NAC youth keynote speaker: What cultural gap?

A Native American Church chapter president's plea last week for NAC members to close the "peyote cultural gap" between youth and elders had at least one youth asking, "What cultural gap?"

Ashkii Hatathlie of Kirtland, N.M., the 17-year-old keynote speaker for Azee' Bee Nahagha's annual Youth Day here June 26, said he was "not shocked, exactly, but definitely surprised" to hear ABN Northern Chapter President Leo Johnson Jr. speak of a "contemporary peyote culture" where respect is lessening, young people leave the ceremonial teepee to smoke cigarettes and peyote is used outside the ceremony.

"Maybe I'm unaware of these things because when I'm at a ceremony, I'm focusing on the ceremony, but I have never seen someone in my age group go outside to smoke a cigarette," Hatathlie declared in an interview after his keynote address.

"A language gap I can definitely see," he said, "because a lot of young people aren't learning Navajo and may not understand all of the songs. But a cultural gap? I just don't see it."

Hatathlie did, however, like Johnson's proposal to create youth councils within each chapter of the Navajo Nation's NAC organization to give young people more of a voice within the ABN. In fact, he thought it should go further.

"If we're going to have a youth council, let's have it at the executive level," Hatathlie proposed. "If you start it at the local level, everyone's going to be going, 'What do we do now?' We need a model."

If the ABN is truly concerned about involving the youth, perhaps they should schedule the next youth day on a Saturday, Hatathlie suggested.

"A lot of Navajo youth take advantage of the summer employment programs, and can't take a day off to come to the convention," he said.

Hatathlie himself had to miss a day of work with the diabetes education program at Kirtland's local IHS facility to deliver the keynote address.

Hatathlie's mother, Belinda Hatathlie, said if there is a cultural gap, the elders have only themselves to blame.

The NAC "is carried on through families," she said. "It's just like any religion: You teach your kids your faith, and you teach them how to respect the faith."

Whether or not there's a cultural gap, young NAC members are dealing with issues their grandparents never imagined, said law school graduate Eugenia Charles-Newton in her talk, "Legal Perspectives on Azee' Bee Nahagha," during the conference.

Over the last four decades, NAC members have painstakingly won the legal right to practice their religion, but allowing unauthorized persons to partake of the peyote sacrament could erode that right, Charles-Newton cautioned.

Under current federal legislation, only Native Americans with a certificate of Indian blood from a federally recognized tribe are authorized to consume peyote, and only within the context of religious ceremonies.

"Be careful!" Charles-Newton said. "If a white person wants to come into your meeting, you have to explain to them that you want to protect the NAC for the future, for your grand kids."

Likewise Native Americans from tribes that are only state-recognized, and even full-blooded Indians who can't obtain a CIB because they are a mixture of too many different tribes and can't fulfill the blood quantum for any one tribe.

One roadman protested that his congregation includes an Anglo who has been married into a Navajo NAC family for 30 years.

"How do I explain to this person that they can't attend our meetings?" he asked.

"Tell them, 'We didn't write the law. We may not agree with the law. But we have to comply with it until we can get it changed,'" Charles-Newton replied.

Working to change legislation governing peyote use is one of the tasks ahead for NAC youth, should they choose to pursue it, Charles-Newton said.

The young NAC members who turned out for the conference seemed more than equal to that task.

Hatathlie, a clean-cut cum-laude graduate who wore a necktie to the convention in spite of the 90-degree heat, has already proven an excellent ambassador for the religion. He won a berth in the National History Fair two years ago with his project on the history of the NAC.

When he went to nationals to present his project, the Diné teen was confronted by some people who objected to what they saw as the NAC's advocacy of drug use.

Hatathlie calmly told them, "Read my display, and then I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have."

"Once they read about the church and our legal struggles, they usually had a different attitude," he said.

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