Jim Kristofic - Navajos Wear Nikes: A Reservation Life

Map of Din Bikyah, Navajo country.

Credit: University of New Mexico Press

Acknowledgments

Youre reading this book because enough people thought it would be a good idea and supported it. And so I thank them for helping me to think and write about the place that has a given so much to me.

Thanks to Mom, who gave me life and taught me to read.

Thanks to Dad, who taught me that nothing happens overnight. And thanks to all my Kristofic relatives for their incredible support and loyal kindness. May I repay it in full some day.

Thanks to my many teachers and mentors for putting up with me and not strangling me. Each of you pushed me to make me stronger and I hope I havent let you down yet.

Thanks to my brother Darren for being my best friend and my worst enemy. I love you, bro. You read this work and told me what was what.

Thanks to my younger sister and brother, for being people whom Ive always admired. I still admire you both today.

Thanks to Nolan, for being a good model of what a cunning, funny, hard-working man can be. I admire you.

Thanks to all my friends and extended family in Ganado, who gave me a chance and who taught me to live the braver life.

My admiration and gratitude go to the diligent reporting of the hard-working (and believe me, severely underpaid) journalists at The Navajo Times , The Gallup Independent, High Country News , The Arizona Daily Sun , The Arizona Republic , The Tucson Gazette , The Kansas City Star , The Washington Times , The National Review , and The New York Times , whose reportage helped give proper context to the issues facing the Navajo Nation today. You all live the right life, folks. Thank you for living it.

I couldnt have written this book without resources taken from the Menaul Historical Library and the Arizona Historical Society.

So much thanks to Martha Blue, Ed Chamberlain, Kathy Tabaha, and David Brugge, whose expertise helped me see around corners and whose wisdom helped this book grow toward a greater sense of meaning.

To those whove agreed to chat about Ganado Mission during the oral history interviews for the Di Lkaahnteel Bahane project, I cant express my gratitude or admiration enough. Dii ayoo baaheeh nisin.

The staff at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Presbytery of Grand Canyon, and the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia deserve the best blessings I can offer. They treated me with the utmost respect and kindness as I slogged my way through unarchived Ganado Mission files in the library on Lombard Street in Society Hill. I thank them immeasurably for taking a chance on my Ganado Mission research.

My thanks to the staff at Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site, who welcomed me so graciously and allowed me a peek into the rough-and- tumble Western world of traders and missionaries, a world that people should never forget.

My thanks to Aaron Peshlakai, a great friend, who said this book made him homesick. And thanks to his wife, Hope, who sees things beautifully. And thank you to the Peshlakai family, who always had a warm, welcoming home and a front door that was always unlocked to me.

Ken Douthitt is a unique man and an observant, expectant soul who gave me much early encouragement and guidance toward this book. His tireless work to preserve Ganado Mission history is a true labor of love and a collection of feats to be admired.

Brandon Carper asked many important questions about Navajo culture and was invaluable as an editor.

Jack Anderson and Josh Morris gutted through several drafts of this manuscript. They are invaluable editors and reliable critics.

A great thanks goes to editor-in-chief Clark Whitehorn and the University of New Mexico Press for taking a chance on this book. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for their input.

And to my wife, Christina, who read all of the early drafts of this manuscript (which means she read it about a million times) and still didnt bail on me. You look for the best things in me and you are the best person Ive ever met.

And to the people who live in Ganado, Arizona: I envy you. You live in the most beautiful, terrible, and most wonderful place on earth.

***

This is a work of memoryand some of it at times is a childs memory. I have set down my own impressions and interviewed friends and family to fact-check those impressions. Any errors or mistakes are unintentional. Names have been altered or changed to protect the innocent and the guilty; there are many traditional taboos surrounding the use of names, and youd better believe I respect their power. But memories are subjective. Different people may remember some things differently.

Prologue: The Question

The hardest thing to learn about a people of another race

is that they are just like you in all essential ways.

Tony Hillerman

***

When people ask me where Im from and I tell them I grew up on an Indian Reservation, they almost always ask me The Question.

So. Are you Indian?

I dont look Indian. My curly, brown Slavic hair and Irish blue eyes dont fit the profile of Americas crow-haired, dark-eyed Indian. Yet I get The Question nearly every time. I have no idea why.

Most people know what Indians look like, even if theyve never met one. Some think Indians wear buckskin, moccasins, and war paint; they ride horses, hunt buffalo, build tipis, smoke tobacco, say How, and wear feathers in their headbands.

Some people stereotype Indians as drunks, wife-beaters, and casino-racketeers.

Some think Indians paint with all the colors of the wind, dance with wolves, and cry when you litter.

And most of them probably wonder why a white person would grow up on an Indian Reservation, so they just assume I must be Indian.

Many of the people whove asked me The Question were sun-screened tourists, who were in awe of the Reservation, this vast desert wasteland where the Indians once fought the likes of John Wayne, etc. Others were spirited travelers who saw the Reservation as a mystical land of turquoise sky and majestic rock formations. People have asked me The Question in doctors offices, art galleries, car dealerships, in job interviews, on parent-teacher nights at the high school; some people had relatives who lived near the Rez; others had briefly visited the Rez in the summer, and some had only glimpsed the Rez in an issue of National Geographic .

I understood the awe of the tourist. True, the Rez is a vast country of sand, rock, and sagebrush. Its larger than the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island combined. Its actually larger than Ireland. Yet there are no strip malls, health spas, or megaplex theaters, few stoplights and restaurants, and only a handful of cinder-block buildings between small Rez towns. Some people whod visited the Rez told me the bleak isolation actually gave them anxiety attacks as they sped along in their air-conditioned, rented sedans between the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.

But when those travelers passed through the Rez, touring the Anasazi cliff houses or seeking some sort of spirituality among the mesas and canyons, something on the Rez drew them in. And something tapped their pity, wonder, and fascination.

And so when people ask me The Question, I dont usually know what to say. It seems that most expect an answer of equal pity, wonder, and fascination.

Usually I have trouble answering because I keep seeing my own questionone that Ive been asking most of my life: What is an Indian?