that some if not all of you have been patiently awaiting a brief if not detailed description of my daily life here on the rez...

I will provide a painting if you will...in the style of Jackson Pollock, only blots of colors of paint here and there...as the reader or viewer, you will discern the meanings inside the images I depict...each seeing something different than the artist intended.

In retrospect, going backwards in time starting with last night...

BLACK/NORTH- A shooting star passes by my path. In cut-off jeans, a plaid button-up shirt, chaco sandals and straw hat, walkin' back up the long dirt driveway through three field gates, accompanied by sheep dogs Tanner and Buddy, it's darkness now...the world lit up only by the stars, the moon and the kitchen lights in the small town of Ganado, Arizona. I'm on my way back from a late-night revival, I stop dead in my tracks, staring at the universe above me. I've never seen so many stars in my entire life...can you imagine? Gazing at the stars, time loses its meaning, my troubles lose significance and the world's put into perspective...I remember how little I am in such a large universe. I realize again something I had almost forgotten.

YELLOW/WEST - Mutton stew and frybread...the traditional staple of Navajo families. We ate dinner on the picnic table outside tonight while the sun set over the horizon. I learned how to prepare frybread by helping my host mother roll out the dough and then watching her carefully drop each one separately into the boiling shortening. We fed the dogs so they wouldn't beg but we could do nothing but swap our hands to stop the knats, and the ants all the while seemed undisturbed by our intruding on their hills. In the gentle breeze from the Arizona mesas, we begin eating after my host father offers a prayer of gratitude in his native Navajo tongue. Teasing, jokes, and laughter over the dinner table.

BLUE/SOUTH - I read books all day inside the hogan. I finished "Sacred Land, Sacred View" and began another until dinner time. In the morning, I drove the forty miles one-way to Windowrock, Arizona/New Mexico, to attend a field study/DPI meeting that I arranged and then studied for the rest of the afternoon back in Ganado. Exhausted from thinking, I climbed through the barb-wire fence and hiked up to the top of the mesa behind the hogan...jackrabbits, praire dogs, and other small animals crossed the horse-trail pathway. On top, I had a bird's eye view of the entire town of Ganado; the leaves on the trees growin' on the sides of Ganado Wash blowin' in the wind, gas station/small grocery store in the distance, Sage Memorial Hospital to the East, Hubbell Trading Post across the road to the South, hogans and trailors spread out to the West and the North, electricty but no telephone lines and no running water, sagebrush, sacred yucca plants, juniper trees, and orange dirt, acres and acres of corn fields, blue sky, clouds.

WHITE/EAST - I greet the dawn each morning around five or six o'clock. Horses - Cowboy, Handsome Missouri, Bailey, and Twis - don't allow me to sleep in. Before bath and breakfast, I feed the horses their two squares of hay. Lately, the insects and animals have been joining me in the hogan. First the ants and crickets, next the lizards and now the beetles. I stay in a traditional, one-room Navajo hogan or home. It's eight-sided, built of wood and earth with a doorway that opens to the east to greet the rising sun. The entire structure is symbolic of the universe. The four long posts representative of the four sacred directions, East, South, West, and North; the ceiling - Father Sky; the dirt floor - Mother Earth, a fire-pit in the center, and so on.

FOUR SACRED DIRECTIONS - In the Navajo worldview, the four sacred directions each teach and guide - leading a person to live a balanced and harmonious life. The East (DAWN) - for values and thoughts/plans, the South (DAY) - for livlihood and work, the West (EVENING)- for family and social gathering, the North (TWILIGHT) - for rest and environment. Unconscious of it until I became aware of the meanings of the four directions, these principles guide my life in these areas as can be seen by the painting above. If any of the directions are missing or are being disrupted and not fulfilled, then a person will become imbalanced and unable to live in hozho (beauty). (A note for the reader - this explanation reflects my current understandings and interpretations of key values and principles I am learning about in the Navajo lifeway.)

Diné Policy Institute Internship & BYU Field Study

In case you were wondering, this is what I'm doing on the Navajo Nation reservation for the summer.

I am an intern for the Diné Policy Institute in Tsaile, Arizona. The Diné College created the Institute to “give Navajos a voice in important decisions.” Its purpose or mission is to “mesh” Western research practices with Diné (Navajo) traditional values and principles to advise the Navajo Nation law and policy makers.


The DPI “provides resources, facilitates dialogue, and provides quality research to analyze issues relevant to the Navajo Nation. DPI’s goal is to educate people and to ensure that well-reasoned policies are developed and implemented to protect the sovereignty of the Navajo Nation, and to advocate for all Native Americans.”


As such, for my field study and internship, I am researching how the “four sacred elements” of the traditional Diné existence, air, water, earth, and light can be used in a policy setting. In other words, for one particular case study, I am trying to understand if the Diné traditional concept of air, for instance, affronts the development of a proposed power plant – Desert Rock – southwest of Farmington, New Mexico.


In order to come to understand how the Diné (Navajo people) perceive the use of air, I am reading their recorded oral history such as Diné Bahané (the Navajo creation story) and other works, interviewing medicine men, the elderly and other Diné from a variety of age groups, and participating in and observing at ceremonies.


Earlier this morning, I spoke with a medicine man at the Diné College. He told me that much of what I seek to learn about is normally only told to medicine men apprentices. Also, there are only certain settings and ceremonies where some Diné philosophy is communicated. So much of what I hoped and planned to research will be unavailable to me as an outsider. These are a few of the challenges I face.


Other than being an outsider – a white woman - I also don’t speak or understand the Navajo language. I can only speak a few words. Although the language can be translated, much of the inherent meanings of Navajo words are lost when spoken in English.


Here are photos from part of my drive to and from Ganado to the college. Horses run wild all over the rez.

Here are the Navajo Nation's "Alps". I'm staying in a hogan similar to the one in the photo below.

Beautiful sunsets.

Back to the beginning

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.