Caroline Wilson Speaks

In this episode, Ranger Dan spoke with GCC employee Caroline Wilson about her experiences growing up at Grand Canyon with her grandparents. She shares how her Diné culture has played an important role throughout her life and even mentioned some tasty snacks you can find around the Navajo reservation.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Caroline Wilson Speaks

[Caroline]

I tell my grandkids and my kids, I said, you can't dwell on what things that might have happened to you, what happened to your people a long time ago. It'll just bring you down. So now, you have to look forward.

Look for the good. Only for the good. Yes, remember your history, but look ahead.

That's what I teach the young people and those that I love.

[Meranden]

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Meranden.

[Ranger Eliana]

And I'm Ranger Eliana.

[Meranden]

In this episode, Ranger Dan spoke with Grand Canyon Conservancy employee, Caroline Wilson, about what it was like growing up at Grand Canyon with her grandparents.

[Ranger Eliana]

She describes what her childhood was like, from carting wool with her grandma to spending her high school summers working at the hotels in the Grand Canyon village and the town of Tusayan.

[Meranden]

She also talks about some very interesting delicacies you can find on the Navajo reservation.

[Ranger Eliana]

As always, thank you for tuning in to today's episode. Season 2 has been filled with so many amazing episodes, and we're glad to be sharing them with you all.

[Meranden]

And here is Caroline Wilson.

[Caroline]

Hey. Good evening, everybody. My name is Caroline Wilson.

Bighorse is my maiden name. First of all, I'm an elder. I call myself an elder of my people and of my family.

So I'm a grandmother, a mother, and a wife. So it's good to look at people and know who you're talking to. And I figured that's what I would do this evening.

So how many of you know about the Navajo people? Okay. So I want to teach you a word.

Some of my coworkers already know the word. In the South Pacific during World War II, they used our language, the code talker language. And I want to teach you one word, and that way we'll greet one another.

How's that? And so this is not a code word, but it's a greeting word, okay? So I'm going to say it to you, and I want you to say it to me, okay?

Yá'át'ééh. Yá'át'ééh. One more time.

Yá'át'ééh. Yá'át'ééh. Nice to meet all of you also.

And welcome to the Grand Canyon. And I so appreciate Dan for being here. He's kind of a support, and also my coworkers.

Thank you for your support (Speaks Navajo). So it's very nice. The canyon is a blessing to me right now.

I was working at another place, and I was kind of stagnated in my job. I wanted to do something else. And for some reason, I was looking through the newspaper one day, and I saw a conservancy ad in there.

And I didn't know what a conservancy was. I didn't know the meaning. And as I have come to learn what the meaning is about, it's to raise funds for the Grand Canyon.

And in a way that we sell products here at the Watchtower, and 84% of that money goes back into programs that are made available to you that visit us here every day. And I so appreciated that. And I've been here for probably 2 years and 4 months, going on 5 months.

So it's a wonderful place, and I'm sure you agree with me because you're here today to experience this awesome site. And Dan was asking me, what is it that you gained from knowing about the National Park? When I was young, I remember one experience when I was young, maybe around 6 or 7.

My grandfather, he was a medicine man. And he would go out and gather herbs. I didn't know what they were.

So my grandma and him, my grandma and my grandpa, for some reason, I just got in and we came up here. I don't remember which area. And then I followed them.

I guess he was looking for a certain herb. And even though I was really young, I noticed the reverence that he had. And so he went to a certain bush, and then he stood there for a bit and he said a prayer.

And then he finally knelt down on the ground and he reverently took some of those herbs out of the ground. And then he showed me without telling me that this is how you treat plants, especially the ones that you're going to use in ceremonies, and maybe the type that maybe you're going to eat also. And so I remember that to this day.

And then my grandmother, she was a practitioner also. She also gathered herbs. In Navajo, they call her a (Navajo word).

It means to bring children into the world. It wasn't a job because she just knew what to do. And so back in the day, they didn't have hospitals.

And so sometimes a mother would have difficulty giving birth, and then they would send for her. And then she would use these herbs to relieve the pain, and she was able to turn babies also. This was my grandmother Grace.

And so I feel inadequate right now because I didn't learn those things from her. I wasn't able to spend 24 hours with her for the last 67 years, but I was able to appreciate what she did and how I was able to experience her teachings. She was also a weaver also.

And so these are two great people that I've known when I was little. So I'm sharing that with you. It's very personal.

My mother. My mother is Julia Curley, and there's 10 of us that she raised. I'm the second to the oldest.

My brother is the oldest, and then I have siblings. One of them is sitting right here. And so very awesome lady.

When we were little, we didn't have a vehicle to get around, and I didn't know at the time that we were very poor. We didn't know that, or I didn't know that. So the way to get to the hospital, to the grocery stores, we'd go on the road and hitchhike, and then somebody would just pick us up and then take us to the grocery store or to the hospital.

And then that's what I remember. We would either live in a hogan, a tent, or maybe just a shed structure. At that time, we would move with our livestock, my grandparents' livestock.

And Dan was asking me about that. And here, up in the high desert, it doesn't rain constantly, and sometimes you'll have a drought for maybe two years. So you had to move where the water was, where the feed for your animals were.

So we moved great distances, and that's why we lived like a nomadic life. But there was a lot to learn. My grandmother wove, so I must have been about five.

She would say, Here, I want you to card this wool. Here, I'm just a little kid. And the carding things are about this big.

And so you'd be sitting there carding and scratching your arm. But it was something that you'd learn. And you would make a pile of it, and she would look at it.

And she would pick this one out, and then she'd say, Redo these. And you would be sitting there with your arms scratched up. But it was a learning experience.

From carding wool, then you did the spinning. You would sit there, and you would spin the wool. I only got to that point.

I didn't learn to weave. Thank goodness. I mean, there are other people that are really good weavers, but I didn't learn.

So at the age of 10, my mother was introduced to a religion. Missionaries came to see her. I'm not sure why she did it, but I'm sure she probably saw an opportunity where her kids could be educated.

And so we were sent away to school to Southern California, to Los Angeles and San Diego. That's where we learned to speak English fluently. That's how we learned to mingle with everybody.

We lived with different families, but the families that I stayed with, they were my second family. And I appreciate what they did for me, and it made me the person that I am today.

[Ranger Dan]

Thank you for that, Caroline. Those are great words and excellent things for people to understand. Just growing up, you've had so many experiences that you just mentioned.

We could touch upon all of that tonight, and you'd be here until the moon is out and over the horizon. You were talking about how long your family's been in this area earlier. We got back into the 1800s, talking about your great-grandparents.

You're stable today. You're in one location, right? But your great-grandparents, they moved. They moved across this landscape. Can you tell everyone how they moved across this landscape?

[Caroline]

Sure. So the Navajo people, they're a matrilineal society. Everything goes through the ladies, through the women. So our clan system stays with the women.

It goes through the daughters. So they're the ones that are the owners of their land, whatever property that they have. The men, they come in, become part of the family.

And so in the old traditions, the uncles, they're the ones that taught the young ones, the mother's brothers. They're the ones that would teach the offsprings of the mom. The dad was basically there for support and to bring, you know, good things to the family.

And that's what the Navajo people are about. So after the long walk, they were able to go home. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but there was a time that the Navajos were gathered up.

They were incarcerated at a place called Bosque Redondo, New Mexico. And they were there for close to six years. And I think there was possibly maybe around 3,500 left of our people.

And they were finally allowed to go home. And they did a treaty with