NATIVE AMERICAN RESERVATION

Over the Spring Break in my junior year of college in March 2002, I went on a week-long volunteer trip to a Native-American reservation in Tuba City, Arizona. The reservation was up on 5000ft altitude, and twelve of us, packed into two rented vans, drove up an endless stretch of a winding road to finally arrive at the Navajo Nation deep into a starry night. Linda, the community leader of the Navajo Nation, a lady in her 60s with cropped hair, gave us a warm welcome on our arrival and made us sit around the bonfire and drink hot chocolate to keep us warm.

Upon waking up the next morning, I noticed that the reservation, instead of having paved roads and buildings, had temporary trailers scattered around a large lot of dirt. We were assigned to help out at different facilities across the community — schools, community centers, nursing homes and hospitals — all of which were housed in different trailers. I was assigned to the community health center — which administered a Fitness and Nutrition program to address the community’s obesity problem, which I learned was one of the major issues in the Navajo community.

I got to work closely with Linda, the leader of the Navajo nation, who happened to be overseeing the obesity program along with a younger staff named Jessi. I was glad of the chance to sit  around the same table with them and chat about life on reservation in general, while working on developing the obesity program together. The reservation, they told me, suffered from a number of serious social issues — from poverty, alcoholism to teen pregnancy.

I asked them whether Native Americans had any interest in getting out of the reservation and becoming part of the ‘mainstream’ society. Do they feel like they are locked up on the reservation against their will and longed to get out? Here I was, the first generation immigrant, steeped in the assiduous process of assimilating myself into the ‘mainstream society’ to become like a ‘native.’

‘Excuse me, but what do you mean by the ‘mainstream’ society? And who are the ‘natives’?,’ Linda snapped. She said that Native Americans had no interest in getting out of the reservation, because they considered themselves the ‘mainstream.’ They were bitter and angry that their country was taken over by the whites. Linda told me a story about a brilliant Navajo boy who won a scholarship to study at MIT, only to come back to the reservation a year later, because the culture shock was too high. The community, she added, took that as a lesson, and since then, nobody else attempted to get out.

I realized that they were willing to talk so openly about what they really thought and even express anger and resentment against the whites because I was not white, and noticed that they would not go near such a subject with other students, who were mostly white, in the group. Upon chatting more, we realized that there were surprisingly many similarities between Native-American culture and Asian culture, including which animals symbolized what and how they were used in different ceremonies. They joked: ‘Wasn’t America and Asia connected before they were separated into different continents?'

Over the course of the week, we were introduced to different aspects of Navajo culture and were invited to join in their communal ceremonies — including the ‘hut’ ceremony where we got to sweat out impurities and the ‘rain’ ceremony to celebrate the much needed rain given their dry climate. The ceremonies were always oriented in relation to the surrounding landscape — which they regarded as sacred and not separate from themselves. We were also introduced to different types of stones that had different healing qualities, to be made into a necklace and worn around the neck. We were also introduced to Native-American food, including blue corn cakes, which became my favorite.

I found the reservation steeped in Navajo culture and tradition a spiritually grounding experience. I found myself taking in these traditions eagerly, as if I had been thirsting for a dose of ‘culture’ that I have been missing since I immigrated to America. I had assumed that America didn’t really have a native culture — all cultures were brought from elsewhere. But as it turns out, it did have a native culture, except that it wasn’t recognized as such.

Given the recent surge of the ‘nativist’ discourse in America, I found it ironic that ‘nativists’ who claimed to be the ‘natives’ of America were the whites of Anglo-Saxon descent, when it was in fact the Native Americans who were the real natives. And the ‘nativists’ who are seeking to ‘restore’ the ‘white Christian culture’ to be the national culture of America had no qualms about having wiped out the Native-American culture.

What would happen if America actually acknowledged the Native American culture as its national culture as the base, upon which the layers of influences from other ‘cultures’ that different waves of immigration brought were added onto to make up the ‘American culture’ that was ever evolving? Wouldn’t it make Americans spiritually more grounded, when we were seeking something more grounding and something more rooted than the rampant culture of consumerism that was all around us?

Even though it was only a week that I spent on the reservation, the exposure and experience of the Native-American culture and contact with the Native Americans made an indelible mark on me, as if it fundamentally challenged and shifted my perspective on America.