You Are Not Navajo

You Are Not Navajo
by Johnny Rustywire
I dreamed I was standing in an old pueblo,
a large room with three windows above me.
My father, his father and my great grandfather
were standing there talking to me.

My father told me,
"You are not Navajo, son,
as you do not know everything I knew."
I did not know what to say.
My grandfather standing in the space above said to him,
"You, then, my son are not Navajo,
because you could not do all the things I did in my day."

My father's grandfather, said to them,
"How can this be?
Don't you know that I stretched out my hands to you
when you were still inside me?
I spoke of you in the wind.

I reached out my hand to you
through all that is around us
and in the stars;
and I touched your young spirits with my heart,
telling you about all those that came before.
This is your land and people.

I survived to give you life,
so that you would walk this land.
You are my children;
you are me, and I am you;
and there can be no difference.

Listen!
You can hear me in the whistling wind,
for that is my song to you in the high places,
the mesas, the valleys and in the flat lands,
and where ever you go.
You are born for me, Navajo."

Now I talk to my grandchildren and their children,
for they are in me still.
I reach out and speak to the wind
so that they will hear me one day
in all these places they will walk.

"You are Navajo,
and know that your grandfathers talked to you
before you were ever here.
Listen my children,
and forgive my slow ways of talking."

rustywire