First Voices - Kelkiyana Yazzie
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Kelkiyana Something my colleague likes to say is that “we're not a resource to be managed.” And seeing the Grand Canyon, that's a part of us as Native people. It's not like a different thing than us. I always hear that when I work with Tribal members and even in my own culture is that this place is a living landscape and we're interconnected with it. We have a reciprocal relationship with it.
Doug Hello folks, and welcome. My name is Ranger Doug from the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. We have a very special guest today, who will join us for an interesting look at Grand Canyon, sharing her insights and thoughts, from the perspective of an Indigenous National Park employee. This conversation is part of our First Voices series of Behind the Scenery Grand Canyon National Park podcasts.
In the modern history of the whole National Park Service, there’s but a handful of fourth-generation National Park employees. And today you are going to meet one of these rare individuals.
What was it like growing up on the Navajo Nation in Arizona? How did this park ranger become the fourth generation in her family to wear a National Park Service ranger uniform? What does it mean to work today, as the Tribal Program Coordinator for Grand Canyon National Park? And how do you calm a mortally-wounded, panicky and stressed-out bison on the North Rim?
We’ll answer these and many more questions. Join us for a fascinating and insightful conversation with special Grand Canyon ranger, Kelkiyana Yazzie. I will let her introduce herself to you.
Kelkiyana Hi. Hello. Ya'at'eeh. Good morning. My name is Kelkiyana Yazzie. I am the Tribal Program Coordinator for Grand Canyon National Park. That means that I work with the parks 11 Associated Tribes to have them feel represented and included in park management and projects here at Grand Canyon. And to introduce myself in Navajo language, I'm a Navajo Tribal member, Bit’ahnii nishli, Lok'aa’ Dine’e bashishchiin, Bilagaana dashicheii, Tabaaha’ dashinali. That's how we usually introduce ourselves to other Navajo people to establish a sense of kinship with them. Those were our clans. So my first clan is Bit’ahnii, which means folded arm people. I always hope that means a good thing. And then my second clan is Lok'aa’ Dine’e, which means reed people and that actually has Hopi origins. So somewhere down the line I have Hopi, Hopi ancestors. Even though I identify as Navajo today. But yeah, clans are still strong and in existence in the Navajo culture. You can ask the little 5-year-old Navajo kid and they'll be able to introduce themselves in Navajo just like the way I did. So that just shows how important that is to our culture and heritage today. Doug Now the Navajo reservation, the Navajo Nation, shares a boundary with Grand Canyon National Park. Our eastern boundary, and your western boundary is shared. So can you share with the listeners a little bit about the Navajo Nation? Kelkiyana Yeah. So the Navajo Nation is considered the largest Native American reservation in the United States. I believe it's let at least 265,000 square miles and it has a population of about 165,000 people who live on the reservation today. If you ever get a chance to drive through the rez, you'll see how spaced apart our communities are and you'll see, like random houses here and there along the highway. So it may seem like it's a desolate place, but in reality it's just full of families full of culture and heritage that's still strong today. Growing up on the Navajo Nation, there's a lot of difficulties and challenges, such as not having running water and electricity, and that's a common thing for the Navajo Nation, is that a lot of households still don't have running water. And with my own family, we didn’t even have running water until I was about fourth grade. Before that, we would use an outhouse and then like a camp shower, like a solar shower, my dad built like pallets and put up curtains, and then we just leave the shower bag out in the sun all day, and that's what we would use. So yeah, wasn't till I was in 4th grade and a lot of families out there still don't have running water. But the Navajo Nation is a special place. We call it Diné Bikéyah. And it's considered to be within the four sacred mountains, one being San Francisco Peaks near Flagstaff, AZ. Another being Mount Blanca, Mount Taylor in New Mexico and Hesperus up in Colorado. So those, within those four mountains is considered our ancestral and modern-day homeland. Doug So you grew up in the Shonto area. Tell us a little bit about that, growing up on the rez. Kelkiyana Yeah. I grew up in a really small community called Shonto. We had a population about 500 people, so everyone knew each other and what's very common on the rez is that we live next to our families. So I have my house that I grew up in with my parents and my siblings, and then just like maybe 500 yards away with my nááli, my grandma on my dad's side, she lived there and I just maybe like one or two miles away was my great grandma and she would always walk over to our house at all hours of the day or night. Even in the middle of the night, she would like, have no flashlight and she's just walking through the trees and she'll end up at our house. But I grew up in a traditional household. We had sheep. We still have sheep and horses. Livestock. Cattle. And so we would do things like butchering for special occasions or just for family gatherings where we would butcher the sheep. Uh, we still do that today in our family. It's a great way to get together and we use all parts of the sheep, whether to eat or you use the wool for weaving. I always remember going to my great grandma's hogan growing up, my dad would drop us off there on the weekends. I know back then I used to really hate it, but thinking back on it, I'm really glad I got to experience that, but she would be using like a like a spindle and she would have a loom and she would like really care-take for her own wool. She would make it all from getting it from the sheep to where it ends up in a rug. She was a weaver. So that was really cool to see that process and I even got to weave a small rug with my great grandma that I still have today coming from the wool from her, her own sheep herd, from her own sheep corral. But yeah, I'm just really fortunate to have grown up in a traditional small community. Our closest neighbors, again, are our family, and then I would have, the school is kind of faraway where we would wake up at 5:30 in the morning to get on the bus and we wouldn't come back until 5:30 in the evening. That just shows how harsh and long the commute to school was growing up in that community. Doug And then where did you go to high school? Kelkiyana I went to high school in a small town called Kayenta, Arizona. It's near Monument Valley Tribal Park. Some people may have heard of that. It's where those famous buttes are that are showcased in old Western films, such as the John Wayne movies. And yeah, it's called Monument Valley High School. And again, it would take like 2 hours to commute from Shonto to Kayenta on the bus because a lot of us lived on rural dirt roads. So the bus would have to travel through and pick us up and then take us to Kayenta. But yeah, it was a really good high school experience. A common thing that was taught to us is Navajo language, so that's something that's really strong on the reservation, not just at the high school I went to, but all the schools across the Navajo Nation, even in all the way from preschool age to college level, the Navajo language and crafts such as basket making and rug weaving are taught in our schools on the rez. Doug And what was your post high school path like? Kelkiyana Yeah. So after high school, I ended up going to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, that was primarily because they offered free tuition to Native American students, and it was still close enough to home. It was about a four-hour commute one way. I'm really close with my family growing up, so I knew I was going to get homesick if I went elsewhere. But I was really glad with my choice because Fort Lewis and Durango is just like a really small mountain town with this strong sense of community. Everyone was so nice and welcoming. It also had a large Native American population. I believe 20% of the students were from Tribes from all over the country, from Alaska to Hawaii, to South Dakota and even the East Coast. So I got involved with the Native American Center, the Environmental Center, and an organization called Engineers Without Borders, where I was able to spend summers in Central America, in Nicaragua, building latrines and water systems for rural remote villages there. So yeah, I got a lot of that experience. I built up my leadership skills while I was in college. I was always a shy, introverted person growing up and I always knew I wanted to be a teacher. So my college experience at Fort Lewis really shaped me to be where I'm at today. I give a lot of credit to that institution for making me the person I am today and for helping me in the current position that I'm serving in the Park Service. Doug And there's a small National Monument established in 1909 near your hometown of Shonto area called Navajo National Monument. Talk about your family’s connection to this small National Monument. Kelkiyana Yeah. So I grew up about 5 minutes down the road fro
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