Guest Editor’s Note, March 2025: Diné Poetics

Yá’át’ééh shik’èí dóó shidine’è. Every contributor in this issue is Indigenous to this place called the United States. Most are from the Navajo Nation and also identify as Navajo Nation citizens. Indigenous peoples from within the US borders are often identified as Native American or American Indian, yet there is a growing movement to use our tribal names and languages as identifiers. The Diné writers highlighted in this issue live relationally through our clan system, which is foundational to how we interact with each other and how we use language to conceptualize relationality with distinct poetics—both oral and literary.

Indigenous sound and thought are centered on sentient relationality and struggles within colonial systems. Consequently, identifying or interpreting Indigenized poetics has been oversimplified because Indigenous writers often use the English language. Originally forced on us, English is now being reconstructed with Diné sound and thought. The English language is currently the first language for most Indigenous peoples. Our familiarity with it reflects our relationship with colonization. Indigenous poetics is growing in numerous directions as writers continue to re-embody Indigenous thought and sound—in new and repatriated forms. The English language can also be a preferred vessel for Dinétics because of the sacred qualities of Diné bizaad. Our teachings emphasize the power emitted from speaking Diné bizaad; our ceremonies are basically that concept—singing our language over a person to heal them—singing our language to repair, to restore purpose and balance into each other. In that sense, some writers prefer not to bastardize or oppress Diné bizaad in a written form when exposed to audiences who are unable to fully create a relationship with its sound and thought. Since the Diné Nation has yet to create a syllabary for our sound and thought, we use the English language to capture Dinétics. Writers are situated in lingual violence as we construct poetics through a colonist’s alphabet. In the reconciliation process, we reimagine our thought, our knowledge, to re-embody our sound. Thus, a code-mixing and -switching phenomena emerges, and often the keys for interpretation lie in how that individual experienced Dinétics. However, for the close reader, clues exist on the page.

So, knowing all this, how does the spatial representation of language as a whole relate to the page in a way that does not limit the argument it is making? Often the argument is literary sovereignty, which offers a translingual, nonhierarchical representation of sound (and absence of sound), artistry and playful syntax, and meter to contextualize Dinétics. Translation of Diné bizaad becomes challenging due to the use of English language orthography with numerous diacritical marks to indicate Diné sound (including rising, nasal, and high tones), breath, and silence. The slightest misstep with pronunciation, spelling, or placement/absence of diacritics can shift meaning. The fact that many Diné are in the process of relearning our sounds adds to the complexity. These challenges are shared across many Native nations, and so this issue closes with a roundtable discussion among several Indigenous writers; I am in solidarity with these writers and numerous others who are moving toward revitalizing our languages and Indigenizing poetics. The writing in this issue manifests how we are gathering our sounds and patchworking the remnants. Axhéhee’ to all the contributors—committed to k’é and survivance.