S6E12: Re-igniting Our Indigenous Roots

Jean: Where would you want to be a worm? Anywhere in the world.

Harjit: I think I would want to be a worm in the Amazon forest.

Jean: With my limited time as a worm, I would want to be a desert worm and just see how far I got.

Annabah: I think I'd just chill in an apple. Or I'd pick an apple tree and just hang out.

Harjit: What a vibe.

Annabah: Yeah.

Harjit: Yeah, I think I would like that too. You could see the views.

Annabah: Yeah, man.

Harjit: Okay, with that we're going to start the episode. So I'm going to start. Chloe, I'm starting. Hi, everyone. Welcome to "Bundle Of Hers." I'm really, really excited today. We have some awesome guests. They're also my friends, which makes this even more exciting. I've had amazing conversations with them and I'm excited about the topic we're going to talk about, which is the resistance of identities that are actively being erased or have been erased through history. And their names are Jean and Annabah. I'm going to have them do a little bit more of a thorough introduction. So Jean, maybe let's start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Jean: Hello, friends and enemies. My name is Jean. I really love the color black, gold, and red, and green. I'm a Zamboni operator. The conversation that we're about to have is really important to me and Annabah and we're really excited to talk about it. And I think we also know it's a rough topic, so just be aware, listeners. You might hear some tears, ugly crying. I'm not going to hide the way that I ugly cry

Harjit: As you never should, because that is who you are. Annabah?

Annabah: Hello. My name is Annabah Glasser. You just heard from my little sister Jean. I originally met Harjit in my first year of medical school and she was a fourth-year medical student, hosting an event to welcome a lot of the individuals who are underrepresented in medicine to a dinner to invite all of us to exist in a safe space. And so our friendship has bloomed so much over the past four years. I'm now a fourth-year medical student. Just matched into general surgery. Jean and I have . . . became friends with Harjit and many of the people on "Bundle of Hers," and it's I think one of the reasons why we're really connected to this podcast and these particular individuals, is just the importance of owning your identity even amid some of the barriers that people face. And for some context, Jean and I are half Navajo women. So our mom was born and raised on a reservation outside of Ship Rock, New Mexico. And it's a big part of our identity, but also unique in that my mom had a very interesting upbringing and we've had a very interesting upbringing living in Sandy, Utah, for the majority of our lives.

Harjit: Our theme this year is how we find power in our identities and we can't really find that power unless we're really able to develop those identities. And I think it takes a lot to have freedom of choice and a freedom of knowing what really matters to you and who you really are and where you come from. So I'm really grateful that you both will be sharing that with us today. So I kind of wanted to start out with asking you a little bit about your navigation of identities that really stood out to you in your life since a child to older adult, and kind of what is the biggest identity right now that you have been navigating currently?

Annabah: So I guess just as a lot of people hopefully know that the larger Native American populations across the United States have largely culturally been erased or very little is known about them to the larger public. And I feel very fortunate in that my mom, who was born and raised on a reservation outside of Ship Rock, had exposed us to her home and her family and some of her cultural traditions when we were really young. But I have to be honest, I think when I was younger I was just like, "Oh, this is just where Mom lived and this is just where Dad lived." My dad's from upstate New York. He's a White male and he comes from a place where there are a lot of other White males. And so I think we just, when we were younger, chopped it up pretty simply to like, "Oh, Mom grew up here, Dad grew up here." But as we got older and especially living in Sandy, Utah, which is a pretty homogenous White population, with a pretty large Mormon community as well, my sister and I were pretty . . . I guess I wouldn't say outcast, but we definitely had our differences compared to the people around us. And I think as we got older, the most notable thing was that, "Oh, I got tanner in the summer." Or we would be running around playing soccer, and I remember there was a little boy who commented, "Oh, your skin looks way more red when you run around." And I didn't think anything of it. I was just like, "Well, yeah, when I get to run around, my face gets red." And he's like, "But yours is different." And so I knew that there was a sense of othering or difference since I was pretty young, and I think those differences just got more drastic as I began to enter spaces where there very clearly continued to not be very many people who identified as Native American, especially not Navajo women. And so it's tough because I think in my class there are not any other indigenous individuals and . . . I don't know. Just the whole process of getting into medical school is really complicated and difficult and taxing, emotional. It's just hard no matter who you are. But then to feel like you're walking into a space where no one looks like you or no one has a similar experience, or you assume these things, it's really hard to kind of break out of that isolation. You have to be really proactive in doing that. And I think that imposter syndrome ends up being very real too. I am going into general surgery, and for a long time I never thought that I'd be able to do that just because I had never heard of another Navajo female general surgeon. Thankfully, going through this process, I've met some and I've, like, read books about some and it's a little bit less isolating, but it's kind of crazy to think that I can only name three off the top of my head.

Harjit: Something that really struck my attention, Annabah, is kind of this navigation through life with that identity of yours not being a forefront, and something that I see often with indigenous communities, this kind of visibility or invisibility. I guess I want to understand a little bit more. Growing up, was this something that was often talked about in your house of being Navajo, of being indigenous? Maybe let's have Jean jump in here.

Jean: Yeah. As Annabah was talking about how growing up there is the visible part that you just can't escape from, that story of that little boy, I had never heard that story, but I remember growing up . . . And Annabah and I had this conversation later on in life. I was always wanting darker hair and darker skin. Even now my cousins always say, "Oh I didn't know we had a light skin in the family." Which to be fair I am very white-passing more so than Annabah definitely. I remember Annabah telling me that for picture days . . . at school, you'll have picture days, and Annabah told me that Mom would not want her to be outside as much because she didn't want her to be as dark while I got the complete opposite, that I need to be tanner. And that she always very much said that, "Oh, people with darker eyes are the most mysterious." And I always wanted to be that. I wanted to be darker in every way possible. And then Annabah told me, "I wanted to have lighter hair," and all this stuff. So there was this like big difference that I don't think we realized growing up. And for me, I think that a lot of the native features that I get aren't based on my skin color, but more of maybe my bone structure, or some people have even said my eyes. But a lot of people in my life, they have never really commented on anything probably because I am light-skinned. I am more white-passing. And so once Annabah and I got closer . . . And this would've been when I was in college and she got out of college, we started having these conversations. And growing up, I felt like we knew about Navajo cultures to some point, but growing up in a predominantly LDS environment . . . Even though we weren't LDS, we still grew up going to Catholic school, so there weren't many Brown people or just many people of color in our friend groups. But one thing that actually came to mind right now, when I got my first period, it was Christmas Eve, I was 11 years old. And I don't know why we called it this, but I said "Mom, Dad, I got my grandma." And then my dad said, "Please don't tell me this." And my mom said, "Oh my gosh, we need to have a party." And I thought, "What?" It's a Kinaaldá. A Kinaaldá is a three-day celebration for a child or a girl going to be a woman or getting their first period. I didn't have any Navajo friends. I, at that age, I didn't want to talk about puberty. I went to Catholic school. No one talked about that kind of stuff. So I thought if I was going to have a party, that would be the lamest party with no one there except my family. And then recently I get a call from my cousin and he asked me, "Is it true that Navajo people have period parties?" And I'm like, "They give me crap for being the light skin, yet I know more." And I hate to say it, when you are biracial, I think you're more likely to learn more about your dark skin culture if you have a dark skin mother, which is what we have. While my cousin who is older than me, who prides himself on being Navajo, had never heard of this because his mother's White and his father's Navajo. Navigating it is very different for other people, and I saw that. I still see that through me, through Annabah, and through my cousins. So yeah, light-skinned or dark-skinned, it's a different journey is what I realized. And I think a lot of people try to judge the fact that I wasn't raised on the rez, but I've met people on the rez who don't know Navajo as well. It's a very different journey. So through all of this, I think there was a part of it where navigating it I thought I was better or I was superior because I was getting more into my culture as I got older, but upset with the color of my skin that it wasn't dark enough. It's going to be a continuing process. I feel like I'm healing my inner child by realizing, "Hey, I don't have to be as dark as Annabah or as dark as my cousins to really get to a good place where I want to learn more about my culture."

Harjit: I really appreciate that you talk about the complexities and nuances that people experience. Like, maybe these cousins that are on the reservation, they are also battling with their own internalized racism, sexism that exists and is prevalent in all of us, right? I also really appreciate that you talk about wanting to continue to keep and hold your identities that feel right for you. And I wanted to ask both of you, how do you guys practice staying visible as Navajo women? Because I think one thing I really appreciate about indigenous cultures is how matriarchal indigenous cultures are and how much power there is in women. And it sounds like there's the two of you and you have your mom and your father, but it's mostly a woman-led kind of family. I wonder a lot about what kind of things do you really hold onto in your culture, in your identities that kind of allow you to navigate your jobs, your personal lives powerfully? Because I feel like a lot of the strongest parts of me come from my identity of being Punjabi and that my love for equity and justice comes from me being a Sikh. So I wanted to know what parts do you hold onto tightly and showcase in the way you live?

Annabah: Yeah, I think we both have probably different answers to this, but answers that we feel really strongly about. And I think you absolutely hit the nail on the head in identifying that there are a lot of indigenous cultures that have a maternalistic focus. And that is very much true of Navajo as well. That's part of the reason why there is a Kinaaldá, a celebration of womanhood as you're growing into puberty and all of this stuff. And it's more public and it's like it's admired. It's a big part of coming-of-age sorts of ceremonies. Jean kind of touched on this a little bit and I still think that to an extent I am white-passing, but at the same time I think that one of the pieces of my Navajo identity that I've held onto was given to me at birth. So I kind of have a little bit of a cop-out answer, but Annabah is a Navajo name. So Bah is a traditional Navajo ending for a woman, and it means someone who has been to battle. So that also kind of reflects the power of the woman and the matriarch in Navajo culture and as someone who is powerful and can be feared and fierce. And I think one way that I've continued to hold onto that is just getting more comfortable correcting people when they say my name too. For a long time it was really taxing when I would say, "Hey, my name's Annabah." And people would automatically say, "Oh, hi Annabel." I think after a while when I was younger I just kind of gave up a little because it just wasn't worth the effort and I felt like people that were willing to kind of skip out or just . . . Not skip out, but weren't willing to ask for clarification, probably weren't going to be people that I got along with anyway from an open-mindedness standpoint. But even now sometimes I have difficulty correcting people, but I really try to be proactive about it even in a medical setting too. So when I start a rotation, I try to be very clear, like, "My name is Annabah." And if people call me Annabel, I'm like, "No, not quite. This is what my name is." Or even little things like if I'm getting a coffee order at a cafe, I don't give them my short name. I sometimes would say Anna when I was younger. I'd be like, "No, my name's Annabah. This is how you spell it." And it usually prompts discussion about, "Oh, that's really interesting. I've never heard that before. Where does it come from?" And I like being able to talk to people about that and share. This is a part of my identity and this is part of a culture that majority of people who had never heard my name would have no idea what it meant. And it imparted some kind of cultural nugget about this is a cool thing about the Navajo culture that someone can now take away as well.

Harjit: Yes, I love your name and that's amazing that it means someone who's gone through battle, because, Annabah, I see you as kind of a Navajo woman who's going into surgery where there's probably . . . You can count them on your finger, on one hand, how many other Navajo women surgeons there are. And that spirit of always in the battle in an empowering way is something that I see in you. I didn't know that was what your name meant. So that's really cool and it makes me happy that that's what it means. What about you, Jean? What kind of things do you hold tightly from your culture? What kind of values that kind of guide the way you live your life, be it in your personal or professional life?

Jean: Well, I do take pride in my apparently high cheekbones.

Harjit: Yes, they're beautiful.

Jean: Oh, I know. Thank you. Well, I mean, with that I try to see . . . Background to this, I was a photography major at the University of Utah and I got to learn about photographers back in the day and when they took photographs of Indigenous First Nations people. Now, at first, I thought, "Awesome. Great. These must be amazing people," when in reality they're selling these photographs to very, very rich other White people because they have this fetishization. They do now. They definitely did then. In the end, I see these photographs and they're still people. They're still people of different tribes. I see my grandmother or shimásání, I see my shicheii, I see my shimá, I see people that I love and care about through these photographs. I see the reservation. And so when I saw those photographs, I decided that I wouldn't be as hard on myself about my own physical features, whether that be my chubby cheeks or my nose that I have a love-hate relationship with. But more than that, because I was a photo major, I started making Navajo-inspired work. I would do critiques on museums that have Navajo rugs or any indigenous tribe rugs in their museums, kind of clapping back at them, if you will. A really important project I did was called "Stolen Sisters." It's about missing and murdered indigenous women. And through that, I found images from my mom's book of old photographs and was able to put them into a small book. So I got them scanned. I took photographs down on the reservation and I took videos on the reservation and I added audio, which included me speaking something in English and then followed that with video with my mother speaking Navajo. So in the video, you can tell that she's saying what I'm saying, but in the language itself. And I was lucky enough to have my mother Linda [May 00:19:00] Badoni Glasser and my Navajo professor Anthony Shirley from the University of Utah . . . I love that I was able to collaborate with them. And Anthony Shirley is amazing. Also, talking with my mom, my mom's pretty . . . I wouldn't say closed off. She's just very living in the moment, living for her daughters now in the future that she doesn't really rely on the past. It's not that she doesn't care for it. I think there are some things that she just doesn't want us to go through, so she just doesn't talk about her past. That is something that I think a lot of BIPOC people with BIPOC parents . . . they went through something that we're lucky we didn't have to go through. But seeing her excited and emotional, which she really isn't a very emotional person, but when I was able to speak with her she realized, "Oh, man, I've lost it. I've lost some of it." So I'd practice with her. And so every time I see her, I always say [foreign language 00:20:06], which says, "Hello, Mom. What are you up to?" I mean, I'm sure that my rhythm and my inflection, my accent is all wrong. I'm a pretty blunt nasally speaker as it is, but she's willing to practice. And also, the Native American Trading Post is a place that I really like to go visit and shop at here. It's where my mom used to take me when I was younger occasionally, but now that I'm not all the way in Sandy, I can go see it more often and go there and shop local native jewelry. And so I brought her there a couple of weeks ago and she said, "They sell mutton here? They sell mutton?" And so we were able to make mutton stew and fry bread. And she saw all the artwork and she was looking at all the jewelry, and it's really wonderful to see her with people that look like her that also are the same ethnicity. So one huge thing is the fact that I may not agree with my mother on everything. I mean, we butt heads, but there's no denying that we both have that Dené in us, her more so than me. But that is probably one of the biggest similarities we have. And I understand if she doesn't want to talk about some things, but if I'm willing to put effort in, I think she's willing to get some happiness back out of it. And I don't think she ever really saw me or Annabah ever considering to even think about getting closer to our culture apart from family reunions down in the Four Corners area. So that's a huge thing, is being closer with my mom no matter how much we butt heads.

Harjit: And I just kind of want to shout out to your mom. We've talked about her a little bit, but it sounds like she was a woman who lived on the reservation and then had to go to boarding school because of racism. It makes sense. A lot of probably why she doesn't share what she's gone through is because there's a lot of trauma there, but also I think it's super powerful that you both are excited to learn more about the culture and she feels like you guys are healing each other together. One thing that you said, Jean, that I wanted to touch on is you used the word BIPOC. And I've been thinking about this term a lot. So BIPOC stands for Black, indigenous, people of color. I think the word black is separate because Black people have their own histories in America. I think the word people of color is a more bigger category because that's different. But then there's also the word indigenous. And I have noticed that due to colonization, a lot of indigenous people did get killed. So I think the uplifting of indigenous voices is something that is super important, but also difficult in a lot of spaces. So I just wanted to ask you both a little bit about that experience of you are Brown people, you're people of color, but you're also indigenous and your stories are very different than a lot of people, and none of us could understand. So did that feel really isolating growing up? Is it something you're still thinking about? Because your histories are very different than people who've immigrated here, right?

Annabah: When we're in fourth grade in Utah, there's a part of our curriculum that talks about Utah history specifically. I remember only a part of the time being dedicated to the Navajo culture, and when I would go to the textbooks and try and read about it, there were only like two pages, three pages. And there weren't a lot of other people around that could say, "Oh, yeah, I know what it feels like to have . . ." I don't know. At recess have the White kids and the Brown kids fight over me to be on their team. And Jean and I have had a discussion about this recently. When there, especially in recent years, have been a lot of social unrest and a lot of injustices enacted upon people of color, Jean and I obviously mourn and grieve, but we also recognize that we don't always identify with the population who is a victim of those horrible tragedies and terrors. And she and I have confided in each other how it's hard to name and place what we're feeling because we don't really have anyone else to relate to on it. For that, I'm really grateful that I have her because it's less isolating to have someone else in my life that has more or less the same experience and exposure to very different cultures. But it's something that we still really struggle with. And I think a lot of the conclusion that I've come to and part of what motivates me and motivates Jean to invest in understanding our culture is recognizing that, like Jean had mentioned before, how we identify with our culture is going to be very different from a lot of other ethnicities and of different backgrounds. But it could even be different from our cousins who have had even a different upbringing just because they were raised by my mom's brother who didn't have a Kinaaldá, or he had also really traumatizing experiences from being deployed in the military. There are so many confounding factors that we can't subscribe a one-size-fits-all to how an identity can resonate with us, especially if it's going to change over time and build and become more beautiful and grow. And so I think I've tried to come to a place of comfort with the fact . . . or contentness, if that's even a word, with the fact that it is going to change and grow and continue to be hard to understand my identity and to make sure that it still stays as much alive in me today, and maybe even more in the upcoming years too. One really difficult thing about the indigenous history too is that the way it's talked about in textbooks and the way it's talked about in the public makes it seem like . . . It almost feels like the erasure has already occurred.

Harjit: That's a very important and powerful statement because yes, totally it feels . . . And it wasn't even a long time ago, but it feels like, "Oh, it was thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago."

Annabah: And I think that's what Jean talked about too in going over all of these pictures. It's almost like this story is romanticized and fetishized as if it were an ancient tale of people long, long ago. No, actually these people really do exist. They're still people who went to indigenous boarding schools and still live each day with the repercussions of the trauma from that. And I think that disconnect is also what contributes to the isolation. I meant to say that earlier, but I went off on a tangent. But that was another important thing I wanted to. . .

Harjit: No, I'm so happy you added that.

Jean: I also wanted to add, anyone listening to this that might be . . . who might not even be indigenous but feels like maybe you're more alone in this than me because I have Annabah here with me . . . Literally sitting next to me, so if I need to cry I just grab her thigh. Oh my god, that rhymed. But I mean, to anyone listening to this that feels like they're alone, I know it can be hard, but the people who really care about you will be there. Personally, living in Utah, I don't really have any Brown friends. I met Harjit and Lena through Annabah, and I'm so grateful for that. But I've never been also really ever been called Brown until I was working in South Lake Tahoe last year when I worked with friends, and our last day one of them said, "I'm going to miss my Brown girls. I'm going to miss our little . . . the Brown friends unite." And I kind of just stood there and I thought, "No one's ever said that about me." I've never felt very connected to people who are mixed race or . . . It feels really nice. And if you ever feel alone, "Bundle of Hers" is a great place to listen to and feel at home. And personally, if you ever want to get more in touch with your culture that you feel like that you've been separated out with, Annabah's done amazing and able to use her career to do it too. I personally kind of like to do crafts, so luckily I have my mom around who's going to teach me how to weave rugs, and I'm really excited for it. But try to reach out to some people. I mean, I'm sure there will be people there for you.

Harjit: Again, I'm super grateful you both are talking about this because it is something that I often think about, right? Being indigenous isn't similar to being an immigrant. It's not similar to being Black. Each story in history is different and it's even different within families, which I think you both touched on. It is really important to listen and understand and really get where people's stories come from. I think I'm a little speechless because I'm just really grateful you both are here

Jean: And Harjit, we love you so much.

Harjit: I also have two other sisters, so I love seeing you guys' connection, and I think it helps with identity formation as well. My older sister would always tell us the importance and the values that we learned growing up as Punjabis or as Sikhs. And so I think it's really cool that you both are able to resist that together. Again. I'm really happy that you were able to come onto the podcast. Is there anything else you guys want to add before I close up?

Annabah: Please reach out to me. I'd love to see some more indigenous ladies get into medicine. Oh, I did actually have one other thing. Sorry. I have one other thing. If you haven't read "The Scalpel and The Silver Bear," that moved mountains in terms of being able to identify and name feelings that I didn't even know that existed in me and I just . . . Just read the book. It's beautiful. Harjit likes it too.

Harjit: Yes, I do. I love it. I actually read it in . . . My older sister was going into medicine, so she read it. I was in high school and I read it, and I think that's when I started learning a little bit more about indigenous history that also I didn't know about because the schools don't do a good job educating us. So that's when I learned and discovered a lot about indigenous history, was because of that book. And it was very, very powerful to me. So if you're indigenous or not, I think it's a great book to read and super powerful. So thank you for shouting that out. Well, with that, I'm really, again, grateful and thankful that you both were able to be here and share your story with us and also continue to resist and show visibility to your identities. Please listen to us on any podcasting platforms. You can follow us @bundleofhers. As you know, we have new pins that say "Power From Identity." So if you have a story about someone who you know is indigenous or if you're indigenous yourself and want to share something on our Instagram, please do that and we can get you guys a pin. Thanks, Annabah. Thanks, Jean.

Annabah: Thank you.

Jean: Thank you.

Harjit: Whoop-whoop. Okay, bye.