Kelsey Dayle John is a postdoctoral research associate in American Indian Studies and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Arizona. She is Diné, a member of the Navajo Nation, and grew up in Stillwater, OK. Her dissertation was on the Navajo horse (Łį̨́į́’) and decolonizing research.
Kelsey contributed this piece in 2016. |
Kelsey writes:
Ha’a’aahjigo
Yá’átééh shik’éí dóó shindiné’é. Kelsey Dayle John yinishyé. Biliganna nishłį́. Tł’ááshchi’i báshíshchíín. Biliganna dashicheii. Bit’ahnii dashinálí. Kót’áó Diné nishłí. (Hello my friends and relatives. My name is Kelsey Dayle John. I am white, born for the Red Bottom clan. My maternal grandfather is white and my paternal grandfather’s clan is Under His Arm clan. This is how I am Navajo.)
The way I was taught, the Diné think in four directions starting with ha’a’aah (the east) and circling our thoughts around to completion, always somehow aware of ha’a’aah. I grew up in Oklahoma off the Navajo reservation, but was sub-consciously aware of the east.
“The sun will wake you up in the morning because the sun always rises in the east and that’s the way your windows face” my dad said to me. I was about six years old, starring out the two large windows in my very first bedroom. For some reason, these words stuck in my mind like instructions etched in cement.
Our front door faced away from the road, by my mother’s request, and instead looked toward the trees. Navajos believe that the door of a hooghan should face to ha’a’aah because all good things come from the east. My dad’s words made me aware of the rising sun and the position of our house compared to others in our neighborhood; we seemed a bit odd on our Oklahoma acreage with a home that faced not toward the road, but east.
Unknowingly, I internalized his explanation by developing the habit of identifying all four directions everywhere I went. Usually starting with north, but always clarifying the position of north because I knew the sun rises in the east. Like checking a math problem, I would circle clock-wise in my mind from east, to south, to west, to north and feel suddenly oriented. In new cities, it helped to picture our home in Oklahoma and the doors and windows which faced toward the rising sun.
Twenty years later, I went home to Diné Bikeyah (the Navajo Nation) to start learning Diné bizaad (the Navajo Language). I started to learn about the foundation of the four directions for Navajos in prayer, ceremony, and daily life. I called my dad and asked him “did you have our door face east on purpose?” He answered almost joyfully, “Yeah! your mom didn’t want it to face the road and I thought ‘perfect!’ It will face east and then I can put my coral in the south like Navajos say you’re supposed to.”
I learned to live this worldview by living in the spatial organization of my family’s house off the reservation in Oklahoma. The layout prompted me to identify the east in every circumstance, to picture our door facing east, our coral on the south side of the house, and to orient myself in relationship to the rising sun. The consistency of it shining through my windows every morning in our home created for me—a worldview.
Today, I live in New York, even further from the Navajo Nation. But, like the four directions, my family’s life has moved in circles from Colorado, to Arizona, to Oklahoma, to the Navajo Reservation, and back to Colorado. Navajos say we are pulled back to where our umbilical cord is buried. For me it’s Colorado, like my nálí, and the pull becomes stronger and stronger each year. To be near family, to see the east, and to be near my people’s land.
During the last year of my doctoral work in New York, before I move back home to the reservation to write my dissertation, the spatial cycles my dad taught me help me feel less home sick in a the heavily wooded region of Upstate New York. But in New York, I cannot see the sun rising from my bedroom window nor can I see it over the hills during my morning run. I fall into narrative to ward off the loneliness that accompanies senseless, endless, labor. Singing, almost like a poem, what I really care about:
Real life seems like it sits across the country, in somebody else’s backyard. Where shadows are longer and wild horses graze in freedom and constraint. Out there, where my feet fall flush with the dusty roads every morning as I run ha’ahaa. I fall in love all over again, every single time. The stark contrast plays tricks on my mind, has me thinkin’ like I’ll be in this world forever.
My aunt says, “you never get injured running out here because of the connection to the land.” I say it’s because my mind is not preoccupied with a progressive march of academic performances. I can perform them alright; give me another pale yellow certificate to hang on my wall, next to another, and another. But at the end of the day, I’d rather stand with my feet hanging over the rails of a rusty coral panel. Talking bout’ life and living and how much I don’t care about money.
When I discovered that writing could set me free, sentences soaring like ribbons in the wind. It felt like my hair when I lope with my horse—how it blows free in the wind, in union tapping into the place where we’re originally meant to be.
The academic world is, perhaps, enticing. Maybe somewhat seductive. Like tall trees that keep you focused in on this one moment in time, this one moment in space. Without the ability to look ahead or behind. Soon I realize these unruly creatures trap me in, and I can see only as far as up, but never out. There my hands hold hard surfaces of books and keyboards, not breathing creation.
All I have is the only thing that keeps me alive. I reflect on stories and memories of times when I actually lived life. Where panoramic sunsets painted the backdrop to our conversations and when I realized the setting sun really is enough. So beautiful it makes me pull over in the middle of the highway, just to not capture it in a photo.
On a sunny Sunday in New York, I sit outside and paint blue, yellow, and white streaks across the canvas trying to render the skies back in Tohatchi, NM. But I can’t capture it because these moments are not photographs. They’re not static, the panoramas move and live and even breath inside us, reminding us that even away from home, we carry it within us.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
The way I was taught, the Diné think in four directions starting with ha’a’aah (the east) and circling our thoughts around to completion, always somehow aware of ha’a’aah. I grew up in Oklahoma off the Navajo reservation, but was sub-consciously aware of the east.
“The sun will wake you up in the morning because the sun always rises in the east and that’s the way your windows face” my dad said to me. I was about six years old, starring out the two large windows in my very first bedroom. For some reason, these words stuck in my mind like instructions etched in cement.
Our front door faced away from the road, by my mother’s request, and instead looked toward the trees. Navajos believe that the door of a hooghan should face to ha’a’aah because all good things come from the east. My dad’s words made me aware of the rising sun and the position of our house compared to others in our neighborhood; we seemed a bit odd on our Oklahoma acreage with a home that faced not toward the road, but east.
Unknowingly, I internalized his explanation by developing the habit of identifying all four directions everywhere I went. Usually starting with north, but always clarifying the position of north because I knew the sun rises in the east. Like checking a math problem, I would circle clock-wise in my mind from east, to south, to west, to north and feel suddenly oriented. In new cities, it helped to picture our home in Oklahoma and the doors and windows which faced toward the rising sun.
Twenty years later, I went home to Diné Bikeyah (the Navajo Nation) to start learning Diné bizaad (the Navajo Language). I started to learn about the foundation of the four directions for Navajos in prayer, ceremony, and daily life. I called my dad and asked him “did you have our door face east on purpose?” He answered almost joyfully, “Yeah! your mom didn’t want it to face the road and I thought ‘perfect!’ It will face east and then I can put my coral in the south like Navajos say you’re supposed to.”
I learned to live this worldview by living in the spatial organization of my family’s house off the reservation in Oklahoma. The layout prompted me to identify the east in every circumstance, to picture our door facing east, our coral on the south side of the house, and to orient myself in relationship to the rising sun. The consistency of it shining through my windows every morning in our home created for me—a worldview.
Today, I live in New York, even further from the Navajo Nation. But, like the four directions, my family’s life has moved in circles from Colorado, to Arizona, to Oklahoma, to the Navajo Reservation, and back to Colorado. Navajos say we are pulled back to where our umbilical cord is buried. For me it’s Colorado, like my nálí, and the pull becomes stronger and stronger each year. To be near family, to see the east, and to be near my people’s land.
During the last year of my doctoral work in New York, before I move back home to the reservation to write my dissertation, the spatial cycles my dad taught me help me feel less home sick in a the heavily wooded region of Upstate New York. But in New York, I cannot see the sun rising from my bedroom window nor can I see it over the hills during my morning run. I fall into narrative to ward off the loneliness that accompanies senseless, endless, labor. Singing, almost like a poem, what I really care about:
Real life seems like it sits across the country, in somebody else’s backyard. Where shadows are longer and wild horses graze in freedom and constraint. Out there, where my feet fall flush with the dusty roads every morning as I run ha’ahaa. I fall in love all over again, every single time. The stark contrast plays tricks on my mind, has me thinkin’ like I’ll be in this world forever.
My aunt says, “you never get injured running out here because of the connection to the land.” I say it’s because my mind is not preoccupied with a progressive march of academic performances. I can perform them alright; give me another pale yellow certificate to hang on my wall, next to another, and another. But at the end of the day, I’d rather stand with my feet hanging over the rails of a rusty coral panel. Talking bout’ life and living and how much I don’t care about money.
When I discovered that writing could set me free, sentences soaring like ribbons in the wind. It felt like my hair when I lope with my horse—how it blows free in the wind, in union tapping into the place where we’re originally meant to be.
The academic world is, perhaps, enticing. Maybe somewhat seductive. Like tall trees that keep you focused in on this one moment in time, this one moment in space. Without the ability to look ahead or behind. Soon I realize these unruly creatures trap me in, and I can see only as far as up, but never out. There my hands hold hard surfaces of books and keyboards, not breathing creation.
All I have is the only thing that keeps me alive. I reflect on stories and memories of times when I actually lived life. Where panoramic sunsets painted the backdrop to our conversations and when I realized the setting sun really is enough. So beautiful it makes me pull over in the middle of the highway, just to not capture it in a photo.
On a sunny Sunday in New York, I sit outside and paint blue, yellow, and white streaks across the canvas trying to render the skies back in Tohatchi, NM. But I can’t capture it because these moments are not photographs. They’re not static, the panoramas move and live and even breath inside us, reminding us that even away from home, we carry it within us.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.