Navajo language

However, languages can force you to make distinctions where another language won't.

So in Navajo, for example, there are all these wonderful routes for different types of consumption.

So for drinking, for example, you have to use a different verb if you're drinking from a cup as opposed to from a bottle because those are different mouth motions.

Now, once I've just said this, you can introspect about your own mouth and you can say, ah, yes, those are different mouth motions.

The Nahonik National Park is only accessible by plane or boat and attracts some of the most hardcore hikers and explorers there are out there.

The park gets its name from the Diné language, a group of indigenous people who live in the Northwestern Territories and the Arctic regions of Canada.

Unfortunately, it has picked up another not-so-beautiful name in the last few centuries.

The legend begins in 1927 with Raymond Patterson, a British explorer who received a chilling warning before he embarked on the adventure of a lifetime.

... to, like, type? It's, like, by far and away the most efficient words per minute.

It's like, it's like how, uh, it's like how the US code was Navajo in, in World War II.

Yeah.

What if one of these Uka Buka languages are really super ...

And they had tried to focus on trying to get dialogue sessions between communities that may not have had opportunities to have those kinds of dialogue sessions.

And that included like, for example, the Navajo Diné people and the Hispanic people that had moved there during the first parts of colonization, there was a lot of community that had basically been put next to each other in the overall community planning.

And because of this, there was a lot of things that they didn't agree upon, and they wanted a way for them to be able to communicate with each other through dialogue.

And Little Globe stepped in as a way to have that dialogue session begin.

And also just the fact that, you know, some of these discussions get so heavy and there's a lot of tears that are shed.

And I think it's during those moments that everyone can agree that there's so much change that happens and there's so much that affects people within our circles that happens within those moments.

For example, there was this Japanese woman who had been researching kind of the effects of World War II, but also interested in how the Diné language was used during the World War II.

And she's from Japan, so she also has the lineage of her own people to also share that side of the story.

She's a water and land protector, and she's been a voice against new helium leasing in Newlands.

Joanne speaks in her native language, Diné bizaad, or Navajo language.

Nicole Horseherder, Adrian Herder, and Macayas Marks assisted in the interpretation of Joanne's words.

You will hear all of the answers start in Diné bizaad with a voiceover by Macayas Marks.

Yá'át'ééh to everyone everywhere.

Hi, I am Macayas Marks, a media organizer with Tó Nízhóní Ání, Sacred Water Speaks, a Navajo grassroots environmental organization led by Nicole Horseherder, Executive Director.

And as someone who has done a lot of scholarly work around decolonization and does a lot of thinking about who I am in relation to others, that's where I think where I really got it is that my gender is not necessarily a performance, but rather my gender is a gift.

So within Diné, Navajo cosmology, within our creation stories, we were told growing up that womanhood, that manhood, that you have to go through a coming-of-age ceremony, and then it's in these instances where you'll be

given the gift.

What really happens in this ceremony is that your grandparents, your aunts, your uncles, anyone who has sort of had an impact on your life comes together.

Why not? It wasn't until I think last year when I found out that the Latin root word of inspire is inspire, which means to breathe into.

And I thought that was such a very beautiful realization for me to like pick a word That means to breathe into, especially when it comes to breathing into joy, to breathe into justice.

Especially because within Diné creation stories, this is where I get to bring in stories, one of our creation stories tell us that how we came to life is actually because of the wind.

So when we were being created from ears of corn, from buckskin, and from feathers, the holy people invited or at least asked the wind to come in.

And so I see all these entries.

Navajo, um, is to give back.

Uh, I don't know a lot of these languages, um, so Zot-

That's so amazing.

Emma Bradford, KJZZ News, Phoenix.

Preserving Diné language and customs is essential, especially for urban Navajos living off-reservation in places like Phoenix.

A local Navajo blogger is launching her latest project, a colorful, hand-drawn children's cookbook.

Gabriel Pietrazio tells us more about it.