Youth Visions
Below are youth visions that have begun to be noted in December, 2022, and will be fully discussed at Áłchíní bizaad íílí-Envisioning the Navajo Nation 102 Years from Now youth-families-leaders forum in July, 2023.
Homesteading
I saw this place and would like to build our family home on it, no other home and no farm or livestock for miles. I can see homes of our kids near us, continuing our way of life that right now can’t be done. It’s not in our chapter area. It’s not in a grazing area of anyone we know. Just a beautiful wide open space that needs to be stewarded. They tell us there’s not enough land, I just don’t understand it. Can’t we spend our family and work life together stewarding land in a beautiful place. Our ancestors were not confined to chapters. We have always experienced our beautiful spaces and need to be able to pass the experience down to future generations.
Diné “Cooperative”
We’d like to discover the solution, the pathway that winds its way towards us being able to stay and build the Navajo Nation instead of now where the solutions are for us to get out of the way and leave. To be able to visualize a springboard of before and after us, as a way of our future. First we need a place to stay, and an office, and land for uses we can work as hard as we want. A home is our common residence that is also work-related, united for future generations instead of empty and kept from us. It can be just amazing.
Decolonization
What is a classroom to us but to learn what previous generations did, teach us how to look after and preserve what we love. But everything right now is cut off from us. Diné strength is more than a token of ceremony. We want to do as much as we can, our own little space, we are growing seeds and we need land to appreciate the seeds we will grow. Why don’t I feel at home and at peace on our ancestral land? Why isn’t Diné strength seen, acknowledged and supported?
Selfishness of Older People
Being on the reservation is completely unique, we are supposed to be connected to the earth, to be at home and happy, peace and beauty. It doesn’t have to be perfect but there is balance. But the older people are not making a space for us, growing up here is hard and make do with having no space. The older ones don’t want to give up jobs to us, as if we are abandoned. They don’t soften things for us, they don’t courageously plan for us. They tell us to be Diné, then give us no choices.
Growing into a Man
Being a person of Diné strength means a knowledge holder, keeping the skills, having strength to protect and keep working for a group to endure. It is the welfare of the clan but the good of clan life what does that even mean, what does a clan mean, what does being a man of Diné strength mean, our guides are gone, what are the value and possibilities of living with it.
Growing into a Woman
Becoming a Diné woman through the puberty ceremony is a very beautiful story. Boys today lack puberty ceremonies to become men, but the kináldaá still makes Diné matriarchs, but with no route to fulfill why the knowledge is passed on. We are just placeholders, saving the knowledge from the wind. One day we will make the roof against this really really rough wind outside.
Relationship with Land
How do we plan to be a bigger part of the land so the Navajo Nation will survive? The relationship to land is non-existent. There is no method to grow close and bring us all closer. It is almost crazy to stay on the reservation with no possibility other than the shell of being part of the land. We have been walking on land that have supported our people’s feet for generations and they don’t support anymore. We’ve been here together and we want to stay together.
Unshared Skills
Our elders pass on and haven’t shared their knowledge with us. They are completely silent. We are not connected, not brought together, the elders and youth are isolated from each other and there is no method to share in a way that will create knowledge and skills. It’s like our Vietnam veterans they don’t talk about the war and in a similar way our elders don’t talk about it, even though it is a precious thing that will disappear. There isn’t a way for us to take proper ownership and being in charge of our own future. We are no longer surrounded by people who know.
This is Where I Belong
To say “This is where I belong” is not merely a spiritual feeling, it is a practical event. We are the ones who actually live here, and we are the ones who will rebuild and make the decisions to rebuild. But we have to work to keep the past alive and not throw it out. We have to say no to separating where we belong from our physical state; and find our handprints and footprints, maybe someday 50 years from now another handprint will be there in a long line.
We are of SIgnificance
The Navajo Nation has already changed to become what it has not historically been, it is not the same community and it is not beautiful, erasing all the history that we think is important, it is being lost. We want to make our communities forever and not continuing tear down of ourselves as a practicing people. What our ancestors did was of significance. We are of significance and we matter.