I went to Tábąąh mąʼii's Facebook profile... who is this? Well, she is Christian (not judging just describing her page based on her devotion posts), we have two friends in common both of whom are more public figures than "friends," and now from her Facebook message, she says that she is Tábąąhá from the Western Agency.  I go to "search friendship"- Nothing. I go to "message history" - Nothing. I realize that I have no idea who this "friend" is.

I did know that 🦝  has had one direct interaction with me with a question that she just "had to ask," immediately jumped to race, and then apologized(?). For what?  For her correct assumption that I do have white ancestry, for her attempted trolling based on race?  Honestly, that I don't know. But I did wonder if she messages others with:

"I just thought you were were half African American, sorry about that."
"I just thought you were were half Hispanic, sorry about that."
"I just thought you were were half Anglo, sorry about that."
or what I wanted to ask her...
"I just thought you were were half Ma'ii, sorry about that." (Joke-splaining Ahead: she is Tábąąhá, ma'ii's are coyote and are overgeneralized as tricksters...and Tábąąh mąʼii means raccoon in Navajo... I know bad joke...but there it is.)

To top it off, 🦝 didn't even like my post. The audacity (jk)! 😛

And then, I remembered - there are unfriend and block buttons because I don't need this energy. ❌👎 Really, I don't think anyone needs this energy.  And I really love raccoons 🦝 and I have some wonder Tábąąhá friends and students in my life, she doesn't have to be one.

I guess my lasting thoughts for the day are - If you have a problem with my clans, if you have a problem with anyone's "anglo-ness" based on their clans, if "passing white" is that big of a problem for you - you can un-friend me. I'm not afraid to talk family histories, or race for that fact. I am not scared to talk about how racist anyone can be, regardless of color or creed. But if your leading commentary is to clarify your understanding of a random person's race  for the sake of random knowledge so that you can troll or you "just had to ask," you can do that somewhere else besides my DM.

And... I happen to really love my Anglo side... which isn't a side at all. It's all part of me... my Diné-ness, my Anglo-ness. I'm not two people, I don't come from two worlds. I am just Christine, a Táchinii, who loves to bake, and run, and garden, and raise my boys on the rez. I have Jersey Italian relatives and they taught me how to speak fast and go down the shore. I have Kiyáa'aanii relatives that taught me how to weave and throw dirt. And my Bit'ahnii siblings taught me how to ride and love. It's all one world, it's all me, and I certainly don't need anyone to apologize for any part of me.

In other news - while you can excuse yourself from my "friendship," do check out my up and coming work about Navajo and Sheep race. Like I said... sheep have taught me tons :)

It always hits you when you least expect it - maybe when you most need it.

I actually thought my son and his goat Eddie would grow up together. Eddie’s mom rejected him so he became a bottle fed kid. And my youngest son, Chase, took that responsibility seriously. So seriously he would bring you the powder to mix the formula for him before you could even tell him to prep the bottle. He had a bike delivery service all set up. Every morning, when I got hay ready for the animals, he would prep his bike and together we would make it down to the corral to feed the animals. And every evening we would do the same with some extra play time.

Tomorrow will be different because today was different. We found Eddie today with terminal injuries, probably getting hit too hard in the corral from another goat. He couldn’t stand or hold his head up. While we tried to feed him and help him, we had to prepare our boys for the change of what isn’t merely schedule but for our 5 year old who took such pride in taking care of Eddie, it would be a change to his life. Eddie wasn’t going to make it.

Our son understood our talk and he was crushed. We spent the afternoon drawing Eddie thanks to Art Hub for Kids. And talked about suffering, death, and hope.

He took it all in stride feeling his sadness, loneliness, and fear. “I’m afraid, mom,” he told me. “Eddie is going to die. I’m going to miss him and his buddy is going to miss him,” talking of the one goat kids that would snuggle with Eddie at night.” It was an honest talk we had. No euphemisms, no flowery picture. It was a moment I will remember forever.

When we went back to the corral. Eddie was dead, as I suspected of a severed spinal cord due to blunt force trauma. Chase brought his goat away and when he came back down from the mountain, he came to the corral where his older brother and I were at, feeding the sheep and goats. His older brother put his arm around him as they stood looking at the animals eating. He told him how proud he was of the way Chase took care of Eddie. Again, another moment never to be forgotten- not by this mom anyways.

We let his tears flow and then we taught him about the herd but it wasn’t us taking care of him. Because as he cried, the 5 remaining kids flooded him with care. They all wanted to know what ailed Chase - how could they make it better. And our son knew that the world couldn’t stop working hard because those kids needed him. Together they grieve.

In that moment, the kids - my boys and their baby goats, all took care of each other. Some days these corral lessons are about getting the job done correctly- other days, like today, they are about getting the job done the best way we can - with each other.

Boarding the plane back to Albuquerque, my boots now have dust from a different field that I bring home to my field.

In short, if you ever have an opportunity to workshop your book manuscript - DO IT. Sure, it might be a plane ride and a few time zones away. But you may just come home with corn seeds from fields that you didn't know you needed.

Pretty inspiring comments coming from the second reader of my NEH application, if I don't say so myself lol. By far, these were the most negative comments I received and the lowest ranking score I was given in my successful run for a NEH Awards for Faculty felllowship. Good thing the other readers thought otherwise. The other readers provided feedback taking into consideration my application as well as my letters of recommendation and my CV.  Yet, regardless of the lines and lines of support from the other readers, for some reason, I just can't shake the feedback from that second reader. And I actually received the grant....Am I alone? I can't be the only one who let's the 2nd reader get under their skin, can I? You can judge for yourself as the NEH selected to showcase my project as a sample for future applicants to read. Check out Narrative Section of a Successful Application. Even better... rank it yourself and put that rank in the comments below... lol.

It's not just this application, the 2nd reader stigma has and always will be the bane of publishing hopefuls. This is the same in the grant and fellowship worlds. For those who don't know what / who a 2nd reader is - its basically the person presses and funders bring on to kill your publishing vibe... lol just kidding: It's usually the 2 review of your application or article and their job is to be a critical as possible. They are not there for the feels - they are there to find the holes you have left that could discredit your chance of actually completing a fellowship or any gaps that you have in articles that would discredit the press who is publishing your piece.

But here is the thing... I've been the second reader. And with grants like this one, livelihoods come down to these reads....literally tens of thousands of dollars that let academics pursue dreams. If someone honestly thinks that a junior scholar is incapable because of lack of publishing, lack of letters of recommendation support, whatever - they have to point it out. I've seen it within my own institution, faculty or staff receive the luxurious work load release to research and publish and when the time comes to produce the final deliverables - there is no research or publishable piece to present. So I understand.

But still, hey, second reader, have you heard Taylor Swift's song, you know the one were haters be hatin'. Well that's how you came in....and I was like.... damn, it's only 7am.

So to my second reader,
No offense (so you know I am here to offend), but I don't know if you have met junior scholars like me - the Indigenous scholars who are ridden hard by the academic system and put away wet. I know that sounds harsh and perhaps a bit crude but that is where the scholars like me come from. As minorities in R1 institutes, everyone wants a piece of us so they can claim diversity and equity, whatever that means. As type A personalities in tribal colleges, everyone expects we pick up everyone else's slack. (And if you are offended by the wet horses comment, clearly you have never had horses, sickos 😆. You should be more offended if you are part of the groups who stand by as we are put away wet).

We have learned to dry ourselves off. And you will never see the towels we use because we have a home support system that helps us balance our well-being. Our home may not be our biological relatives, but humans and nonhuman animals that have melted into our lives that wish us to succeed for who we are and not what we can provide for them.

Our drive will out race almost anyone in short or long distance runs, regardless of diversity or other merit based opportunities. If it sounds like a lot, it is - but that's what we, high driven, motivated Indigenous junior scholars do. We show up to cook and stay to clean up. We put in the grant fellowship applications and make rocks move so that we can finish them. Because if we don't, that gives others, especially those who have never met Indigenous scholars, the right to speak of our 'diversity given' opportunity and not of our stellar ethics, both in the work place and in the community.

I know your job is hard, but when you see a packet like mine fly into your email or be placed on your desk for review - you should listen to our recommenders when they tell you of what we are capable of.  If our plans seem impossible of a task, ask yourself, is it unfeasible or is it just unfeasible for you. Look at the C.V. and read in between the lines, where grant management overlap, dissertation completions, and faculty of the year awards. That is not by coincidence, nor given by diversity, or gifted by administrations - that is the work of our horse. I don't want an award because I am an "Indian in Academia," I want an award because I aspire and I can do. If you don't read between the lines, if you don't justify your decision beyond "it doesn't seem feasible" it just looks like you need an excuse to award someone else.  Provide suggestions on how to make it feasible.

Keep taking on roles as the 2nd reader. I took every single feedback you did provide and made it happen. I made sure that my story in my multi-species autobiographic manuscript highlighted the struggles of a junior Indigenous scholar, including my moments of doubt in me... I actually reduced my interdisciplinary connections because that was the dissertation's job - this book's job is to provide applications of real world experiences to reach broader community and academic realms... I contacted minority serving institutes across the nation to not only pitch this project and possible collaboration but to make them aware of grants their institutes could apply to meet their own program's food sovereignty, indigenous research, and community grounded projects come to life... And I built a new home of scholars to help me workshop this manuscript into its final publishing format - it is a team of individuals who, in fact, believe that the evidence is evident of successful objective outcomes. I know that not every scholar is like me. And I know that I can't be awarded every grant or fellowship that I apply to.  But make your feedback, 2nd reader, count for improvement.

But this year's 2023 Sheep Is Life Celebrations in Window Rock, Arizona moved me to throw on my good boots, the ones that rarely see the corral, with some coral and Navajo pearls. On Saturday June 17th,  with a mask and sanitizer ready, I headed to our Nation's capital. After a year of editing I am on the last leg of author edits of my book project prior to submission to the editors. Presenting helps to remind me of my chapter story lines, receive feedback from community members on my interpretations, and reinvigorates my project and the sprouts from the main research. And if there was a crowd I wanted to speak in front of, it was this one. So I stepped out - unsure of what was more daunting: presenting my findings to the group who spent years teaching me or stepping out into a world that has relaxed its COVID prevention protocols. Paranoid?, maybe. Crazy?, possibly. Nervous?, absolutely.

I arrived at the Navajo Nation Museum and saw so many beautiful familiar faces. They were chatting, working with fibers, selling rugs, jewelry, paintings, and shirts. Most were sheep themed - it made me which I wore my black sheep shirt :)  I also noticed the missing presence of those hadn't made it to this side of the pandemic because of age, because of sickness, because of life. The warm sun and slight breeze meshed those memories with the current realities. It felt good to be touched by it all and to be around this group.

I made my way to the auditorium, removed my mask, hooked up my wireless mic, and started speaking. Maybe it was because this was my first in person presentation about my work in the dust of COVID - maybe it was because I was just grateful to be alive, when so many hadn't made it to this dust trail - maybe it was because my husband was in the crowd for the first time. What ever it was, as I spoke I became more and more grateful.

During my presentation, it hit hard -- the positive impact of the Diné be' iiná: Navajo Lifeways organization - the people, the histories, the sheep. They have been part of my journey, integrating a Navajo girl who grew up mostly off the reservation into a confident Táchinii woman who grows with the land and animals of the Chuskas. A lot of people talk about how difficult it is returning home to live, finding a job, fitting in - but it wasn't like that for me. While it may have been daunting, it wasn't something that I was going to shy away from. I accepted positions in the dorm before working up to an associate professor and grant manager for the Navajo Cultural Arts Program. All along, I was raising sheep, or as my book dives into, they were raising me. It had been in my dreams from childhood that I would return - and I have - but never along. My grandparents, family, sheep, shadow, and this Diné be' iina: Navajo Lifeways group helped me to secure my footing.

We have woven together, run together, butchered together, eaten together, celebrated together, and complained together.

I was particularly excited to share with Sheep Is Life's audience the introduction of the Indigenous Animals Studies curriculum at Diné College. This was an important result of my dissertation and my conversations with the individuals I met through the Navajo Lifeways Organization. In particular, at my very first focus group at Roy's house, a group assembled to butcher with me and to help me to fine tune questions for my dissertation. Roy himself suggested asking about what classes students could take to reconnect with nonhuman animals and if students would be interested in them. Turns out they were and now they can - so thank you, Dine Be'Iina Inc, for hosting not just Sheep Is Life, but for living it :) You have helped me live it too!

Sheep Is Life, I'll see you next year - hopefully with a book in hand!

If you would like to check out the presentation - I speak for about 30 minutest starting at the 50 minute marker: https://www.facebook.com/709240484/videos/6530199793698042/

Coffee is the Start to All Great Days: We grab some coffee from the 1st floor of Diné College's Ned Hatalthi Center Building and make our way to my office - a room that has been vacant for the last year because of my sabbatical. These days it is more of a storage area than a place of critical thought or student advising. Embarrassed by the dust and clutter, I make room for Dr. Kelsey Dayle John to sit down and we start chatting about horses, sheep, dissertations, and life as Diné women, ranchers, and academics.

I met Kelsey after googling resources on Indigenous animal studies. I had found abstracts of articles that spoke to me as if we were writing from the same space: Diné relationships with nonhuman animals. She focuses on horses 🐴 and I sheep 🐑, both animals that have been written off as acculturated nonhuman animals acquired during colonial contacts 🇪🇸🙄. I tried to access her dissertation, book chapters, and articles but our library unfortunately did not have subscriptions. So, like any good academic - I stalked Kelsey on Facebook 👀 and asked for copies via messenger 🤣.

We got to chattin' online and, boy, did we have a lot in common! I shared this blog about my manuscript writing adventures. She sent videos and articles and let me know that she would be organizing the Horses Connecting Communities gather. This would be the 3rd annual community learning space that will take place June 17-18 at Diné College Rodeo Grounds to honor and perpetuate the legacy between Diné people and horses (PSSST - there is still time to register and attend so get on it!). We planned to meet up during one of her visits to Tsaile ... coffee - it was decided as a good meeting place :)

More than Animal Studies: Meeting Kelsey was a breath of fresh air because she made me feel normal about my thoughts about Animal Studies as a Navajo woman who works and lives with livestock. She had completed her dissertation a few years after I did. As we talked I wished we had met earlier, when I was in the trenches of writing. My biggest hang up during that time period was deciding if Animal Studies was what I was doing. I mean, I was justifying Diné relationships with nonhuman animals with the non Indigenous trending studies, using the lingo, had committee members dedicated to the field ... but what I was writing about was/is taught to me by animals (domesticated, wild, dreamt). It is much older than the academic field of Animal studies; it is much more prestigious than academia itself. Kelsey got that. 

Purpose of Human Animal Studies Classes at Diné College: So I shared with her our new courses on animal studies from Indigenous standpoints that I had been working on as part of my larger NEH award. This part of my award was also an updating of my Animal Studies repertoire. I read A LOT of topics within the realms of Human Animal Studies, Animal Narratology, Critical Animal Studies, and Animal Science. I looked at curriculum in place and suggestions of how to create Traditional Ecological Knowledge lessons from places like Dr. Seafha Ramos' website Stem Trading Card: TEK Lessons. I checked out books like Dr. Margo DeMello's edited volume Teaching the Animal: Human–Animal Studies across the Disciplines (2010) to justify course descriptions and draft letters to adiministration. And I read as many of the Indigenous scholars I could find who worked with nonhuman animal relationships (enter my fb stalking of Kelsey lol). I found blogs to be a wonderful space to talk outloud. Dr. Zoe Todd's website Specultative fish-ctions helped me to organize my own website and blog (even how to find space to promote our family's art business - check it out).

The courses are spread across the Anthropology and Native American Studies disciplines and are meant to transition out ANT111: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology and usher in approaches that understand culture beyond anthropocentrism, beyond primitive studies of Indigenous peoples and cultures. More specifically, they are closely aligned to four of Diné College Strategic Goals in 2022:

1. Diné Identity: These classes allow for students to engage their own Diné perspectives as they dialogue their experiences with other communities, especially in the areas of nonhuman animals: How are Diné people creating, maintaining, and breaking relationships with non-human animals and what these signify for us as Diné people.
2. Student Success: These classes builds critical thinking skills, more specifically tribally centric critical thinking skills, that allow for student success. In other words, they allow for the development and refinement of skills that can be directly and immediately applied to their course of study and their daily experiences. No longer is the Western approach the only approach, but Diné inherent knowledge constitutes the foundations of how to solve problems.
3. Institutional Transformation: Classes engage Diné College in Anthropology's attempt to transition from its archaic format in which Indigenous peoples are merely subjects of study into realms of understanding the relationships between human and nonhuman animals and the more-than-human of our homelands.
   
4. Nation Building: Ultimately, these classes assist students in reflecting and enacting upon measure that will build holistically well-balanced Navajo individuals, healthier Navajo families and a stronger Navajo Nation. As the Navajo Nation looks to build economies, understanding how human and nonhuman animals contribute to said economies will bring about sound work environments.
   

What do the Discpline Prefixes and Course Levels Indicate?
None of these classes have prerequisites, because in reality relationships between human and nonhuman animals can start anywhere, at any level, or at anytime. But the NAS classes allow for a sensory component to learning that the ANT classes don't engage as much. While students learn how to conduct multi-species ethnographies in the 116 and 216 classes, it is not until the 316 and 416 classes where we work with Dinécentric sensorial arenas. Students are required to work with their own livestock or assist with Diné College's Land Grant Office and their animals to reengage communication with both human and nonhuman animals.

So why bother with the ANT classes at all?
For starters they meet the general education degree checklist 😆. I am currently working on NAS meeting that criteria on its own. In the meantime, this has helped to facility other programs, such as the Animal Science degrees here at Diné College to add these classes to their degree checklists.  But beyond checklists - the ANT classes bring me back advice by my doctoral advisors, Dr. Mendoza and Dr. Vareses, who told me as a Navajo Native American Studies scholar I will need to know both Western and Indigenous approaches, theories and trends just as well as, if not better than, scholars from the so-called main stream disciplines. It will only add to my tools in my tool kit and give me an upper hand in any debate or dialogue. I have taken that into my own pedogogical practices. Often you will hear me tell students "do not throw the baby out with the bath water." Just because they are written by non-Indigenous scholars, doesn't mean they aren't helpful in articulation or thought processes - even if it is to deconstruct their own discipline.

Therefore, the ANT classes introduce unique perspectives from both Western and Indigenous ways of knowing on how we relate with animals.  This information helps us to grow how we look at ourselves. The NAS class will allow for us to focus on how we as Indigenous people dialogue and depart from other Indigenous communities throughout the globe.

✅ Update current trends in Animal Studies literatures, practices, and curriculum
✅ Create Indigenous Animal Studies courses to accompany my book manuscript

Classes are open to all Diné College students and will be taught in rotation. Thank you to all those great minds, scholars, teachers, and community members, who have helped bring these courses to life!
Don't forget to register!!!!

From Response Paper to Book Review: While some of my cohort started publishing book reviews during graduate school, I waited until after I graduated. My first review was for the Tribal College Journal (and I continue to publish with them today because I love the audience and the editors). I remember accepting the request and being really nervous because, even though the author wasn't Navajo, the book was about Navajo people and by a well-known anthropologist working in the areas of Native foodways. It took me FOREVER to write those 500 words. Well actually, it was pretty easy to get down 1000 words. I needed to cut it to 500 - that took forever. I sent it out to 2 or 3 of my friends to read and re-read for me. And I kinda felt sick to my stomach submitting. It was my first ever piece that would represent my thoughts in a published arena - and my thoughts are pretty honest. And what if I submitted it with spelling and grammar errors? Would the editor regret asking me to write for them? But when it came out, response to my book review was great and I was over the hurdle of getting my first publishing out there!

Recipe for Book Reviews:
The journal that you are writing for will have their own specific details that you will need to adhere to: citation formats, word count, headers, biographies, as well suggestions on what they want to see in your review. Pay attention to those instructions because they will kick back your book review if you don't. Not the best start to building a relationship with editors 😆.

Now-a-days, I am taking book review requests in areas that are helpful to my book project. To date, I have three styles that I have utilized:

• General minimalist word count book review (500 words) such as the Tribal College Journal.
  • Book summary (one paragraph)
  • Significance of the book (one paragraph on the key concepts brought to light by the author)
  • Critical holes in the book (one paragraph on areas overlooked by the author)
  • How this book applies to classrooms or Native Nations (one paragraph)
• Critical analysis mid rage word count book review (1000 words) such as the American Indian Culture and Resource Journal.
  • Book summary (one paragraph)
  • Significance of the book (two paragraphs on the key concepts brought to light by the author)
  • Critical holes in the book (two paragraph on areas overlooked by the author)
  • Additional readings that compliment and/or complicate the author's main perspectives (one paragraph)
  • How this book applies to classrooms of Native Nations (one paragraph)
• Creative writing book review essay (3000 words) such as Transmotion.
  • At this moment - my favorite writing comes in the form of a creative writing book review. So far, I have only done one of these but I look forward to writing more. These are unique story telling pieces where I am able to tell a story about my experience reading and writing about literature.
  • I had an opportunity to give feedback on The Diné Reader (2021) for Transmotion. I particularly enjoyed this writing because I was able to frame it through a conversation with a blue bird that I had just woven on my loom. It includes teachings from my nálí and from our corn field, entering into a terrain of lateral oppression and how we, as Native people, are shamed when we offer honest feedback about our own people and their work.

Book Reviewing Friends: All the book reviews that I have done have been written by authors who I have never met or were merely acquaintances with. As more and more of my friends are publishing, I am receiving requests for book reviews about their work (and even reviews for books by my former professors). Up until now, I have pushed them away. I don't know why really... closeness, fear of losing a friendship, difficulty with emotional separation, general intimidation - I don't know really. 🤦🏽‍♀️

But, thanks to my buddy 🤝 Dr. Andrew Curley, whose book Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation will be dropping in April 2023, I'll hopefully work through those discomforts by way of a book discussion during the 2023 Diné Studies Conference. Dr. Jennifer Denetdale organized a panel of Diné scholars to dialogue with Andrew and discuss the relevance of his study to local, national, and global academic conversations as well as it's impact on Navajo communities.  We are just waiting for word on whether our panel was accepted or not. 🤞🏽

I also just accepted a request to review my NAS colleague at UNM and home girl 👭, Dr. Wendy Greyeyes' A History of Navajo Nation Education: Disentangling Our Sovereign Body (2022). Hopefully, the panel will help with confidence writing about my friends' work in written format.

So as I said, completing book reviews, they are the sheep leg holding of academic publishing. Slowly you build your confidence and hopefully, after a few rounds, you'll look to hold the knife.