Abstract
Indigenous story is about place and our orientation to the place(s) we live through and in. This essay is about Diné (Navajo) identity and its entanglements with the authority of words and the politics of voice within the academy. It is about how voice or narrative are political acts that ground Indigenous peoples in land and territory. In Diné communities, there are ongoing discussions regarding the politics of authority and representation in the erasure of Indigenous voices in academic spaces. Such academic erasure has ripple effects into the ongoing contestation of land and belonging. These ripple effects fuel identity politics among Diné people on the community level. I argue that Diné people themselves are erased and the everyday narrations of our realities and experiences through these normalized academic processes. In addressing those academic processes, I draw attention to another framework for identity politics that encourages and supports not only our voices as Diné people but upholds our intellectual sovereignty and claims to land. I engage narrative to bring forward an understanding that our relationships to words and story extend beyond our tongues.
Highlights
This is a story about identity and how I have come to understand myself as a Diné person.There are collisions of histories, ideologies, institutional influences and subsequent policies that shape the world of Indigenous identity
These sites of impact demonstrate how multidimensional and complex the world(s) of identity politics is for Indigenous people
In the world of Western education, teachings are not embedded into land; people are not embedded into land (Wildcat et al 2014; Simpson 2014). These practices of alienation continue to carry on in academic spaces, where the politics of voice still influence the materiality over representation but the very claims and authority to speak governed by land itself
Summary
This is a story about identity and how I have come to understand myself as a Diné person.There are collisions of histories, ideologies, institutional influences and subsequent policies that shape the world of Indigenous identity. In this way, both simultaneously make me accountable and ground my authority through my understanding of their relationship to land and people. The politics of voice for Diné, in my view, are guided by relationship: to land but to people and kinship.
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