Annotating the First Lesson of Diné Bizaad: Speak, Read, Write Navajo

—After Danielle Geller, “Annotating the First Page of the First Navajo-English Dictionary.” ^#

My sophomore year of high school, I registered for Navajo Language I, not because I wanted to learn Navajo, but because I wanted to qualify for the Navajo Nation’s Chief Manuelito Scholarship Program. I grew up surrounded by Diné Bizaad and the Navajo culture. And there was a time that young Danielle wanted nothing more than to leave her language and culture behind for something “better” out East.

In high school, I thought going to college in New York City was going to fix all my problems. When I visited New York for the first time—yes, I was awestruck—but I was also cramped, lost, and unable to follow the sun’s path in the sky. High school Danielle didn’t take into account her relationship with home and Diné culture, not until it became tangled with New England trees and miles of city buildings.

Irvy W. Goossen, after writing his first book, Navajo Made Easier, in 1979, went on to teach at Northern Arizona University, and published his second book, Diné Bizaad: Speak, Read, Write Navajo ^#, in 1995. He started as a teacher through Navajo Missionary language classes, before fully integrating himself into the Navajo community as a language learner and researcher. Goossen perpetuated destructive colonizer ideals through the anglicization of Diné Bizaad, a once spoken-only language. Sometimes I feel like I didn’t really learn Diné Bizaad, but some anglicized conglomerate that the elders in my community don’t completely understand—at least, not without an extensive explanation, usually in English.

The people I’ve met who can speak and read Navajo are usually in their twenties. I’ve met youth who can read parts of Diné Bizaad and elders who can speak it without trouble. But it’s very rare that I meet a youth or an elder that can do both fluently. I find it interesting that this section of the lesson, featuring Hastiin Hall and Kii, is a conversation completely in Diné Bizaad between a Navajo elder and a young boy. When my friend Mykel and I read these conversations to each other during our Navajo I class, maybe we were actually speaking the ideal into existence—two students, taking on the role of a young Navajo boy and an old Navajo man, bridging that gap between youth and elders. Maybe the first step to bridging that gap is simply sitting down and speaking.

Diné Bizaad never came to me in the form of a book. As a child, I only saw Diné Bizaad written in church, where Christian missionaries translated the Bible into Navajo. I remember sitting between the wooden church pews, scrambling between my grandmother’s legs, and paging through a worn book with an anglicized alphabet of a language I’ve heard spoken by my aunts, grandparents, and mother since birth. To this day, most of my family members who speak Navajo don’t know how to write or read it. But they’re completely fluent speakers. Often, while writing, I call my mother and ask questions: How do you say that you miss someone? How do you say, “I miss you”? Is there a word for “sorry” in Navajo?” I’ve realized that learning Diné Bizaad means asking questions and listening, asking questions and listening, asking questions and listening, over and over again.

In high school, I was introduced to a formal teaching of Diné Bizaad, where students are expected to write and read from a settler colonial perspective on our cultural language. I was introduced to the book, Diné Bizaad: Speak, Read, Write, and I spent nearly three years studying this material alongside other Navajo youth. I recall those years fondly, seated next to one of my closest friends, handwriting sentences on lined white paper and taking Cornell notes. I remember the feel of the wooden pencil in my hand and the sound of the graphite, as I wrote on the blank lines from my official Navajo Introduction sheet:

I have a hard time pronouncing certain words in Navajo. They don’t come as easily to me, like they do to my mother or my grandmother. My tongue and throat understand how to make a glottal stop sound; they also have an understanding of the high tones and low tones. But my lack of fluency in Diné Bizaad really shows whenever I try to say the “gh–” sound, which isn’t simply a “guh–” but rather a “ggłuhh–” mixed in with a slight “rr–” reverberation. This is shown through the words, shighan, hoghan, and Ghaají. I’m not a linguist, so I can’t really name what these sounds are doing to the mouth, but I just know that the inner walls of my mouth and the thin expanse of my throat struggle to form sounds that my people have been speaking for years.

This might lead you to ask, Then how can you say that Diné Bizaad is a part of you? How can you connect with Diné Bizaad? When directly translated, Diné Bizaad means the language of the People. These are my People. This is our language. If this is our People’s language, how can I not say that Diné Bizaad is a part of who I am? Even when I trip over pronunciations and scrape my knees against phrases and definitions I have yet to learn; I am Diné.

Back home in Shiprock, New Mexico, everyone says “Navajo.” No one really says “Diné,” which is interesting, because Diné is what we call ourselves. And yet, I have multiple vivid memories of calling myself, my family, and my culture, Navajo. I remember my uncle, very proudly, pulling up a chair and sitting across from me at the dining table in my grandmother’s hoghan and, between bits and pieces of food saying, “You’re Navajo. Be proud of it.”

I have cousins and knew students who called themselves Navajo over Diné—going as far as to make it a part of their Instagram handles and Facebook profiles. While Navajo was derived from a Tewa phrase, then adopted by the Spaniards, I wonder if this is our subtle way of reclaiming something.

My paternal grandfather, from what I remember as a young child caught somewhere between eight and ten, didn’t speak much English. Maybe it was my age, but I don’t remember having that many English conversations with him. Instead, I remember the shape of his body as he walked next to mine, while we trekked over sand hills to pick up a large Domino’s pepperoni pizza. I remember the feel of his hand as he sang me to sleep during nap time, patting my back in a soothing rhythm. I remember his glasses, tucked back on the bridge of his nose. They were the shaded kind that kept out the sun and made him look like a cool motorcyclist. My grandfather taught me the word bilagáana while pointing out the Mormons from our small Kirtland community as we sat in the town Dairy Queen, licking up white vanilla ice-cream, shared because he wasn’t much of a sweets guy.

In the mornings, my masaní’s (maternal grandmother’s) radio was always tuned into KNDN, the local radio station broadcasting in Navajo, serving the Four Corners area. I’d push past the screen door, and be greeted with “All Navajo, All the Time” and Gary Stewart. Through the speakers of a silver vintage radio with a taped antenna, I paid attention to which Navajo words I recognized. That radio became a huge part of my childhood, simply by being present and playing Diné Bizaad. Sometimes my masaní was in the kitchen, sipping on coffee, or she was out in the fields, tending to the land with calloused hands. But without fail, she always turned on that radio in the morning and kept it playing till late afternoon.

A common translation of yá’át’ééh is hello. And a common English translation of yá’át’ééh abíní is good morning. But if we were to directly translate them, they’d be Yes, it is good, and Yes, the morning is good. And I think that better encompasses how I felt those mornings hearing Diné Bizaad and old-country music playing in the morning: it is good.

I’d never heard of this before. Granted, my father taught me the opposite. I remember him telling me to “always look people in the eyes” and “give them a firm handshake” when you meet them. My father considered eye contact and firm handshakes respectful. But also, my father’s parents went through boarding school, so who knows if that’s where he learned it. It’s interesting how a language book includes gestures with the physical body. I think we forget that languages aren’t just spoken, but embodied as movement alongside our mouths.

I remember my mother, surrounded by my aunts and uncles, laughing as my grandmother spoke Navajo. She’d pull me close, hugging me from the side, and say, “You are Tłááshchi’i.”

And when I asked, “What’s that?” she’d smile and say, “We’re the Red Cheek People.”

I knew that clans were important. I know that I’m Tłááshchi’i from my mom’s side and Ta’neezaahnii on my father’s side. I understood that there is a clear connection between me, my clans, my family, and my people. But it wasn’t until I got to high school that I learned the specific word for this deep connection: kinship. Or more specifically, Ke’.

We are learning Diné Bizaad—we are speaking Diné Bizaad—because Diné Bizaad goes hand in hand with the livelihood of Ke’ and the ideological beliefs of our long and ever-growing culture. Ke’ does not exist without Diné Bizaad, and Diné Bizaad does not exist without Ke’.

“It may separate two words that would otherwise seem to be connected.”

Speaking English / éí / as a Diné woman.

xxxxKnowing only a little bit of Navajo / éí/ as a Diné woman.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxMy father did not know Diné Bizaad, / éí / but my
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxmother speaks it fluently.
xxxxxxxxxMy younger sister knows more Diné Bizaad / éí / than me because she got
xxxxto be a part of an elementary school language learning initiative.

Shí / éí / Diné Bizaad bíhoosh'aah.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxI am/ éí /learning Diné Bizaad.

I never got the chance to ask my father why he didn’t know Navajo. While he was alive, it seemed like an insensitive thing to ask. And maybe it still is, but a part of me wonders if he’d laugh and say, “I don’t know” similar to how I respond when people ask me why I don’t speak Navajo (not Diné Bizaad, but Navajo).

When I asked my mother, she said, “Your dad didn’t want us to teach you.” I’m assuming “us” meant my mother and my aunt, since my father only knew his clans and maybe how to count to ten. I’ll admit, I don’t know enough about my dad’s background to make a definite claim, but it makes me wonder: did my dad’s dad, my grandfather who mostly spoke Diné Bizaad, not want him to learn Navajo, either?

To be.
I am.
Diné nishļí.
I am Diné.
Haash dóone’é nílí
Yá’át’ééh shí éí
Danielle Shandiin Emerson yinishyé.
It is good, it is good, hello.
I am Danielle. I am Sunshine.
I am Danielle Medicine.
Tłààshchí’í nishłíí dóó Ta’neeszahnii bàshíshchíín.
I am Red Cheek Clan, born for
the Tangled People Clan.
My mother used to joke, we’re Red Bottoms,
your butt was bright red when you were born.
I learned later, there are two
translations. Red Cheek,
Red Bottom, a Clan passed down from
my mother, and her mother,
and all those Red Cheek Clan mothers
before her who were born
with red bottoms
before her.
I am Diné.
Diné nishļí.
I am.
To be.

It took leaving my homeland to realize the importance of learning Diné Bizaad and our traditions. Growing up, I was tethered to everything Navajo. It was commonplace. I was immersed in the language and spent a lot of time at my grandparent’s hoghan. But when I got into a fully funded high school journalism program out on the East coast, I realized that Navajo, that Diné Bizaad, wasn’t as commonplace as I thought. Our language is undergoing a colonial genocide.

Our language is strong and living, and nothing changes that. But as a Diné youth, I need to do my part to keep not only my culture alive but also an inherent part of myself thriving.

Yá’át’ééh
It is
good.
shí
éí
I,
Danielle Shandiin Emerson yinishyé
am called
It is good
It is good.
I am Danielle.
Tłààshchí’í nishłíí dóó
Ta’neeszahnii bàshíshchíín.
I am Red Cheek Clan, born for
the Tangled People Clan.
Ashííhí éí dashicheii dóó
Táchii’nii éí dashinálí.
My maternal grandfather is the Salt People Clan,
and my paternal grandfather is
Red Running Into The Water People Clan.
And it is good
It is good.
Even as my family swirls, round and round in the wind,
tied together by our fingertips with
white yarn that holds up
our hair, smeared with warm
winter sunlight on our mouths,
and dripping black coffee
on our tongues, I say my introduction
with a voice that reflects all the
good things that come from the east.
All the good things that
those before me have passed on
through love, though K’é and kinship,
through names and the land we grew up on,
like thousands of stars,
So’ łani
in my
outstretched
hand.

This lesson got drilled into our heads as Navajo Language II students during my sophomore year of high school. I remember explaining this language rule to my younger siblings.

“When you want to say you really like something, you use ayóó shił yá’át’ééh.”

I remember my youngest sister nodding along, watching my fingers as I pointed at worksheets. “But if you’re talking about food that you really like, instead you say, ayóó shił łikan.”

A part of me liked that I knew the small nuances. I felt like I was really getting somewhere with learning Diné Bizaad. It made me feel a bit closer to my culture and family. And I think it brought me and my sisters closer together too.

In Diné culture, we bury our newborn’s umbilical cords in places that hold great significance and impact. My umbilical cord was buried at my masaní’s farm. For our lifetimes, and perhaps even beyond, we’re tethered to where our umbilical cord is buried. There’s something freeing about Diné Bizaad. It makes me feel both connected and untethered. There’s a comforting push and pull that exists between me and language. Would I still feel a strong connection to home and my masaní’s farm if my umbilical cord hadn’t been buried there? Definitely. Because I don’t think it’s the umbilical cord that tethers and untethers me. But rather the love and care that’s been shared, cupped in warm, crushed-velvet hands, and spoken in Diné Bizaad, an embodied language that makes me who I am, despite the fact that there are not “definite articles” in Navajo.

There are still some things in Diné Bizaad that I don’t know. There are phrases and sentences I don’t know how to say or translate into English. And those moments, where I’m unable to bridge my understanding to Diné Bizaad and can only find the words in English, in Bilagáanna Kejí, sometimes I feel lost—untethered and free-floating in open space. I’ve never asked the family on my dad’s side why they never learned Navajo.

Growing up, I thought a lot about this untethered-ness, and how my hands, at such a young age, wanted to take the ends of the long, bloody, strung wool between me and my culture, between me and my language, between me and my family, and tie them together into little knots that decorate our necks and fingers in turquoise blue and sterling silver. My masaní used to say, "I feel naked without my dootł'izh.” And I’d watch her put on her jewelry, wondering how / haash a bare neck and wrist could feel so exposed—perhaps even vulnerable. And it took years watching my masaní stand tall despite so many hardships to finally understand: she didn’t know the English word for armor, so to reach an understanding between her middle school granddaughter with a limited amount of Navajo vocabulary, she described the feeling as vulnerability. I still think about that to this day, how / haash we met each other in the middle, even if it wasn’t perfect by translation standards. And perhaps that’s where language learning emerges. The haash.

My aunt and cousin once attended a poetry reading of mine. I was a little nervous, since they’d never heard me read my work aloud before, and I’ve always had reservations about sharing my writing with family since a lot of my poems are inspired by the good and bad of family and the past. But when I walked to the front, flattening my long, flowered skirt and adjusting my turquoise cluster earrings, and I felt their gaze on me, I suddenly felt confident. Something told me I needed to share this with them.

I finally felt ready to share these poems:

HER AND THOSE BEFORE HER
“Shí / I feel naked without my jewelry,” those were her
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxwords, my masaní / grandmother
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxsmiled her
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxold birchwood smile when our ałts’ísí / small
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxcurious nihiłá / hands pointed and twirled and pulled at her
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxshells and stones, all strung together below her
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbik’os / neck, between our nihłílazhoozh / fingers.
xxxxx“I feel naked without my dootl'izh / turquoise protection”…

SHÍMA YAZHÍ AHÉHEE’ / THANK YOU, AUNTIE
xxxShíma yazhí / my aunt sits on shílátsíín / my wrist.
xxxxxxxxxxThe colors that adorn her hair—łitsxo / orange and yágo doołtizh / blue—
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxare hand plucked and spun from Father Sky.
xxxxxxxxxxIt is thin and braided, held together with a silver
xxxxxxxxxxclasp. Shíma yazhí / my aunt points, “Look.”
Shí / my gaze turns,
meeting the dinilchí / pink glow of an early winter morning.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxIt reflects off her eyes
like frosted headlights from passing cars on the highway. ayóó
déézk’aaz / it’s cold out, the air turns my breath into white curls, like
smoke from a dying stove ko’ / fire…

YOUNG NAVAJO GIRL
xxxxxxxxxxIn the land’s large palm, its distance
xxxxxxxxxxthe rough edges,
xxxxxxxxxxmake her look so much
xxxxxxxxxxsmaller.
xxxxxxxxxxMesa tabletops, stacked like hands
xxxxxxxxxxfingers intertwined,
xxxxxxxxxxwrinkled and callused.
xxxxxxxxxxHands
xxxxxxxxxxthe girl has held before.
xxxxxxxxxxHands
xxxxxxxxxxthe girl has never seen before.
xxxxxxxxxxHands
xxxxxxxxxxgrowing yucca plants and yellow rocks,
xxxxxxxxxxfrom their fingernails…

My cousin found me afterward, and I didn’t know how I expected him to react. I was still coming down from the clear buzz of reading work aloud in front of an audience. But I found myself surprised to see tears in his eyes. In a sincere tone that almost cracked at the end, he said, “I read your poems before today, and I don’t really know how to read poetry. But hearing you read it, with the Navajo language and memories, I finally felt like I understood it. It’s different hearing you speak it.”

Something fell into place. My cousin read my poetry beforehand, a written gesture towards language learning and self-expression. Then came to my reading to hear me read the poems aloud. And here, where writing was granted voice and movement, is where something like understanding fell into place. There’s something a little unnatural with reading Diné Bizaad, that subconsciously, or maybe even consciously, my cousin wasn’t able to connect with in my written poems. But, when the words were spoken, even if he didn’t understand, my cousin still felt that same tug and pull of the tether all Diné feel, so deeply, with Diné Bizaad.

There’s a lived experience in speaking Diné Bizaad, in telling stories, and in voice. Even if I wasn’t directly teaching a lesson in Navajo, my cousin still felt like he understood the root—the emotion-lined memories—of what I was saying. It’s this underlying connection to Diné Bizaad and Diné identity that draws us together. My cousin and I reached a shared understanding: we saw each other in Diné Bizaad for the first time.

My middle name is a common
xxxxxxxxxxname back home.
Shandíín / Sunshine / Sunwarmth / Sunlight /
xxxxxxxxxxIt has different / translations.
I always found translations strange.
xxxxxxxxxxIn my head, I was just Shandíín.
Danielle Shandíín Emerson.
xxxxxxxxxxNot Danielle Sunshine / Sunwarmth / Sunlight / Emerson
But my father nicknamed me, not Shandíín,
xxxxxxxxxxbut Sunshine.
Sunshine became my identity.
xxxxxxxxxxMy father made Sunshine my name.
But I always knew
xxxxxxxxxxthat my language,
that Shandíín felt more like me.
xxxxxxxxxxBecause my language is my identity,
my language is who I am.
xxxxxxxxxxI am not Sunshine.
Háísh Danielle Shandíín Emerson wolyé?
xxxxxxxxxxWho is called
Danielle Shandíín Emerson?
xxxxxxxxxxI raise my hand.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxMe.

“KNDN, all Navajo all the time!” The radio host spoke with the same, rough Navajo accent that many of our elders carried with pride. The entire radio station consisted of Diné Bizaad, led proudly by the Diné community. I could pick out a few of the host’s words. Mostly about advertisements: car dealerships and back-to-school discounts at local supermarkets. Sometimes I could translate full sentences, “Kirtland Central High School is hosting parent-teacher conferences this weekend.” Other times I’d only catch the date and place, “Dííjí eí damóo Niłchil’tsosí táá’,” (Today is Sunday, November third) or “Dahghaalgaiidi,” (taking place in Kirtland). But no matter my ability to understand, the radio station offered comfort. If the radio was on, shimasani was already up and working in the fields. During the winter, she always started the stove’s fire early. So whenever us younguns came over to shower and get ready for school, we were met with warmth—in sound and in atmosphere.

Diné Bizaad is warmth. It is home. Diné Bizaad éí shigandi. We live in our language and our language lives in us.

I spent a good portion of my life learning Diné Bizaad alongside one person. And while I wish it was my grandmother or my aunt, or even my own mother, it was a friend back from New Mexico, in our small bordertown high school, who sat in on the same Navajo language classes I did from our sophomore to senior year. Diné Bizaad had always been around me, but I wasn’t actively trying to learn, not like how I was with Mykel. As we neared graduation and crammed our heads with sentence structures and body-parts vocabulary, we also very loosely practiced in the hallways during lunch and passing periods.

Mykel:xxxxxxx “K’adish?”xxxx/xxxxxxxYou ready to go? or We done here?
Me:xxxxxxxxxx“Aoo’, K’ad.”xx/xxxxxxx Yes, we’re done.

We both took the class seriously and helped each other along. And when it was time to choose partners to practice conversing in Diné Bizaad, we’d simply turn our chairs to face each other. Sadly, I don’t remember all of those conversations, as we’d spend too much time asking each other questions or stumbling through a couple of phrases. But I think we touched on something just as important as learning our language—Diné Bizaad is about relationships. Me and Mykel formed a bond through language learning that started with a shared identity and became a lifelong friendship. Thank you for teaching me that, Mykel. Ahéhee'.

At home, family members have started asking me how to say or write certain things in Diné Bizaad. And while being relied on makes me feel trusted, it also adds pressure—pressure to get everything right, pressure to know everything. I know that this isn’t their intention. But sometimes my semblance of knowing, and therefore my lack of knowing, becomes a heavy heat behind my eyes and in my neck, something I can’t rub out or make fully disappear.

But despite this pressure, or perhaps better known as fear—fear of being wrong, fear of losing our language, fear of not knowing enough—my cousins and siblings help me remember that they’re learning just like I am. We’re listening to KNDN and trying to understand what the local masaní’s and cheii’s are saying on the radio. We’re looking over flash cards and sharing them with each other. We’re asking questions over Facetime, phone calls, texts, and instant messenger—how would you say waffle in Diné Bizaad? And if we keep helping each other, if we keep establishing and nurturing our relationships—our relationship to Diné Bizaad, to our culture, and toward each other—then Diné Bizaad / Navajo, will be all right. We will be all right.

Yá’át’ééh. Shí éí Danielle Shandíín Emerson yinishyé. Diné Bizaad bíhoosh’aah.

Diné Bizaad ayóó shił yá’át’ééh. Nataaní Néézdi shighan. Shighan ayóó shił yá’át’ééh.

This is my narrative.

My name is Danielle Shandíín Emerson. I am learning Diné Bizaad. I really love learning Diné Bizaad. My home is Shiprock, New Mexico. I love my home a lot.

This is my narrative. Language learning emerges here.

Ahéhee’.