This was a chance encounter. I was browsing on my free library app Libby for available audio books.
Native American history, literature, culture has been one of my main interests over the past few years.
In fact, I recently watched Dark Winds and Flybread Face and Me both directed by Billy Luther, a fact which I hadn't realized until after I had watched both.
This memoir fit really well with those shows/movie as much of her early life was spent in Navajo country in Farmington New Mexico although she herself is of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo peoples. She was born on the reservation in Yuma. She currently is the director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe. (rad job btw!)
This memoir explores her journey of identity as a person of "mixed ancestry" living amongst both whites, non natives, and in the midst of the more populous Navajo nation. The story is a gripping tale of her close knit family. One of a series of sisters, their parents worked diligently to give them a life that was not as marked by poverty as their own had been. This path led them away from their place of origin and to a life of walking the line between honoring the past and the traditions of their ancestors and trying to create a comfortable reality in the present which meant at times suppressing cultural identity.
I'm reticent to create any parallels to my own life, but I've been recently reflected on the power of identity. Most people want to feel part of something larger than themselves and as our society has expanded through industrialization and global commerce, I think the cost has been the sense of continuity that humans experienced throughout much of their history with a sense of family/tribe.
People try to re-create it and simulate it through other forms of belonging, but I feel the simulation falls short of what there is a visceral longing for.
Sometimes we are raised to strongly identify with something and then there comes a point when that identity doesn't serve but actually hinders us from evolving and adapting to the present. I grew up strongly identifying as a rancher, but my life took a turn that didn't involve me being a rancher. I can talk about a strong cultural affiliation, but that is all it is. It doesn't matter than my family heritage extends back on three sides in that subculture all the way to the 1800s, It is not the reality of my present or likely future. So, I can imagine a little tiny bity - the pull of a heritage (referring to the book) that extends back not 100 years but hundreds or thousands and is both cultural and ethnic and how difficult it is to both honor and yet integrate into the ever pressing pull of present exigencies. My family and extended family is extremely tight- knit, supportive, and clannish and I feel so grateful for the security that has afforded me my whole life.
The story was both interesting and personal. I got the sense that Deborah is an HSP so I definitely related to her on that level. She seems like a natural harmonizer who thought deeply about things and worked at both pleasing and being authentic which speaking from experience is kind of an ordeal.
There was a part that really stood out to me. I jotted part of it down hurriedly in the kitchen one day (Due to my full time work schedule my book listens happen in snatches while I'm cleaning up the kitchen at 6 am, on my commutes, or on my 30 min lunch breaks.) I think she was exploring her tribal history, traditions, rituals, healing medicines, ceremonies etc in order to try to feel connected to her roots and people and to discover her place in the world. At one point it's like she had an epiphany where she realized that that was all well and good but what she needed to internalize were the edicts. This is all I got down "I vowed to focus on their edicts." How I interpreted this and applied to myself is the following: You can't really re-create the past because all of those things that I listed, beautiful as they are, were part of their time- what was needed for the time, made sense, and served. I can do them now, but perhaps it is more important for me to discover the rituals, ceremonies, art and nature connection that will serve me now. Somehow I can honor even preserve ancient traditions, whilst still being open to creating new ones and being part of the constant evolution that is life itself.
I tend to elevate, romanticize, and be nostalgic about the past: my childhood, my ancestors, times gone by when I like to think that life was more natural or vibrant. Sometimes I fall prey to melancholy, wistful longing, and regret for what I have no power to re-incarnate or create. I guess what I'm saying and why I jotted this down is because I don't want to live there any more. I heard her say that she wants to take the spirit of her people and their edicts into her life. I want to do the same. I want to own and speak my values and try to integrate them into my life now. It feels hard to infuse a suburban existence with some color sometimes, but the reality is wherever I lived on the space/time continuum, I have to acknowledge that I might be having the same struggle. Perhaps creating life moment by moment, being awake to the beauty of what is evolving spiritually, emotionally, and our part in the greater cosmos can be as epic as we frame it.
No comments:
Post a Comment