It’s important to do as much as I can to publicize the ideas of language, the importance of family, the importance of history, and also the importanc… - Luci Tapahonso

There are a lot of stories like that, about how words have power that can create and heal. Also destroy. After something is said, the people who heard it will always remember it. You have to think about the words you say.

I try to accept as many invitations as I can with the idea that probably people have not met another Navajo before. They don’t really have any idea except maybe the stereotypical kinds of ideas of American Indians. For whoever comes behind me in the next two years, I want to establish what the position entails, and that is a challenge.

The idea of poetry in our Navajo world, speaking — Ya’ jił’tí’i’gí’ — Diníbizaad — is related to the whole — one’s whole life, the whole community. It’s not separated the way poetry is in Western society.