A discussion of experiences living on the Navajo reservation

George Noory and Erica Elliot discuss her life on the Navajo reservation.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on
iHeart Radio and welcome back to Coast to Coast George
Nori with you our special guest, doctor eric I Elliot.
Her book is Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert,
and of course we're talking about her life. On how
long did you stay on the reservation, Erica? I stayed
two years, and then I wanted to perfect my Navajo

(00:22):
and so I went to live with the family. Spoke
no English, and I became a sheepherder five hundred ninety
four sheep and goats, and I did that for a
few months, and I learned everything about really traditional life.
It was, oh my gosh, very much like a hundred

(00:42):
years ago or something. And I learned how to shear
sheep and card the wool and spin it and weave
and get the plants to die the wool, and butcher.
I butchered a sheep. That was really hard for me.
That and then I wanted to learn more about indigenous people,

(01:08):
so I joined the Peace Corps and worked high in
the Andes with Quechua speaking Indians who were descendants of
the Incas. But you know, George, I wanted to tell
you about what happened when I spoke those few words
of Navajo. Everything changed. I mean, the kids just came alive.

(01:29):
And they asked me to take out each kid every weekend,
to take out a different kid and drive them to
their remote homesteads out in the middle of nowhere. And
it was incredible because they invited me to ceremonies that

(01:49):
white people never experienced and usually aren't allowed in those ceremonies,
and they completely took me in and it changed my life.
And what happened to the children is they saw how
excited I was about learning about their lives and their culture.
And it turns out these kids were actually incredibly smart.

(02:12):
And it's too bad the other teachers didn't realize that
because they wanted so much for me to learn about
their lives that they learned English so fast that this
is unbelievable. But I have a newspaper article to prove
what I'm about to say. Three of the children, one
a regional speech contest. And these were children who really

(02:35):
couldn't together. It shows you when how much transformation happens
when there's love involved. I loved these kids, and they
knew it, and it made them come so alive. And wow,
were they smart. They were really smart kids. They're all

(02:56):
adults now, aren't they. They're all adults. And I wanted
to tell you or your listeners that I had I
knew that. Um we got a picture by the way
of you with the kids. Oh yeah, thirty six kids. Yeah.
I just was so in love with them, and I
knew their all, their whole family. I you know, it'd

(03:17):
spend a whole weekend with each of the kids. So
for thirty six weekends, I was with a different kid.
And they didn't speak English, the families, the grandmothers and
the parents, and so I really had to learn Navajo
to really converse, and that that was hard. I was
already linguistically oriented because I had lived in different countries

(03:41):
in Europe because my parents worked, but I had never
faced a language that was so challenging. And well that's
why they were our code talkers during World War Two,
so the Germans wouldn't figure out what we were up to. Yeah,
and I want to tell you something else. So I
knew that boarding schools had a really bad history with

(04:04):
abusing the children, but this boarding school was really different.
Part of it was this is different era. This was
nineteen seventy one, so things had already changed. But I
asked the principle why why this was different because they
were nice to the students. They didn't hit them or

(04:27):
you know, punish them for speaking their language or doing
anything bad. And he said it was his deep purpose
to make sure that the kids were treated well because
he told about his abuse in the South and so

(04:47):
he was very identified with the children and making sure
they weren't treated the way he was treated when he
grew up in the South, and we ended up having
a bond. He called up Washington, DC for the Bureau
of Indian Affairs. He said, there's we have this white

(05:09):
teacher who speaks Navajo and she's on her own doing
something that looks like bilingual bicultural education, and you know,
do you want to use her as a pilot program
because that's when that was a brand new concept, it
was just starting. And so I became part of the

(05:31):
pilot program and the BBC came and filmed the classroom,
and you know, it was really exciting how we collaborated
and he allowed me. He really we really bonded, and
he normally he had to make sure the teachers followed
the curriculum. He let me do whatever I wanted. So

(05:51):
I made my own curriculum instead of the Dick and
Jane books. We made our own curriculum based on experience,
like going into the canyon and doing these little adventures
and then they'd come back and write about it, and um,
so I just I just wanted to tell the listeners
how what a magical experience this was for me too. Well,

(06:15):
most people probably don't even know that this Navajo reservation
of seventeen million acres exists. That's that's right. And so
I think if the listeners decide to read the book,
I think it'll be mind blowing. In fact, it's so
mind blowing some of the things I saw, like with
the payote ceremony, Well, yeah, you saw some miracles which

(06:37):
I want to get into too. Yeah, okay, I'll let
you take over. I just wanted to make that connection.
I can tell how excited you are about this project.
You've been oh so excited, George. It changed my life completely.
How are they living now, Erica on the reservation? I mean,
are they happy? Is it? Is it well provided for? No,

(06:59):
It's it's a rugged life. There's housing bad and stuff
like that. Yeah, it's it's very rugged. So they got
the land, but that's about it. Huh. Yeah, the government
hasn't kept its promises very well. But now, like I said,
there's a silver lining to that. These young people are
getting just so amped up about changing things and making

(07:22):
the people more self reliant like that. You well, and
when you say young people, you're saying non Native American kids. No, No,
I'm sorry Native their own Navajo people. Okay, Okay, the
young people, like in their thirty twenties to forty, let's say,
are really starting to make a difference on the reservation.

(07:44):
All right. So the name of your book is called
Medicine and Miracles in the High Desert. What miracles? Okay?
So one of the families was a member of the
Native American church, which is the Payote religion that's borrowed
from the Plains Indians. That's not traditional Navjope, but many
tribes adopted this from from the Lakota people. The Lakota

(08:08):
people found use of Payote in ceremonial religious purposes that
it helped them cope when they were being slaughtered um
in the late eighteen hundreds, and and then it was
a source of great comfort to them and solace to
have this plant medicine that helped them cope, and and

(08:31):
and again the Navajoes adopted it and so um, white
people in that era were not allowed to attend, but
I was invited, and um it was legal for Navajos.
The government gave permission and they would go to Texas
every year and harvest the pot. It's a cactus. Yeah,

(08:52):
it's a cactus like sem pedro. And and I they
asked me if I would like to go to a ceremony,
and they said, I'd have to, you know, wear no
white man clothes. I had to dress like a Navo woman.
They supplied me with everything and as full of silver,

(09:13):
jewelry and turquoise. I looked like I was going to
a Navo prom or something. I really was. I was
so dressed up, and I was kind of scared because
I knew this was mind altering and I so I
didn't know what it was gonna do. You had to
the pot two yeah, and it came came in three forms,

(09:34):
the button, the tea, and a powder and it went
around all night and they were praying for healing of
a baby. And um and I sang. And you know,
some people thought Native people are not emotional. They got
really emotional and um in their prayers. They were tears

(09:55):
coming down there. We'll tell us when you took the pyot,
what happened to you? Okay, every time something miracle, something
miraculous happened the first time, what was so amazing, George
is I was just there about a month or two,
so I was just barely learning Navajo. I could say,
what's your name, where are you from? How many sheep

(10:16):
do you have? And stuff? Not much? And so my um,
the family that quote adopted me, and they told me
I was supposed to call the woman my mother shimma.
And she sat next to me. And when the sacred
tobacco came around, which you you it's from herbs that

(10:37):
are gathered in the mountains. When you inhale, exhale and
then you pray. And so when it when after my
Navajo mother finished praying, she handed me the hand rolled
cigarette and said pass it on. She in English, she
said you can pass it joined mariana joint and I

(10:59):
took get. I was really had a lot of payodi
at that time, and I was really affected by it,
and so I took it and I inhaled exhaled, and
then I started praying in Navajo. And I thought to myself,
while I was praying in Navajo, right now, I didn't know.

(11:21):
I didn't know how to pray, I mean, in their language.
I didn't know their language even I was just a
beginner at learning. And I while I was praying, I mean,
I was speaking totally fluently, and I was part of
my brain was saying, wow, I must be I must

(11:42):
be hallucinating. I can't possibly be speaking Navo, but this
is I'm I'm in a dream. This can't be real.
I kept saying myself, this can't be real while I
was praying, and I thought, gee, I must be really
high from this stuff. And then I finished. And then
this water drum goes around and and you pass it

(12:05):
on and you hey young, and and then she, my
Navo mother, passed me the drum and said pass it on,
and I didn't. I started drumming, and I started singing,
singing a Navo prayer song. Hey nay young, ah yow?
Did or know how to earn any of this stuff?

(12:27):
But you were? Were you pretty accurate? Though? Singing? Well,
I'll tell you how this ends. I just thought, I'm
dreaming this whole thing. I said, this is more real
than real life. But I know it's a dream. This
can't possibly be true because I've never heard these songs
before ever in my life. How can I possibly know them?
And so after the peyote wore off and it became daylight,

(12:50):
we filed out, kneel down, touched the earth with our forehead,
and fanned ourselves at the eagle feather fan, and then
went into the nearby cinder block house and sat down
for breakfast on the floor with a sheet. And it
was mutton stew for eyebread and canned peaches, and the Navajo.

(13:12):
The medicine man at the Payoty ceremonies are called roadman,
and they don't they don't say medicine man, said roadman.
The roadman looked at me and started talking to me
non stop in Navajo. I didn't have any idea what
he was saying, and he was looking me right in
the face, and I started feeling really uncomfortable, and everybody

(13:33):
was looking at me, and finally I was so embarrassed
I just said, uh, excuse me. Um, you know, I
don't really know what you're saying. I don't speak Navajo.
And everybody burst out laughing, and he said, you sure
talked up a storm last night. You don't remember. I remember,

(13:55):
but I thought it wasn't real. I thought that can't
be real, like a dream. Yeah, I thought the whole
thing was a dream. And he said, no, it was real.
I was really singing song. I said, but I don't
even know those songs. He said, well, that's what the
medicine does. They call it plant medicine. That's what the
medicine does. Now do they give this medicine to people

(14:16):
who are sick, Yes, they do. So it's used for
prayer and for healing sickness. And so every time I
went to a peyote ceremony, I went to quite a few.
I saw miracles happened, and one of the miracles was
to my own healing. Um. I don't know if you

(14:37):
have time for me to tell about how a tumor disappeared,
I just have a minute to go. You had a tumor, Yes,
it was like a lymph gland, like a lymphoman that
I went to two hours to do you know if
that was benign or cancers know that the internist said
it was probably cancer and that he needed to biopsy,

(14:59):
and he said it it was hard as a rock,
just like Cant. He was sure it was cancer, and
it disappeared sometime during these episodes of these events. Yes, yes,
I touched my under my jaw and it disappeared. And
it's still still gone. Yeah, I keep fingering it. It's
fifty years later. I'm still put my finger there. Do

(15:20):
you think it's going to come back? Right? I can't
believe it after fifty years. It's that it's permanently gone.
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