“Áyóó łíí’bił dáh si t’ii.”

I grew up in the sixties in a Navajo-speaking home and attended Christian boarding and public schools, where I learned to love reading. In elementary school, I often rewrote stories from books, inserting family members, familiar places, and our pets as characters. This lessened my loneliness and homesickness while away from my large family.

As I continued to write in English (speaking Navajo was not allowed), I wanted to share my stories and dreams of home and family. Even at eight or nine years of age, I realized that my literary attempts fell short of the allusions that the images, places, pets, and people could convey in Navajo. My friends agreed that the stories “felt skinny or hungry.”

Later, I wrote poems translating colloquial Navajo syntax into English. This approach embraced my family and homeland, and Navajo readers and audiences recognized and appreciated it.

To illustrate this, consider the phrase “Ayóó łíí’bił dáh sití,” for which the translation is, “Someone over there is riding a horse real fast.” This six-syllable sentence is multifaceted: it conveys a visual and spatial image and a sense of weather, speed, and the postures of both the rider and the horse.

“Ayóó łíí’bił dáh sití” describes a person and their horse running, maybe racing, across a flat landscape at a distance from the speaker (me or us). The horse and rider are going so fast that their figures seem parallel to the ground. Small clouds of dust and dirt form as the horse’s hooves crush dry weeds, and bits of brush and leaves are hurled about. It’s a clear day, and the sun is overhead. It’s apparent that the speaker is with others viewing this, and they agree, maybe replying, “Wow!” “They are going places!” or similar expressions of admiration or excitement. Also, the gender of the rider is not indicated. Thus, a Diné speaker understands the images, landscape, and weather allusions, and one can sense the relationship between the rider, the horse, and the observers.

This shows how a previously unwritten language reflects the culture, lifestyles, and viewpoints of the Diné. The language is connotative and succinct; there is a sense of a group, the vast expanse of the Navajo homeland, the sky overhead, and how Nihasdazáán, our mother, the earth, supports us.

Our language reminds us of the legacy that connects us to the past and instills that legacy in this present time. Diné bizáád, our language, protects us as the Navajo Code Talkers defended America during WWII. Even now, our existence may seem threatened, but we will endure, as did our ancestors.