In this episode, Ranger Dawn got to talk with Marian Manyturquoise who is a Diné employee of Grand Canyon Conservancy at the Desert View Watchtower. She tells stories of her life growing up at the canyon, her childhood at boarding school, and the importance of respecting everything around you.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Marian Speaks Transcript

Marian Manyturquoise: So, I'm going to teach you one word. Are you ready? I'm going to say it in three parts, okay? So, here we go. Ni-zho-ni. Ready? Ni-zho-ni. Beautiful. You beautiful people. That means beautiful.

Meranden: Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's Grand Canyon Speaks episode. My name is Meranden.

Lakin: And this is Lakin.

Meranden: We hope everyone out there has been enjoying season two. It's been a lot of fun being able to hear these stories and put them out there for all of you to listen to.

Lakin: We're happy to share this next episode with Ranger Dawn and Grand Canyon Conservancy employee, Marian Manyturquoise, who grew up at Grand Canyon with her grandparents.

Meranden: Yeah, she shared some knowledge about her Diné culture, her experiences with boarding school, and the importance of respecting the land around you.

Lakin: Once again, we appreciate listeners like you for tuning in, and we are excited for more episodes to come.

Meranden: And here is Marian Manyturquoise.

Marian: Yá’át’ééh means Hello. I didnt get to shake your hands. That means hello, Yá’át’ééh (speaks Navajo) When you meet your relatives or meet new people, mostly from your own tribe or your own relatives, you come to that with (speaks Navajo), I'm sorry, we're over here. So, I would say hello to all my relatives, all the people that have come from far. So, thank you for coming to the Grand Canyon.

This is a beautiful place. This is my favorite spot. This is where my family has lived for generations, hunted.

We gathered all these different, the different trees here, produced different things, and the plants also that we would come and gather at certain times of the year. So, thank you for coming to my area of this country. So, my name is Marian Manyturquoise.

This is the only turquoise I own. And then the other thing we would do is, we're in the clan system. So, what I would say is, who my mother is, is what I am.

And who my father is, who my mother's father is, and who my father's father is. On top of that, then you have at least four other clans that are really closely related to you. So, I'm going to say that whole thing for you.

I will try to explain it afterwards, so you have an understanding of what I said. So, (Introduces self in Navajo) So, I am my name, and then my mother's clan is Yucca Fruit People.

My father's clan is Apache Towering House people. My grandfather, who is usually my Cheii, is the Shadow in the Woods, is the Bear clan. And then my father's father is my nali.

He is the Deerwater clan. So the reason why we have these clan system is so we don't intermarry. So the four extra clans are also the other clans we don't marry.

If that happens anywhere, it is usually called the moths. You know how the moths, they go and they keep going towards the fire when they know, I guess they don't know, I don't know, but that's why they're called the moths. So I just like to bring that up.

That's the clan system. So there's over 200 clan system in the Navajo tribe. So I grew up here in this area with my family.

I was born here in this area. So back in the 60s, most of the kids were born in the Tuba City district, Tuba City PHS, which is about 50 miles east. So that was the main hospital for all the kids that were born in this area.

And as I grew, we grew up in these canyons here. We'd follow our parents here and there. We migrated a lot.

We'd live in Cameron for the summer. And in the fall, we'd come closer to the mountain. In the wintertime, we'd spend here close to the mountain.

So when you come up 64 east of here, as you go up, you can tell the different elevations, right? But on 64, you have the community of Cameron. And then as you come up, you're in the Navajo Nation. You're in the Navajo Nation down there.

In the summertime, like about this time, the weather gets a little bit dry. There's no kind of moisture. So we would go down to Cameron.

There's a natural spring that comes out of the lava beds. So we'd go there, and that's where we'd take our sheep. And then in the fall, we'd come closer this way.

But the only thing is, we have to haul water. But in the fall, we have all the green that has turned to the right color for our livestock. And then in the winter, we'd come straight up.

And we do have winter homes down here just below, maybe I'd say a good five miles in this direction, inside the pinyon trees and cedar trees. In the fall, we'd spend our winters there. And then by that time, we would still haul water, but also collect snow for water.

And then we'd use all the wood that was dead, had matured. That would be our firewood. So that's how me and my family, we migrated back and forth.

My parents, it was hard for them to get employment here on the Navajo Nation. So a lot of the things that my father did and my mother did was they would go from one area down to Phoenix or to Salt Lake to do migrant work. And through that time, they had 12 kids.

So they would migrate and go leave us, and we would be left with our grandparents at times. But growing up here was a special thing because we got to know our canyons and get to hike into our canyons at night. If we lost a sheep, we'd have to go into those canyons and look for our sheep.

The only way we did that was with the bells on the sheep. So a lot of things we did as little kids, like gather snow, help gather pinyons, help gather corn, watermelon at our little garden in Tuba. So there's a lot of things as growing up made us, my brothers and sisters, really strong.

So this is a very special area for me because of my grandparents and generations before. So the Grand Canyon, when I think about it, is because it really brings a lot of thankfulness, I guess you wanna say, because generations before, back in 1886, most of our family members that lived here to get away from the soldiers to be captured, they would go into the canyon and they would hide down there for till 18... Okay, 1886 is when the treaty was signed. So they would, when that, about maybe five or six years before that, then they came back out after the treaty was signed and they came back and they started living here again.

And then the park was made and then we were pushed back that way again. So that's, the specialty is that they found refuge down here so they didn't have to walk so many hundreds of miles to New Mexico. And the beauty of this area is so breathtaking.

Every time I think of my home, I always think, oh, ow, you know, I live in a real special place. So I'm gonna teach you one word. Are you ready? I'm gonna say it in three parts, okay? So here we go.

Ni-zho-ni Ready? Ni-zho-ni. Beautiful.

You beautiful people. That means beautiful. So anytime you see something or I see something, or when I say a prayer, it's always beautiful.

Nizhoni. Then at the end of our prayers, that's another thing. We always say it four times (speaks in Navajo).

Because, and there's four directions and there's four different sacred mountains. So that when we end our prayer, that's how we say it. I think that's why, and my language is really beautiful.

So just a few stories about how we grew up here. We were left alone a lot. So we'd go and we'd hike into these canyons here.

The little Colorado River Gorge. We didn't really, it was part of us, I think. So there's air pockets in those canyon, sheer cliffs, there's air pockets in them.

So our crazy brothers would say, okay, let's go. So we'd go in those air pockets and we'd go on our hands and knees and we'd follow each other all the way to where it ended. And then we'd slowly turn around and we'd go all the way back out again.

I don't know why, but we did. But we didn't feel any, we weren't scared. We were part of that land.

And just like with the moonlight and our grandparents would say, go get the sheep. We knew where to go, even though we weren't there like every single day. We'd go down and listen for the bells and anything that was wild, mountain lion, coyote, anything, didn't really bother us.

Snakes, because you were part of that land. So, and the other thing is, we were never to play in the water, respect the water. So when there was a monsoon, it was coming close to our home, we would stop everything.

We would just sit down, cross-legged or whatever, irreverently, and we'd sit there and wait for the rain to come through. And then we would meditate. We were told to do that.

So we'd just sit there and we'd watch, we'd just listen to the rain until it went through. Then we were told, yeah, now you can go out. So that's how we respect the thunderstorm.

We also respect the eclipse. So all Navajos don't do anything during the eclipse because it's the changing of our mother earth and our skies, our moon, and our sun. So before an eclipse, we would just get ready, get our food ready, drink our water, and just close off all the light in our home.

And we'd just sit still through the whole eclipse and we would pray. And then after the eclipse, we would, you know, bless ourself and then we'd say thank you or our thank you prayer. And then we would sit down and have our meal on the floor.

So a lot of our meals were on the floor. But I would like to express that, how we respect the eclipse, how we respect the moisture, the thunderstorm, and snow. Anything that brought us life is what we respected.

And that's just a few things. And then later on, as I grew up, we were told to go