Leona Begishie Speaks

Leona Begishie tells about her impactful experiences working at the Grand Canyon School as the Native American Aide, her relationship with her Diné culture, and how the Grand Canyon means “family” to her. Leona supported the Native American students by bringing cultural awareness to the teachers and staff.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Leona Begishie Speaks

Leona Begishie: We don't have any native teachers at our school, so they kind of connect with me. And so, they're a little more open, they're a little more at ease because I look like maybe grandma or their aunt or their mom. And so that part, although all of the academics, math, ELA, all that is important, but it makes them at ease when they see me.

Meranden: Hello everybody, welcome to Grand Canyon Speaks. My name is Meranden.

Dan: And I'm Dan.

Meranden: In today's episode, Ranger Lizzie spoke with Leona Begishie, who was the Native American aide at the Grand Canyon School.

Dan: Yeah, she is Diné and greatly supported the Native American students by bringing cultural awareness to the teachers and staff, planning events for Native American Heritage Month, and providing a safe space throughout their time at the school.

Meranden: We hope you enjoy this week's episode, and thank you for tuning in.

Dan: And here's Leona Begishie.

Leona: Yes, my name is Leona Begishie, and my clans are Salt people, and I'm related to the Rock Gap people. And my grandfathers are the Zuni Edgewater, and my paternal grandfathers are the Bitterwater people.

So, in Navajo, I would say, (Introduces self in Diné). That's what makes me a woman. That's the woman that I am, that lets other people know in our nation that, oh, then they might say, recognize kinship, you know, oh, you're my mother, you're my daughter, you're my, you know, grandma.

So that kind of sets up those relationships with other people. Thank you.

Ranger Lizzie: Thanks, Leona.

So tonight, Leona is coming and joining us just from the village. She works at Grand Canyon School, and I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about the school and your position there.

Leona: So, the Grand Canyon School is a pre-K-12 school, and our school is the only school that is within national park boundaries.

There is a school in Utah, but they're in a national recreation area. So, this is actually a national park, and so it differentiates a little bit, but we're the only pre-K-12 school in any park, and people are always surprised. You know, I do crosswalk, and they'd say, are these kids school kids, you know, when I'm at the crosswalk? And I'm like, yeah, and they're really surprised by that, that we do have a school here.

My title is Native American Aid. What has happened is the school will get a grant for the Native students that attend the school, and within those regulations, rules of those grants, you have to have a group of a parent group, a Native American group, in order to receive the money. You have to have that group in place, and that group has decided to use the funding, and they can use, they decide how to use that funding, and one of the things that they decided to do was bring in a Native American aid to help the children.

And so that's how that position came to be. And I do assist teachers sometimes, but my job primarily at the school is to look, kind of watch how our Native American kids are doing, and if they need some assistance, extra assistance with anything, English, math, writing, I'll go to their classroom, I'll pull them out, and I'll work with them either one-on-one, or sometimes I pull a whole group and work with them, and I'll just be like, just reinforce some of the things that they're learning in the classroom already. One of the things that I do also is, at the beginning of the year, we hold trainings for all the teachers and the staff.

Usually it has to do with animals, like with our tribe, our nation, we don't, you don't mess with snakes, so a lot of parents say, don't let my child look at a snake, and some are okay with it, some are a little more relaxed, but there are others that say no, absolutely no snakes, or owls, you know, we don't want our kids to look at owls or be around owls. And those are the two animals that are, that parents really emphasize, please be careful with these animals, because the owl is a messenger, so they're more, they want to be more careful with an owl. So, an owl is a messenger of, you know, bad things that could happen, or it could be a messenger of death, so they really, you know, ask the school to really respect that.

And the good thing with our school is they really do. When we get materials, they kind of vet the materials with, like, what kind of pictures are on there, or what videos are on there, you know, they respect that. So that's, and eclipses, you know, we can't be out in an eclipse, so they just take that into consideration, maybe when they're doing the calendar for the school year, that type of thing. So, it's a really good school.

Ranger Lizzie: Awesome. Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the programming that you do around, like, Native American Heritage Month?

Leona: So Native American Heritage Month is in November, and starting in October, what I do is, I usually communicate with the art teacher, and we do different activities.

It could be learning how to bead bracelets, or weaving, or making pottery, dioramas. We do some research on other tribes within the area, or even throughout the United States. And so they learn about different groups of people.

And I have all of the students do it, not just our Native students, and they get really excited about it. This year, we actually had them make moccasins. Some of them actually wore them, which was really cool on Heritage Day.

So that's one component of our Heritage Month. And then in November, we have one week where, it's almost like a spirit week, it's the only way I can describe it, you know, where one day we might have Hairdo Day, where, because the different nations that are here, wear their hair in different styles. So, we'll have these different types of hairdos throughout the whole school for that day.

Moccasin Day, Jewelry Day, and then at the end of the week, we just have a whole, you know, dress-up and regalia day. And on that day, we usually have a program that we put on, you know, where the kids are singing, or they're doing a poem, or they're dancing. I do, we have a Cherokee girl that goes to our school, and she's very interested in her culture.

She's not exposed to it, so she'll ask me to do some research, and she'll say, can we do a dance from my tribe? And so, then I'll have to learn how to do a Cherokee dance, because I'm not, you know, I don't have that information. So, I'll have to look it up and do some research. So, we did like a bear dance, and we did a horse dance last year.

So, we have all these different tribes, and of course, all these people, groups of people speak different languages. And so, what I do is I grab all these kids, and I'll say, okay, what would you like to do this year? And you know, they'll say, oh, we want to dance. So, we learn a dance, and then I teach them, if they want to sing, I teach them a song.

And the songs that we learn are all Navajo songs. And the reason why we learn Navajo songs is because I'm Navajo, or Diné is what we call ourselves. And I'm really forced to say Navajo, because that's what people know, right? Like outside of our group of our people, everywhere, you see Navajo reservation signs, you know, and on maps, it says Navajo reservation.

So, I always say Navajo, just so it's familiar to everyone else. But we call ourselves Diné people. So, I teach these kids from different tribes a Navajo song.

So, what I'm really surprised with is that they pick it up really quickly. And these kids don't speak Navajo. And some of them don't even speak their own language, but they pick it up so fast.

And that was one of the things that was really interesting to me. And I really thought it was really cool. And they pick it up the first time we get together.

And then so then they've got like about a month to learn the songs. So, one of the songs that I thought was cute was, it's a song about a puppy. And I just like, I kind of want to sing that song because it's a children's song, right? So, and it's very short.

And every song that we sing, you sing it, we repeat it four times. Because four is a sacred number for the Diné people. So, but I'm not only going to do two.

And that was one of the things that had come up, which I thought was really neat. I had asked the kids, I said, you know, four is a sacred number for us. So, every song that you sing, you do it, you repeat it four times.

And I said, but due to time constraints, I said, I think we should sing it twice. Only two times. And they were like, no, no, no, don't do that.

No, let's sing it four times because that's how you're supposed to do it. So even though they don't know a lot, some of them don't know a lot about their culture or traditions, they were respecting mine, right? So, they were respecting mine and they were saying, let's do it four times. But I'm just going to sing it twice for you.

Just repeat it twice. So, it goes. (sings Diné song) So that's the song that they learned.

And that's, like I said, surprising to me. It was surprising in a really good way. So that was an interesting something that I learned.

Ranger Lizzie: Thank you for sharing your song. And it's about a puppy?

Leona: It's about a puppy. It talks about how he eats so much that he drags his stomach when he's walk