November is Native American Heritage Month, and for Navajo poet and artist Venaya Yazzie, the month is a way for people to celebrate and appreciate who they are within the culture.
On Saturday morning, the Farmington-based Yazzie will host three young storytellers in a virtual celebration of the month. According to a news release from the Northwest New Mexico Arts Council, one child will read a story and share art inspired by the piece. Another is planning a Navajo/English storytime and has translated some of the book, to help other children learn Navajo. And the third will read a story that was published by her Native American grandmother about Coyote in Navajo and English.
“With the Northwest New Mexico Arts Council, we’re able to gather local talent, especially in the fall, like Hispanic Heritage Month and Native American Heritage Month, those two really get us in the flow of finding people to celebrate their heritage ... and culture and art,” she said. “It’s all really connected, and so that’s how we had come together to do the storytelling because the kids, in this case, were all multicultural, and so it somehow blends together. What’s cool about them is they’re really interested in their culture; some of them even use the Navajo language in their storytelling, which is really great.”
She said the great thing about featuring these children is that they are really in touch with who they are.
“I think that’s a really great part of showcasing children, because sometimes, kids don’t really want to go there,” Yazzie said. “If they’re not taught about their identity and their culture, they kind if shy away from it. But these kids are kind of exceptional in that way.”
Yazzie will also share some of the poetry she has written. She said a lot of it is centered around matriarchy: “Our society is a matrilineal society, so a lot of it has to do with my grandmother and ancestors and that sort of thing.”
“I’m glad they were able to let me do this because I’m interested in sharing work that I’ve done, too, as a poet. ... Whenever I get a chance, I see if I could share my own experience in identifying as a, I’m a Navajo from my mother, then I have Hopi heritage from my father, and so I write poetry, and it’s really just based on my culture and, I guess identity issues, like being a Navajo woman in the culture now,” she said.
Saturday’s virtual storytelling event isn’t the only thing happening this month around the Four Corners: Along with other events hosted by the Northwest New Mexico Arts Council, San Juan College in Farmington is also holding events, as is Fort Lewis College’s Native American Center in Durango.
Yazzie will participate in a Zoom event called “Native Artists Navigating Through the COVID-19 Pandemic” on Nov. 19, hosted by San Juan Colleg’s Native American Center. The discussion will also include: painter Avis Charley, Dakota/Diné; poet Tacey Atcitty, Diné; and photographer McKayla Tsabetsaye, Zuni/Diné.
And while Native American Heritage Month is a time to celebrate the culture as a whole, there’s another important component to it, Yazzie said.
“I think it’s always important but, particularly now, I feel like it’s a way we celebrate Native American Heritage Month or Hispanic Heritage Month or whatever heritage anyone is, for us as Natives, I think it helps to reground us. Have you ever heard of that phrase, ‘You have to know your past before you can know your future’? Something like that,” she said. “I feel like a lot of times as Natives, we have to reach back and kind of look back and say, ‘OK, this is what I have, this is what has been set for me by my ancestors, so I can move forward. And I think Native American Heritage Month can help us to recalibrate who we are as Native people, or Indigenous people in the world.”
katie@durangoherald.com
She is water
She is water.
She
is
Tó’ haalí –
‘flowing water.’
She is
flowing.
She surges through intersecting borders of my red and blue veins. She meets me at the foot of widening green sage. She is there where the blue of confluence molds itself around the curves of sandstone rocks. There, she recites her high desert female narrative: an Athabascan story of water.
Flooding.
She
pours a mist of story
over the dry of arroyo sands-
she is
tó’ haalí
flowing
flowing
flowing –
her voice
tides
and
pours
down
in
to deep red clay
arroyos near Huerfano.
She is blue water pouring
onto and over red, brown hands made of fine sandstone. Her voice, stable and rooted, formed by her desert tongue. Born for water, she is Diné being, my grandmother. She is me; I am her.
She is water ...
Venaya Yazzie
If you go
What:
Native American Month Youth Storytime and Poetry. The event is sponsored by the Connie Gotsch Arts Foundation.
When:
11 a.m. Saturday.
Where:
Online at
.
More information:
Visit Northwest New Mexico Arts Council at
. Also check out Fort Lewis College Native American Center for a calendar of events at https://bit.ly/32g7Uwd, and San Juan Regional College in Farmington.
