The Rez

    When I was in middle school, in fifth grade, we spent a few months talking about something that we had only heard about a little bit before hand: Native Americans. We took a lot of time talking about the different tribes, especially the Aztec and Mayans, and we discussed the differences between them and us. The teacher and the lessons always focused on the past; they spent most of the time talking about where they lived and how they died. They told us of the witch doctors and great warriors that the United States fought. To me, native culture was beautiful and curious. The way that they interacted among the tribes, and had an unshakable connection to the land around them intrigued me. However, probably the most enticing thing for me was that I believed that the culture was gone. This is something that I think a lot of people believe, that the Native American culture, if it exists today, is so minuscule that it is not even worth examining. There are 5.1 million native people that would probably like to disagree with that thought process.
     I put the Navajo Reservation (The Rez) as the second step in my transformation because it became an integral part of my life after I spent a summer close to Window Rock, their capital. This trip left a massive imprint on my character because it forced me to examine the world under a far different light than I had before. I left for the Navajo Reservation about a month and a half after True North. As I mentioned in my post about True North, I knew that who I had become up until True North was not the person that I wanted to be. This turned out to be great because that allowed me to start picking up my mental pieces in a different culture, and due to that, I picked up a lot of the culture.
     What I found when I examined the pieces was that the Navajo Culture is a forgotten culture. Not forgotten by the Navajo themselves, but by the entire nation that is surrounding them. This is not just for the Navajo though, this is for the 5.1 million Natives living on the 324 reservations across the United States. I was inadvertently taught when I was a kid that Native Americans no longer existed and that when we said "sorry" our condolences only extended to the dead. I wish I had been taught about the present culture that exists and been told of the conditions that the people on the reservations still live in. However, my childhood is in the past and we all need to see things in the world in the light that they truly are.
    I am currently back on the Navajo Reservation working with Western Indian Ministries alongside short-term missions groups. The people in these groups are most likely seeing the Navajo (and maybe even native culture) for the first time. I just pray that they will be successful in truly seeing this culture and caring for their fellow American citizens and citizens of the Earth. In upcoming posts I will talk more about the mission, native culture, and what I am actually doing here. For now, leave here with the knowledge that the native cultures that you studied in school don't stay in the classroom. There are living, breathing human beings experiencing what you have only been taught.