[Excerpted from my blog, On the Reservation]
In Navajo culture, your identity is shaped by your clans. When meeting new people, you introduce yourself by your clan and trace it all the way down to your maternal grandmother’s. This means you will almost always find same-clan relatives anywhere you go. Out here, you will never be alone.
When I moved to New Mexico, I left my clan. I left behind a rich network of women. My relationships with my mother, aunts and grandmother were intertwined with phone calls, shopping trips and breakfast at Einstein’s Bagels. Our clan was a warm support system that always offered too much food, too much advice and too much commentary on my hair.
As expected, I miss it everyday.
But what I did not expect was to find a new set of women in New Mexico. These women are the teachers, paraprofessionals and clerks at my school. They are not glamorous. They are not rich. They herd sheep in the morning before work and they drive an hour to attend classes at night.
They are also my mentors, guardian angels and, really, my surrogate clan mothers in a place where I have no family. And from them, I have learned many things.
For more, go to http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/jshyu/
