Dancing with Zoila: Letters of Recommendation for your Mentors

Christine M. Ami

Thoughts on my dissertation advisor's continued impact.

A few months ago I was contacted by former and current Ph.D. students of Dr. Zoila Mendoza to support her nomination for the University of California Davis Distinguished Graduate and Postdoctoral Mentorship Award. It made me chuckle a bit thinking about it. Zoila has been responsible for so many of my letters of recommendations. So when asked if I would/could join their petition, the answer was a clear "of course. What do you need."

Among the requirements for the nomination, the application requires individualized paragraphs from former and current mentees.  But once I started, a paragraph fell short of anything sufficient. How could I sum up in a paragraph the laughter, the tears, and the music Zoila brought to my life? So I wrote a short essay - still insufficient - for the main petitioners to select from. I have that essay here...

Zoila and I during the Spring 2016 UC Davis Graduation Ceremony.

But before I leave you with my Dance with Zoila, I want to encourage all you scholars out there... take a moment to share these memories with your mentors, award or not. I know some may not have had the most carinosa relationship with their advisor as I have/had. And that's not to say that she coddled me. (Remember... in addition to music and laughter...I did say there were also tears 🤣.) Zoila was honest and pushed me academically. But there if there has been mentor who was there for you, academic or not, don't save these words for retirement parties or goodbye speeches. Share them now.

To whom it will concern:

“In between corrals, fields, hogans, and classrooms, I was trying to complete my dissertation with a knife in one hand and a pen in the other.” This image is how I often write about my graduate school research experiences bolstered by Dr. Zoila Mendoza. My project focused on the Indigenous sensorial knowledge associated with traditional Diné (Navajo) sheep butchering. At the center of my endeavors were my relationships with Diné people, sheep, Dr. Mendoza, and myself.
 
It took me years to find Dr. Mendoza, and in all honestly, I never even knew that I was looking for her. You see, before my tenure at the University of California Davis in the Department of Native American Studies, I had come from a master’s program elsewhere where every corner echoed “no.” “No, you cannot test in 19th century Indigenous literature.” “No, you cannot used positionality-based writing.” “No, your Indigenous realities do not count as experience with research.” “No, you cannot write from a Dinécentric way of knowing.” “No” was the best manner for the Ivory Tower to deal with this new breed of “Indian Problem,” the ones who had made it passed R1/R2 graduate school admissions, banging on the walls of the Ivory Tower, pleading for manners to incorporate our ways of knowing. I expected this same fight when I stepped onto the UCDavis campus. That was until I sat at the table for Dr. Mendoza’s performance studies graduate seminar. Dr. Mendoza taught me not to bang or beg but rather to be.
 
More specifically, Dr. Mendoza taught me to dance strong in academia. From concise, powerful writing structures to grant sourcing and comprehensive research skills, she taught me the steps. Dr. Mendoza mentored me on how to find music in archival searches, ethnographic research, and linguistic becomings. More-so, she was eager to be my dance partner during graduate school and continues to support me through today. During course work, she let me sing my bloody tales of sheep butchering while she readied her dancing shoes. On my dissertating adventures, she pulled me back onto the dance floor when I tried to quit. And even now, she sits on the side stage, playing her guitar, allowing me to dance in the spotlight to the daunting task of publishing my first book. 
 
Her guidance has led me to successful fellowship applications with prestigious academic funding agencies such as the Social Science Research Council, Mellon Foundation, and National Endowment for the Humanities. Her realities of becoming a Guggenheim fellow are now my next foresight. Imagine that – a small Navajo woman, an Indian Child Welfare Act kid, who now teaches and researches at a tribal college – my name listed with Dr. Mendoza as a fellow Guggenheim recipient. Dr. Mendoza has planted those dreams for me in my next dance.
 
Nearly 8 years past my hooding and I find myself as an associate professor at the first tribally establish institution of higher education in the country. I still reflect upon my time at UCDavis and my ever-dancing relationship with Dr. Mendoza. It is that impression that has led me to build Diné College’s first Native American Studies program, to create an Indigenous research agenda, and to foster emerging Indigenous scholars with a firm vision of what was, what is, what could be. I am engaged in the dance of pyro-epistemology at my tribal college. It is a calm, cultivated, cultural burning of the Ivory Tower’s “no,” a calming of wildfires of doubts from administration soaked in internal colonization, and a prayerful and powerful (re)planting of our ways of knowing, just waiting to dance in the wind. All of this is because Dr. Mendoza taught me to simply be in academia.
 
I am fortunate that Dr. Mendoza is only a call away. I hope that I have made her proud in my career and life decisions. But Dr. Mendoza also taught me that it is not her pride that I am in search of, it is pride I find in my own work. I have that.