Spring 1864,
I look around as we are forced out of our land and all I see is isolation. The white man can only see a white culture. The whites are forcing me and my tribe to walk on this long to New Mexico. There isn’t nearly enough food or water supply for the Navajo people on this horrible trek across the whites so called land. My father has fallen ill and my mother already has passed on to the other world. She is with our ancestors in the sky.
The white men keep talking about how being different isn’t okay. Being illiterate isn’t okay. How our skin color isn’t accepted in their culture but if they educate us and make us dress like them, make us work like them, make us live like them, their society will accept us more than if we continue living the way we do. The fact is, we live the way we do for a reason. We the Navajo people are Nomadic hunters for a reason. It’s the way our ancestors lived and now the way we live.. We are who we are and no white man who thinks he can tell us what to do, what to say, what to wear and where to live will ever change what our past has given us.
My father always said stick to your roots. Always do what you feel in your heart is right. And this long forced walk to Fort summer, doesn’t feel right in my heart. The white men are trying to form us into something that will fit into their society, the truth is, that will never happen. We will always try to stick to our roots. The roots our ancestors have planted that have grown into a beautiful tree called, the Navajo tribe.