Navajo culture is having a moment. Just look at young Navajo writers like Kinsale Drake and Amber McCrary publishing books and making waves, and influencers like Alana Yazzie popularizing Navajo food on her Instagram page as The Fancy Navajo.
All of them will be joining longtime Navajo poet Laura Tohe this weekend at the Blue Corn Festival, celebrating Navajo food, culture and futures.
Tohe, poet laureate of the Navajo Nation, has published books of poetry, oral histories, even librettos for decades, often retelling 200 years of Navajo history, from boarding schools to the Long Walk at Fort Sumner, to World War II’s Navajo Code Talkers.
Tohe, who is also a professor emeritus of English at Arizona State University, joined The Show to talk about the scope of her work and the women coming up behind her. But, first, she introduced herself in her native tongue.
Full conversation
LAURA TOHE: [SENTENCE IN NAVAJO.] My name is Laura Tohe, I am Sleepy Rock people clan, born for the Bitter Water clan people.
LAUREN GILGER: I wonder this because I've interviewed folks from the Navajo Nation before who have wanted to do that, to say that on air. What is the goal of that?
TOHE: It's part of our protocol, we introduce ourselves to others so that we will know how we are related or not related. We always find someone is our relative.
GILGER: So it's about, it's about community, right off the bat.
TOHE: Yes, it is. Uh-huh.
GILGER: So I wanted to start this conversation with a little bit about your body of work looking at how you've kind of written in various forms about 200 years of Diné history and what your goal was in that? Like, was it about reclaiming history? Is it about documenting history from a Diné perspective?
TOHE: I think it's a lot of things. I was fortunate that when I was about 10 or 12 years old, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I was growing up during the Vietnam era, and many of the civil rights movements, the Black Panther movement, Brown Beret, American Indian Movement, and I was influenced by that because I saw all around me the injustice and colonialism that had been part of my life and I wanted to write about that.
For a long time, I did not write anything because I didn't know what a poet was, I didn't know what poetry was, and I started to read other Native writers' work at that time there were very few. And that influenced me and I started writing in secret, you know, I was like a closet poet. And it wasn't till later on that I started to share my work.
GILGER: So I want to ask you about something you mentioned there, because as you're telling the story of how you became a poet, right? You mentioned that you listened to and read other Indigenous poets at the time, and I think that's so interesting because, I'm guessing, that a lot of the up and coming Navajo writers and Diné poets and things like that, who you will be at this festival with, right, would say the same thing about you.
TOHE: Yeah, and being the Navajo Nation poet laureate, I'm out there. So people will know my work, but I have been writing since the 1970s. So it's really gratifying for me to support younger and emerging writers now, because I know what it's like to be out there and try to push your work out there and to try to get published and to have, you know, those triumphs and disappointments and, you know, just to have people buy your work or come to your readings, you know. I've been through all that and so I feel like now as a poet laureate, I feel like part of my responsibility is to help younger writers and so I try to do that.
GILGER: Yeah. So let me ask you about what's happening right now in the broader kind of writing world, and it feels like Navajo writers, other Indigenous writers, filmmakers, creatives, authors are having a moment, like there are more of them who are getting recognition. There's more of an interest in this genre, or in this history or in this point of view. Do you feel that? Do you see it in bringing up some of those Navajo writers you mentioned?
TOHE: Yes, I think this is a very exciting time for Native writers and poets, but also for musicians and artists, you know, who are contributing to their tribal culture, but also to American literature as well. I think that what's happening in the United States is, our art is really coming of age and it's really exploding.
Lots of younger Native writers, a couple of the young women that are going to be at the Blue Corn Festival. Amber McCrary just published her first book, and then there's Kinsale Drake, who also has published a book, and she's, her and a few of the other Navajo women started the NDN Girls Book Club and promoting books to give out to places like on the reservation where we don't have a lot of libraries and sometimes you have to go a long distance just to get to a place where a library is or where, you know, books are sold.
So all of this is really exciting to see. We are, as Native peoples, getting out there and showing who we are, our talent, our stories. And this is something that's really exciting for me because, when I was growing up we had none of those, there were very few Native writers at that time, and the only Native peoples I saw on television or in the movies were stereotypes. Being out in the larger world, there was nothing there that really was genuine and unique for us. So all of that is changing. So it's very interesting to see what's happening now. And I'm so happy that this is going on.
GILGER: Let me ask you lastly, Laura, about what you think the effect of this all is. Like this, this long scope of history, recent history, I guess, in terms of writers like you leading to the writers who are out today and what may come next. Like, do you think that poetry in particular, but writing and creativity and creating in general, can really do something in an active way? What is it, what does it mean for this next generation and the one after that?
TOHE: Well, from my own life, I can speak to the oral history book that I wrote, “Code Talker Stories.” The stories that appear in that are all told by the Code Talkers. My father was one of the Code Talkers, but he passed before I wrote the book. These stories that we have as part of our history, our lives is something that I think people are interested in now. People are very interested in who the Code Talkers were, what they did, and I think that's really something to see that people are really interested in this history, this military history that helps save this country.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This interview has been updated to correct that Laura Tohe was not the first Navajo Nation poet laureate.
