Luci Tapahonso interview

Interviewer
Lucy why don't you start out by just describing the Long Walk

Luci
The Long Walk was probably one of the most important periods of in their history.  It has, of course, a profound impact on the people that suffered through it and lived through it, and it continues to have an impact today on our lives. 

Interviewer
What do you think it meant to the identity of the Navajo people?

Luci
I think that though it wasn't meant to, it probably reinforced and strengthened and ensured the identity of the Dine.

Interviewer
When you think of ancestors and relatives and people who made the Long Walk what are your emotions about that time?

Luci
It's hard, you know, to say you feel one way or another and it's so much a part of our experience that it's difficult to think of it separately by itself.  It's very meaningful to me, and it's so much a part of our experience as a people and as individuals and as a group so...

It's very much a part of the way that we identify ourselves, and not necessarily the experience, but because many of my ancestors of whom I'm a direct descendant, which means it's my experience in a sense.  So I don't think of them as separate from who I am.  I think of what happened as forming my own sense of self, and my experience that it's going to play a role, or it plays a role in who I am as well as my future and my children and grandchildren's lives and their future as well.

Interviewer
How do you feel the Navajos were treated by the U.S. Military?

Luci
I think it's a long cycle of misunderstanding and abuse and very much different kinds of mistreatment. That was the feeling, or the way that was the general feeling in America and at that time.  Over time as Navajo people became more educated, and as there was more interaction, I think that maybe those feelings, and that kind of treatment, continued, but perhaps not to the degree that it did in the 1880s. 

Interviewer
Why do you think the Long Walk happened?

Luci
I don't know... I suppose that the general purpose, as history shows, was to isolate and to civilize and to Americanize Navajo people. So that was the general purpose for it.

Interviewer
Part of the 1868 treaty was an education component with boarding schools and things like that.  What do you think that did to the Navajo identity?

Luci
It's very complex.  I don't think there is a single answer, and there's not a single outcome.  For one thing, the people that signed the treaty--and were there at Bosque Redondo--helped many ceremonies, and it was not an action that occurred from a single decision or made by a single person. It was a process that took a long time and that involved a lot of talking and praying and all kinds of... the process for the Dine was very much a complex and sustaining process, so they put a lot of thought into what the implications of the treaty was and were aware of what the education component meant.  So when people began... when they were forced to educate their children, there was always the component that when Navajos became educated then they could be advocates or they could be, I guess advocates for the people. 

Interviewer
What was your boarding school experience like?

Luci
I went to a private Methodist boarding school.  At the time I was in school, which was the 1960s you know, no one was encouraged to speak Navajo or practice their own, you know, practice ceremonies or anything.  That was not... that was a time when we were all encouraged to speak English and to... we couldn't speak Navajo, we couldn't... that was the time.  It wasn't until much later, probably in the '70s and '80s that Navajo began to be taught and people began to talk about culture and Navajo history and those sorts of things. 

Interviewer
What happened if you did speak Navajo?  Were you punished for that?

Luci
Ya, we were not encouraged and we were punished. 

Interviewer
What motivated you to write 1864?  How did that come about?

Luci
As with all of my work, the rhymes and stories… you know a person writes what they care about, and a person writes about what they want to remember or have remembered, and so that was part of the, as with all of my other work, that was part of why I wrote it.

Interviewer
How about The American Flag... how did that come about?

Luci
The same... that's kind of the companion piece.  I wanted to write something about the rugs that were woven during that period because they were very stunning and very beautiful, and they are also a sad experience in some ways to see the rugs and know what was occurring at the time.