Obsolescence

"Experience remains the unexplored metaphysical terrain of the 21st Century and it is likely that the best scouts will be Indians—not by virtue of superior 'intellect' as commonly understood, but simply because there remains among many of us a predisposition to live in the world as opposed to living on, above, or in control of the world." (Vine Deloria, Jr. and Daniel R. Wildcat, Power and Place: Indian Education in America)

Silko writes about a time when the land is all that survives. It had happened before. It would happen again. People had an age. They would come to the end of it. Many are preparing for that time now. Many have been preparing for ages.

At the time I was afraid. I still dream about the end of this world. I still cling to this life. Her words haunted me, because I knew their truth, though, at times, I am still a child, afraid of knowing.

I spent each day outside with my Grandfather watching him work the dirt. He taught me to respect the plant people and the insects. They were my friends. I spent hours with them, beneath the sun, talking and listening. They told me things: the insects and my Grandfather.

He had a stove just inside the door and would cook what he grew there, on four burners of his own. My Grandmother's stove, with six burners and a griddle, was upstairs. By the time I arrived he'd lost his upstairs privilege.

When he died his sisters sent for me and taught me the intricacies of water. In the city water was easy to come by. I was a child and didn't think beyond the faucet. They lived with rations and each sister had their way to work within the rules and to work around them. They answered to their plants—the city could try to catch them and figure out how to fine them.

Generations of Navajo found happiness and meaning in a world of agriculture, livestock and hand made essentials. Clocks, currency and employment did not dictate their days, nor define their personalities. Land based economies and land based peoples lived and continue to live by the sun and seasons. My grandparents, like many urban Indians, applied their knowledge to their circumstance, using tried and true theories to navigate the very difficult task of raising a family in San Francisco. Tradition helped us retain our shape as humans, as particular humans, informing our daily life, on or off reservation, in or outside of the city.

Today we face the same task our ancestors faced—making choices in a novel world with indigenous knowledge and traditional ethics for guidelines; our goal is to retain our belief in and our ability to be ourselves.

The key to decimating a people for good is to instill hopelessness. Economics, formal education and consumer/media culture emphasize, unequivocally, that living seasonal lives is absurd at best. For generations we have been told that the only way we can survive is to fundamentally change who we are and to completely abandon our knowledge and language.

I learned how to be human in kitchens and cornfields.

I learned our responses in times of crisis, and the practical applications of our philosophy to our contemporary place.

Each of us face an increasingly hostile economic, educational and political terrain, often working long hours and having little time for meaningful relationships.

As a Navajo and a novelist I face the parallel beliefs that my existence, as well as my vocation, is obsolete. The skills, philosophy, oral tradition, and languages, as well as the narrative structure and style of the prose I work within, operate inside a land based oral tradition. This writing is meant to be taken in, contemplated and applied to daily life (activities and decisions). I am consciously offering this content in this form as an alternative to the immediacy and disconnection that characterizes the status quo (on and off line). The Axe is not business as usual. My goal is to create a space and an experience similar to the kitchens and cornfields I grew up in where highly complex historical, scientific, philosophical and spiritual knowledge was presented at a high level so that every member of the family/community could partake in the confidence and joy intrinsic in an indigenous upbringing. These complex stories were told on a seasonal bases and it is often not until your fortieth year of hearing and living that individuals really "begin" to understand. What is elemental is the process.

Translation

"That one aspect of Bakhtin's style most inseparable from his personality is the developing idea. Its subtle shifts, redundancies, self-quotations—ultimately, its open-endedness—is the genre in which, and with which, he worked. To translate Bakhtin, I suggest, is therefore not only to translate the ideas (they can be paraphrased) but also to reproduce the sound of the open-ended, self-developing idea. This would be his 'conversation in progress,' his dialogue about dialogue, his interlocution with readers who have still to respond." (Wayne C. Booth, introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, Edited and Translated by Caryl Emerson)

As a writer and language learner I am constantly trying to use the right word in the right way. I also believe, as a language learner, that making mistakes is a form of community service. The more people laugh, the better.

Different language communities take different approaches to correcting mistakes, and maintain radically different stances regarding when you are ready to speak and when you should just learn and listen. I suppose, like child rearing and dog ownership, this really is an artifact of the parent/owner/teacher involved. Some are loving and playful and others authoritative bullies (I include dog owners who let their dogs run and pounce on strangers, because "they love people so much" as members of the authoritative bully kind).

When speaking I don't mind being laughed at, except in English (which is my first language, and the one I am corrected in most, but that's another idea, developing). But in writing I am afraid. I try to get it right and have often asked others (native speakers) to read over work (though none have been willing to, which is another idea, developing), so I don't write some ridiculous twattle that only makes sense to me.

I had a neighbor from Brazil. We'd spend hours talking. I would talk to her in Spanish. And she would talk to me in Portuguese. We'd laugh. We'd be serious. This time, talking together, bridged the 20 year difference in our age, and the dramatic variation of our experience. My wife would sometimes be with us and would answer in English. My friend's daughter would sometimes be with us and she would answer in English too. They found us amusing. When I'd get stuck for a word or phrase I'd ask her daughter to translate. They'd laugh, her daughter and my wife, and tell us both: you are not talking Spanish and you are not talking Portuguese. We have no idea what you are saying.

A few years ago I wrote my first full page in Navajo. It might be a total mess, but it is true to the people speaking (who are a total mess themselves).

I believe in writing—in the oral tradition—taking language for what it is, an opportunity, a translation. But it was only after reading Leslie Silko's Turqouise Ledge that I started to allow myself to write as freely as I speak. To use my language books, my dictionaries, my tapes to work for me in the project of communication. Keeping our languages alive requires us to speak. Keeping them in print requires a willingness to ask others to speak them as well. Most of the work I read is in translation, and every work I read has some French, Spanish, German, Czech, Italian and Polish thrown in, even if only the names, that require pronounciation. I struggle to get my tongue and teeth around them. I feel them. I hear them. I take them in, literally. They, the translators of these works, expect me to know these languages. The languages have enough weight to warrant the expectation—so they go in the translation, un-translated.

I'm writing with that in mind, knowing the languages I work with (learning and speaking) have the same amount of weight in my own life. So they go in too, un-italicized and un-translated.

My developing idea is this: if to translate is not to betray, and all language is communication, then we should make the attempt to reach from one area in language to another. Sometimes those areas are between people, but they are often within a person themselves. Allowing those areas, allowing the elasticity of mind required of reading through, makes translation difficult and rewarding. Attempting an honest experience of these moments between asks more of the world and from ourselves, and requires that we not only speak, but respond.