My father was a Navajo Medicine Man. This is what he taught me? | Allen Manning | TEDxLutherCollege

[Applause] joy hot air Carson shape elegantly a cocoa ask Adolphus teen lay de clichy na hey Dom astatine lay hatake lay dada Nishiki a biz cashed in day so for those of you didn't follow all that I'll translate from the Navajo I said greetings esteemed friends I'm an Anglo a white person not a Navajo and years ago I lived with a traditional Navajo family with a traditional Navajo medicine man and his family they lived in a remote place called look at Jack I sleep in our car in the Navajo Nation in Arizona so my narrow parents passed away 30 and 20 years ago and with their passing and with the deaths of others of their generation a whole way of life is disappearing I think we should care about that is all over the world indigenous peoples are dying off for example the Ocotillo way the pono sockin and thousands of others we're losing something of our human heritage with that here in America where we're not very good at appreciating who indigenous peoples have been we're very good at destroying indigenous peoples and you know killing them enslaving them and so forth so my story was when I was in my late teens I got it into my head that I wanted to learn the Navajo language so I applied myself and got to a point where I spoke passable Navajo and then to improve my Navajo even more I went to live with a traditional Navajo family in Arizona you know there are lots of stereotypes of indigenous peoples and Native Americans and most of the stereotypes are way off the mark for example the old stereotype of Native Americans as stoical and unfeeling how me Tonto you know it's you know stupid of course and you know the older Navajos I knew were never anything like any of those stereotypes so I went live with my narrow family and they gave me a Hogan to live in a traditional Navajo home made of mud and logs with a dirt floor and so I slept on a sheepskin every night that I was there and I loved being on the sheepskin the first morning after the first night that I was in my Hogan might never father it's not a yogic came into the Hogan and woke me up indeed a she yet get up son and he said let's go outside and I'll tell you about the chores that we expect you to do so we went outside and he said look at this tree here and it was a tall probably 80 foot high tree and he said you know he had a trunk like this and he said you know I don't like that the trees so close to the corral move it over there closer to the shed and you know I looked at him dumbfounded and you know like and I said Dada Dada shisha like that's impossible I couldn't do that what are you saying and so he he started laughing and it became pretty clear that it was his joke and you know so so he wasn't a stereotypical stoical Indian by any stretch of the imagination another time he and I were out driving together we went in my car to a ceremony he was leading he preferred my car to his vehicle which was a horse-drawn wagon and my car was a lot faster than his wagon so we're driving along and he started singing and per usual I didn't pay much attention to his singing it was sort of listening to someone humming and his singing went like this na Jung ji Oh Ha Na a young Joseph Onan Basso Conda Bendel Jojo and they a young neh yeah and at a certain point I paid attention to the words of his song and the words were your driving way too fast ha ha ha ha and he said they're sheep grazing out here sometimes they get on the road and if you don't slow down we're gonna hit a sheep so so I hit the brakes and slowed down and looked over at him and he smiled broadly at me and I smiled back at him so he had a wonderful sense of humor you know I really appreciated my Navajo family and loved them and they were very different from my Iowa family my Iowa parents were somewhat severe and even abusive but my Navajo family were just really warm and kind to me and you know I felt really comfortable being with them so a stereotype that there is about indigenous people as a Native Americans is you know that they don't know very much but my nevela father was really knowledgeable he he knew all about herbal medicines he and I used to go out collecting herbs together and so he knew lots and lots of stories stories about the creation about battles with monsters and on and on and on once I asked him how did you get to be a medicine man how did you learn to be who you are and he told me the story he said well when I was a young man or when I was 12 years old actually I went to visit a medicine man and the medicine man it was somebody had heard about and I went into his Hogan and I introduced myself and I said please sir I want to be a medicine man when I grow up will you teach me and the medicine man looked him up and down and just said no I don't want to do that like I can see you're a little you know just a stupid kid that you don't know anything you know so you know go away I'm busy just on the edge it was crestfallen by that and then the medicine man said you know something kid the life of a medicine man is a wonderful life you know lots and lots of prayers and the prayers make you powerful and wherever you go you're known and respected and in my and also you'll get quite wealthy you'll have lots and lots of sheep it's not Asia at that point was pretty much panting and saying please sir please I want to be a medicine man teach me teach me I can do it I'll be a try to you know be a good student for you give me a chance and the medicine man eventually relented and so then he said okay here's a short prayer let's see what you can do with it so he said a prayer just line the Yasha repeated the prayer perfectly so the medicine man was intrigued by that and he said okay here's a longer prayer let's see what you can do with that and again just on the edge' repeated the prayer perfectly so that was the beginning of an eight-year relationship we're on the edge of came to see the medicine man virtually every day for eight years and at the end of the eight years he was a novice medicine man went out on his own and performed ceremonies another stereotype of indigenous peoples is that they're simple and you know don't think in that you know a deep way or anything but the older Navajo as I knew were really pretty good at critical thinking and I'll give you a couple examples my Navajo mother once said you know people tell me that I should give this the Sheep salt and so I do but you know I've never got why I should be give the Sheep salt so this season I'm not going to give him salt and we'll see what happens so she didn't in then come late July she said just look at the Sheep they're all scrawny and sickly looking so now I understand why they need salt so I'm going to give them salt so she did and as a result the Sheep recovered and you know so I really appreciated my Navajo mother she was a practical woman and in this case she'd ran an experiment and learned from her experiment so I never felt arrogant or superior to her in any way if anything you know I felt humbled by her you know I just loved her another example of their critical thinking was a time I was talking with this very old man probably 100 years old his name was Chad in vanilla and here's what he said among other things he said you know I look at my great-grandchildren and you know they sit in front of this thing the flickering box television and you know they they sit there for long periods of time and you know are transfixed and I don't get what that thing is so here's my question do they go to your schools do the schools teach them about the flickering box and I said well usually they don't teach about that there are other things I think are more important so my answer infuriated him and he said they should teach about the flickering box you know it's just you know it's something that's powerful that's come among us Navajos and we need to know what that thing is and you know the children should understand what that this is the flickering box and here's what it does to you and here's why you sit there you know like that and you know I had to agree with him so you know our movies our superhero movies you know create myths to me the myths are always the same myth over and over again it's the cowboys and Indians story we're good guys fight bad guys now after a period of time the good guys prevail and the bad guys are defeated and you know good guys are happy bad guys are dead or unhappy so you know it's not a very interesting story and to me the the real life stories and the stories told by indigenous peoples are much more interesting than anything Hollywood can come up with so you know I recommend if you ever get a chance to interact with indigenous peoples grab that chance because you know they have different life stories than we have different experiences and there are things to be learned from them so I'm not trying to make the case that the novel is I knew we're perfect people you know they had flaws and faults just the we do so once my Neville mother came at me screaming at me just saying John Doe AHA yada yada la aldea chattin cutscene and they're so yellow and you know I was frightened by that and she was a short woman but you know she scared me I bet you want to know what she said she said she said you've been really irresponsible you didn't chop wood for us and now there's no firewood and tonight we're going to freeze to death I apologized profusely and said I'll chop wood there was there was a moon out that night so I chopped wood by the light of the moon and you know I brought the firewood into them and nobody froze to death that night you know we in America are pretty ethnocentric you know you hear all the time people saying you know America is the best country on Earth and the people who say that are almost always people have never been to any other country you know and Tunisia said he just learned the English word rain and so he said you know English is a bad language you just have that one word rain in Navajo we have example add some pecan some not Jean and you know a bunch of other words he mentioned in Navajo for rain I let him have that one but it's not that usually got to be older and older as we all do and and at a certain point I decided it was time to leave my Navajo family so I was talking with him and you know that time he said to me she in such net hadass mean lay patient and not on the banished Nishio okokwo so he was saying son I'll have a word with you and he said you know when I was your age I worked on the railroad and I was laying rails and I worked for a rail boss and the rail boss was really mean to me he he would shout at me and scream at me and hit me and kick me and sometimes he refused to pay me so I got so that I hated that man and then I stopped myself and I thought wait a minute I don't want to be like him somebody who hates people so I said to myself you know if I ever get the chance to be nice to a white person I'm going to do that and that's how I'll respond so he said my son our family's taking you into our home we've been kind to you and good to you we've fed you we've housed you we've tried to make you comfortable here so what I want from you is that someday when you're talking to a group of white people you tell them that a Navajo family was kind to you and you know so I'm doing that right now and so I'm dedicating my talk to the memory of my Navajo appearance Santa Yasha doats Atlantia Jabez on and uh hey thank you very much [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 387,577

Rating: 4.882122 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Humanities, Humanity, Love, Social Change, Social Justice

Id: z3vVvw0pEe4

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2019