Education

Four generations

Family of students, teachers watched Diné College grow with the times

By Cindy Yurth
Tséyi' Bureau

FARMINGTON, N.M., April 17, 2008

If the Tony Goldtooth family marched down to the San Juan County Courthouse today and legally changed their name to "The Diné College Family," no one would be terribly surprised.

The Goldtooths have logged four generations of Diné College students on both sides.

Let's start with the youngest generation.

Danielle, Tony's 21-year-old granddaughter, is this year's Miss Diné College, and it's hard to imagine a better choice.

Danielle literally grew up attending the school, with mom Carol.

"I sat in the back row with the other moms, nursing her or whatever I had to do," recalled Carol with a laugh. (Try that at your average university, by the way.)

In fact, Danielle narrowly avoided being born at the college's Shiprock campus.

Carol, then 19, was sitting in psychology class when her water broke. Even though she was a biology major, she wasn't sure what was happening.

"I snuck out the back door and went to find my favorite professor, Ed Garrison," Carol recalled. "His wife Martha drove me to the hospital."

Tony is the one, though, who started this family legacy. Born into a sheepherding family who didn't put much stock in Western-style learning, the young Anthony Goldtooth was nonetheless deposited at a Christian boarding school in Holbrook, Ariz., after his mother came down with tuberculosis and had to enter a sanatorium.

"I didn't know a word of English," Tony recalled. "I spent the whole first year completely lost."

By the time he graduated, however, the tables had turned and he had started to lose some fluency in his native language.

Alarmed, he applied at the brand new Navajo Community College in 1971, when it was still located in two flimsy buildings on the campus of Many Farms High School.

There he encountered a school where not only Navajo language was offered, but also classes like weaving and silversmithing (another connection: the Miss Diné College crown Danielle now sports was crafted years ago by Tony's silversmithing teacher, Kenneth Begay).

"The core of the whole thing was teaching Navajo language, culture and history," Tony said. "That portion of it is special. We designed (the curriculum) so we wouldn't forget who we are."

Tony got his associate's degree, then went on for his bachelor's at the University of New Mexico and came back to NCC to teach Navajo language in 1976. He taught first at the newly constructed main campus in Tsaile, then moved over to the Shiprock campus when it was established in the late 1970s.

His wife, Cora, and son, Anthony Jr., both attended Diné College (the name was changed in the 1980s) as well, and, inspired by their children, both Cora's and Tony's mothers went back to school late in life at the college's Shiprock campus.

Cora's mother, Rebecca Johnson, ended up getting her associate's degree at age 79 and embarked on a career teaching Head Start until her death at the age of 83.

Tony's mother took classes in things she already knew how to do, like weaving, basket-making and mocassin-sewing.

"She just wanted to see what college was like," Tony explained. "Afterward, she said to me, 'Son, thank you for going to college. Now I see how difficult it is. You have to sit there in class, enduring hunger and thirst, paying attention to everything the teacher says.'"

Tony has seen a lot of changes in his 35-year learning and teaching career at Diné College.

Those first few shaky years in the 1970s, even rudimentary supplies like books and chalkboards were hard to come by.

"Now, we're probably the only college in the country that has every computer equipped with a Navajo language font," he said.

He has seen the college change its name from "Navajo" to the more authentic "Diné," seen the dorms gradually become modern and comfortable with successive renovations, and seen the college spread into four satellite locations, aided by televised "distance learning."

The student body has grown from 300 to 1,700, and, Tony said, "the students are a lot younger now."

In the old days, he explained, most Navajos had to interrupt their educations for one reason or another, and many were in their 30s or older by the time they graduated.

On a sadder note, he's seen the level of Navajo language proficiency steadily decline.

"When I first started teaching, most of the students had learned Navajo as their first language," he recalled. "Now, some of them come to school not knowing a word of Navajo. But if you take all the classes and practice at home, you can get pretty good in two or three years."

That brings us to Danielle, who, yep, has taken her granddad's class (so did her great-grandmother, Tony's mother-in-law, whom, Tony jokes, he had to give an "A" to or risk "having my saddle put outside the door").

Danielle at first resisted the family legacy.

"I didn't want to go there, because I knew all the professors so well," she said. "Sometimes, when you know people too well, they can give you a hard time."

She tried Fort Lewis College in Durango and San Juan College in Farmington, but just "never felt at home," and ended up back at Diné.

Occasionally, all the family connections can be a bit stifling.

"My math teacher said, 'Your mom had to take algebra three times too!'" said Danielle with a laugh. "Some of the teachers have had all four of us - my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mom and me. I grew up with their kids. But you know, it's like a little family out here, and family's a good thing."

Information: Diné College students and alumni who want to connect with others may want to check out the college's myspace page, http://groups.myspace.com/dinecollege.

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