Foreword

I am Bird That Flies East. Hear my words.
When I was about fourteen years old, Shimásání—my maternal grandmother—traveled from Dinétah (the land of the Navajo Nation) on one of her many visits to see our family in the city. She arrived in the evening with her small bag of clothes and her graying hair falling out of her tsiiyééł (a Navajo-style bun tied at the back of the neck).

Early the next morning, Shimá (my mother) and I found Shimásání sitting on a couch in our front room. Shimá wanted her mother to show me how to spin yarn by hand from newly carded sheep’s wool. Shimásání took a piece of raw wool and rolled it downward against her thigh, forming an elongated ribbon. She added more raw wool and the ribbon got longer and longer.

I moved to the floor in front of her to get a closer look, silently marveling at what she was doing. Her brown, aged hands moved so quickly and, it seemed, without thought. Years of spinning wool became evident as it transformed into yarn right before my eyes.

While she spun she spoke to me about my life. She said that even though I was young I needed to grow into a strong person, like her and Shícheii (my maternal grandfather). She said I needed to do something good with my life by making good decisions.

“We make decisions with the tenth one to be born in view,” she explained.

This was a familiar phrase to me. From an early age, I was taught that, as Diné (Navajo), we make decisions with the tenth generation in mind. Whether in regional chapter houses or in communities, decisions are considered in the context of past, present, and eventual future.

Ten generations? I thought. How can I see that far ahead?

But then I recalled a story from our family history, about a brave asdzání (young woman) who escaped the horrific relocation of the “Long Walk” that nearly brought the Diné to extinction. Old and young Diné were made to march hundreds of miles away from Dinétah. This asdzání, my ancestor, had escaped and walked miles upon miles through enemy territory to make it back to our ancestral lands.

When Shimásání mentioned “the tenth one,” I realized that not only was this way of thinking subject to community decisions but even one person could determine the well-being—and possible survival—of another person ten generations down the line.

At that moment it dawned on me that I had been and was someone’s tenth one.

On the stage of my mind, I could see Shimásání’s words clearly. It was as though I saw the invisible strand of yarn that connected me to my people. This connection ran from my center and stretched out before me, reaching to Shimá, who was seated across the room. It continued from her to Shimásání: three generations connected.

Then, as if picking up the invisible strand with my hands, I began to follow this line, curious to see the connections behind Shimásání. I followed it back generations, until there she stood, the asdzání from our family story. Her long hair, her rug dress, and her worn-out moccasins were present before me as if all the time and generations between us had vanished like fog. There we stood, a breath away from each other, each holding our part of our connection.

Past and future met in this circular moment.

I then understood that I existed because she chose life in the face of possible destruction those many generations ago. She lived so I could live.

“We make decisions with the tenth one to be born.”

Shimásání took the finished yarn and told my mom to bring out our traditional Diné grass hairbrush. She gently brushed my long black hair until all the tangles retreated. She then folded the newly spun, cream-colored yarn into a proper length for my hair.

Taking my hair in her wrinkled brown hands, she started at the ends and slowly and evenly folded it in and up. She then wrapped the yarn below, around, and above the bun several times. When she was done, my hair was neatly tied into a tsii-yéel—just like hers.

“There,” sighed Shimásání, patting my tsiiyéél. “Now your thoughts are organized. I made this yarn for you, shiawéé [my little one].”

With my hair newly wrapped in freshly spun yarn, I stood up and felt the weight of my new knowledge resting against the back of my neck. Shimásání had not come simply to teach me how to spin yarn. No, she had come to teach me a deeper way of my existence, by showing me my connections to the generations of my people.

I now saw that for their whole lives I had always existed within their very decision-making process. I was ever present in the past because they placed me in their future.

“Life is sacred,” Shimásání would say. Now I understood not only that life itself was sacred but also that my life had always been sacred to her. Like the asdzání, Shimásání too had made decisions that would ensure my existence, to ensure the existence of the tenth one from her.

We are all connected, tied together like the yarn in my hair, to our generations.

My friends, you may not be Diné and you might not be able to see your tenth ones yet, but they can be as real today within your own personal decisions as they will be in the future. Their existence and identities will emerge long after you are gone, but someday one of them might invisibly reach back to you, like I did that morning, to find that you have always been there, a vital part of their story.

Each of us is someone’s tenth one. I ask you, how important are today’s choices of the heart? Where will they lead your generations?

—Bird That Flies East, Diné and Totonac