We Always Go Forward

Recently, I participated in a Yébîchai ceremony,—Kléjê Hatál, or Night Chant. Over 1,000 years old, it takes place in the winter and this one lasted 10 days. After the ceremony, driving back to Navajo Technical University’s Crownpoint campus, I thought about the spiritual significance of what I had just gone through, but also about how Navajo and tribal people have existed over time. Some of what has happened in our combined histories has been devastating. Large numbers of people have died, land has been lost, and subjugation, illness, and a host of other ills have visited our people.

Still, as I drove past Tsoodził (Mount Taylor), one of our sacred mountains, I thought about those returning from the Long Walk when the Diné were forced to walk 150 to 400 miles from their homelands in the Navajo Nation to an internment camp at Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico. Many died along the way and more starved once crops failed at the new reservation.

Diné leaders eventually prevailed in their efforts to allow a return to their ancestral homeland, so, during the long walk back, the first sign of home they would have seen was the sacred blue mountain, Tsoodził. I can imagine their exhaustion but also their excitement as a future beckoned them forward over the dry lands and hills they had to traverse. Today, tribal peoples face what sometimes seem to be insurmountable obstacles. As the co-chair of the World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium, I witnessed firsthand that this is not only true of American Indians but of Indigenous peoples worldwide. Poverty, lack of jobs, poor educational systems, poor health systems, drug and alcohol abuse, and other issues arising out of historical trauma affect a lot of Indigenous people on this earth.

But among the Navajo and other tribal peoples are cultural touchstones, historical memories, and an ability to face whatever obstacles exist in a way that always holds a promise for a better future. We often call this spirit “resilience,” and it is central to who the Diné and other tribal peoples are. Inside bleak realities, we always go forward, working on behalf of our relatives.

Tribal colleges and universities are an expression of our resilience. Those seeing Tsoodził as they returned home could not have foreseen Navajo Technical University. When I have conversations with our environmental science or environmental engineering professors about NTU’s water projects, or when I visit the advanced manufacturing lab with its state-of-the-art equipment and instrumentation that students and faculty are utilizing to generate new industry for the Navajo Nation, I am sure my excitement is as strong as that of those who returned to their homeland, seeing our blue sacred mountain in the distance.

Within the contemporary, high-tech world that NTU represents, are ceremonies that link me and all those who participate to the ancient spiritual, cultural, historical past. Without such ceremonies, the connection to our long history, and the spirit of the TCUs themselves, would not exist. There is beauty, the Diné say. Hozho nahasdlii’, in beauty I walk.

Elmer Guy, PhD (Diné)

President, Navajo Technical University
Tribal College Journal Advisory Board