Tavish Brown grew up in Naschitti, N.M., located between Gallup and Shiprock on the Navajo reservation. While still a student at Newcomb High School, where he graduated in 2005, Brown knew what he wanted to do: study the Navajo language. Brown is the UNM undergraduate recipient of the 2007 Robert W. Young Scholarship, which supports students studying Native American linguistics.
Photo: Tavish Brown
“Barbara Howard was my high school Navajo teacher. She told me that she was getting old and that I should learn Navajo and come back and take her spot,” Brown recalled.
Howard also encouraged Brown to form a Navajo dance group at the school, which he did. Called T’iis Nideesghizh Bitsoόké, or “Grandchildren of Newcomb,” the group was influenced by the Dinétah Navajo Dancers; Brown is now one of their performers.
Brown speaks highly of the Navajo language program at UNM. “Ms. [Roseann] Willink helps us with difficult words, tongue twister words. She breaks them down, explains their history. She also explains the difference between some Navajo words used in New Mexico and those used by Navajos in Arizona,” he said.
Willink also helps her students to learn and understand old Navajo words that are not in use today, Brown said. He noted that the Navajo equivalent of the phrase, “let’s go,” has evolved from “tsotti’” to “tį́.”
“People who are fluent notice that others speak in a chopped up or abbreviated form. Only medicine men still speak the language in its full form,” Brown said.
Brown said that his parents speak Navajo, as does his older sister Tamara, a student at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His younger sister, Kendra, at Newcomb, doesn’t have the language fluency either. Brown said that mispronouncing words in Navajo can be embarrassing because they can be “bad words.”
The beauty of learning Navajo at UNM, he said, is that he is learning it while also learning more about culture and tradition. “Words are tied into ceremony. You can’t understand the words without their cultural context,” he said.
He intended to spend part of the winter break working with a medicine man.
“I’ve already learned so much from him. Young people who follow him know the language,” Brown said.
Brown was raised in the Christian faith, but he’s learning that the language needs to be taught within the native belief system. Following his studies at UNM, Brown plans to go to Diné College to learn how to teach. Teachers there, he said, are medicine healers.
Brown said that the use of technology and exposure to non-native language, culture and tradition have hurt native language acquisition among young people. “Many people prefer the modern world and choose to learn in non-native ways,” Brown said.
Brown follows his own path, the well-worn path of his ancestors.
Media Contact: Carolyn Gonzales, (505) 277-5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu
Posted by scarr at January 22, 2008 03:02 PM