Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought

Morning Offerings, Like Salt

39 Morning Offerings, Like Salt Esther Belin I am surrounded by the rocks from Dibé Ntsaa. At my desk, the rocks sit and write with me. The story penetrates like early spring wind, creamy and spread evenly along my spine. The rock crystals breathe and rest. Their sharp edges speak in rhythmic high tones trailed by melodious low tones, inviting me to speak. — — — My beginnings according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs records: DOB: 07-02-68 Location: Indian Health Service Hospital, Gallup, New Mexico — — — According to my clan: Tłogí diné nishłí, Tódich’íínii báshischíín, Kinłichíínii éi dashicheii, or the fourth part to my whole consists of a last name: Belin, Bilíí. — — — According to my tribe: When I fill out tribal forms, I am never asked for my Diné identity. However , I am always asked for information about my physical beginnings on this planet. Within the same forms, I am usually asked for that same data numerous times. The consistent focus on that data infers its significance as a part of my being, suggesting that my tribe has replaced our traditional living system with a defined Westernized world order. I am never asked for clan documentation. I am always asked for date of birth, place of birth, Social Security number, and then census number. Ironically, the date of birth, birth certificate, and Social Security documents are usually required before one can obtain a tribal census number. 40 • Frameworks of Understanding — — — When I think of a traditional tribal lifestyle, a census number is furthest from my mind. Growing up away from my tribal homeland, I never considered my urban lifestyle as traditional or tribal, yet my census number, revealing a 4/4 blood quantum, qualified me as authentic, while my physical elements existed in Los Angeles (LA)—a trail of vapors stemming from an exiled status. The cosmos of legitimatizing ourselves in terms of the Bureau of Indian Affairs veils us as colonized. Or does that cosmos protect us? The question is one of individual preference and semantics. I love the freedom to choose my definition of Indian, Navajo, Diné, urban, rez, beat up and knocked down, yet never dead. As a writer, the pleasure is definitely in the play among vocabulary and embracement of the English language. I confidently say that English is a tribal language. I give it the power to be Indian, Navajo, Diné, urban, rez, beat up, knocked down, and never dead. — — — Somewhere along my lineage, someone imagined. Nitsáhákees safely transferred into the next world. We reimagine ourselves, re-create our Diné worldview wherever “home” is reestablished. Thus, the manner in which I was raised in a small town south of downtown LA was an extension of the Diné way of life. In the town of Lynwood, California, my parents imprinted Sa’a ˛h Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhó ˛ó ˛n on my sister, brother, and I (California style, of course). — — — I stare into the rocks on my desk. Immediately, the most obvious observation is the diversity: size, shape, color, texture, density, clarity. All stem from the same vicinity, yet they are vastly unique, contributing to my world in complementary and tangled ways not as a tangible text but as a text that is constantly in the making. The text contains me, as a five-fingered being, on a journey through a web of cultural constructs. Are the words from my mouth, which represent the thoughts from my heart, tethered to the sky, as well as to Earth? Are those words contributing to give order to both the male and female parts of me? Are the fertile parts of my roots nourishing equally, seasoned with the vibrating stars as well as the dampened, mineralized earth? — — — As a child, I lived in two constructed worlds—one around my father and the other around my mother. Part of that era of termination and relocation was a lacerating disruption to the essential elements: moisture, substance, air, and heat. My parents went about their own ways to reconstruct those Morning Offerings, Like Salt • 41 essential elements and adjust their senses. Moisture emerged from the oceanic tug of the Pacific, its salty breath, a helix of sea ribbons in coherence with the splashing surf, an anchor, my limbs winding to warm undercurrents and gulping riptides. The salty tears held in the drinking vessel between my internal organs and fatty tissue now hold my...