Meeting Miss Navajo Nation, there's hope for youth

By Joline Gutierrez Krueger
Albuquerque Tribune

Friday, April 27, 2007

 
Miss Navajo Nation Jocelyn Billy speaks in Diné to the teens who shuffle in to a stuffy conference room, her mouth effortlessly paddling along in the clicks and chas of her native tongue.

She's here at the Youth Diagnostic and Development Center, the state's juvie lockup, in royal regalia: silver crown, silver jewelry, sky-blue broom skirt, moccasins, a woven wool sash.

"Yá' át' ééh," she says. "Shi éí Jocelyn Billy yinishyé."

"Huh?" most of the four girls and six boys respond, somewhat embarrassed, mostly confused. "I don't know what you're saying, miss."

All 10 are American Indian. Most are Navajo. None of them can list their family clans when she asks them to.

Billy has much to do here.

"I've been speaking to you in your traditional language. I've been asking what's your clan," she says, clinking her turquoise-ringed hands together like tinny cymbals. "Those are very important concepts. No wonder, no wonder that our people are hurting. We don't know our base anymore. We don't know our brotherhood."

That, she tells them, is what has brought them into custody.

But the youths do not turn away. There is no defiance in their faces. They get what she is saying.

"We're being selfish today," she tells them. "We are too busy with TV and video games and the movies and the music that make us hate ourselves, our traditions. We are too busy drinking and fighting and ooh, we like to puff ourselves up. Because we are scared. Because we don't know who we are. Because we don't know who we can be."

Along with her this day is Navajo Nation Vice President Ben Shelly and his wife, Martha, a rare honor.

But it's Billy the teens have come to hear. It's Billy who reaches through their adolescent bravado, their hurt, their distrust.

She understands them. She tells them she cares. So they listen.

"I'm not very educated about my culture and stuff," one young woman admits, her bitter mask melting into a girlish awe-struck smile. "My mom never taught me. But I want to learn."

Billy is the perfect teacher.

At age 24, she knows more than many of her elders do about Navajo traditions. She can cleanly butcher a sheep with the best of them. She knows the stories, the path, the strength of her ancestors.

"As a young woman, that's what you should know," she tells the girl. "You can be powerful."

Billy says she has always known her path, taught to her by her family as she grew up in Chinle, Ariz. Knowing the old ways helped her succeed in the new ways, she said.

She graduated from Northern Arizona University in 2005 with degrees in political science and applied indigenous studies. When her reign as Miss Navajo Nation ends in September, she plans to attend law school.

For now, her mission is to bring the younger generations back to the Navajo way, to teach them that which their parents did not, to remind them that they belong to something rich and sustaining and right.

And so she visits incarcerated Indian youths across the Southwest.

She brings them books on Navajo culture and history, each one signed by her.

She brings the lessons of their ancestors. She brings hope. She brings herself.

"Own who you are," she urges them. "Own your language. Own yourselves."

Perhaps, she says, it will help them find their paths when they return to the world outside.