I grew up in a setting few are familiar with, a half-Navajo, half-white kid on the Navajo Reservation. Located in the Four Corners of the U.S. and almost five times larger than Connecticut, the rez is, to quote one of the Catholic nuns who taught at my school, “God’s own country.” Red rocks, hundred mile vistas, rambling sheep, and the bluest sky I have ever seen set Din4 Bik4yah, Navajoland, apart from the world. Furthermore, even though it is even now fighting the effects of 140 years of assimilation and the pressures of modern society, it is a world that remains Navajo.
The flip side of this struggle, however, (at least if viewed from the outside) is that there isn’t a lot of “diversity” on the reservation. Some might even deem it an overwhelming racially homogenous society. I mean, in the thirteen years I attended school on the rez, the total number of white, black, Asian, and Hispanic students I went to school with could be counted on both hands and a foot. No lies. I even called up former classmates and stalked facebook before compiling a list of all the non-native classmates I could remember. The total? In over a decade, only thirteen non-native kids.
This “low diversity” was not some unique statistic promoted by my school in order to increase its reputation, however. Rather, it is indicative of the composition of the reservation as a whole. On the reservation, it is the natives, not the Anglos, who are the majority group. This of course puts a spin on what it means to be a mixed Navajo person, as it can be argued that mixed race individuals most often identify with the minority side of their person. It is the identification with the minority that often defines the struggle many mixed people go through. Although this is most often the case, what happens when that minority – blacks, Asians, natives, etc. – effectively becomes a majority within a certain area? Does white society – the majority group in America – still manage to retain its preeminent position? How does the racial dynamic change? What effect does it have on a mixed race individual?
In my experience, it changes that formative process of questioning that all mixed race people go through. As a kid, the harshest treatment I received was not from elite white brats secure in their supposedly elevated position, but instead from the other 98% of kids who were Navajo. I endured ridicule for being lighter than them (although darker than any of the white kids I knew), not liking basketball (the native sport), and having long hair tied up in a traditional Navajo bun.
Because of these early experiences, for a long time my best friends were the other “minorities” – an eclectic mix of other mixed-Navajo kids, white kids, and the rare Asian kid whose family didn’t make that left turn at Albuquerque. However, lest you think that my interaction with my white side was just peachy and free of conflict, let me assure you that being a half-Navajo kid in an overwhelming Anglo world was as difficult as being half-white on the rez.
With this in mind, what happened that I am now able to live in both worlds? How is it that I am here at Yale, this reputed bastion of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism? As clichéd as it may sound, in middle school my family shipped me off to that oh-so-American institution of summer camp. It was an experience that changed me; I found myself for an extended period of time in a setting where both my Navajo side and my white side were free to express themselves to their fullest extent.
When I returned back to the rez, I realized that the nervous and supremely awkward kid I’d seen my self as previously, hemmed in by my reaction to the reservation’s unique structure, was not some predetermined role I had to play. Becoming aware that one’s surroundings undoubtedly influence the person he or she becomes yet do not predetermine anything is the first step to achieving h0zh= - harmony – in one’s self. Ever since I reached this conclusion, I have been on a journey of sorts, seeking to come to a better understanding of my own person. As of yet, I am sure of one thing: I am Wade Campbell and I can comfortably say that I am white and I am Navajo.
No comments:
Post a Comment