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Playlist: Alix Blair's Portfolio

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150 Years after the Navajo Long Walk

From Alix Blair | 01:07:35

"You can't heal from something unless you really honor that it happened."

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of 1868, which released the Navajo from the prison camp where they were held for four years, after the Long Walk. Producers Jaclyn Roessel (Navajo) and Alix Blair (European American) present this kaleidoscopic, Navajo-centric story exploring the Long Walk, the Treaty, and their legacy on Navajo people today.

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This year marks 150 years since the Treaty of 1868, which released the Navajo from the prison they were held in for four years. That prison is known by three names: Fort Sumner, Bosque Redondo, and Hweeldi, which translates to "the Place of Suffering." Beginning in 1864, the US Government forced the Navajo to march away from their lands in Arizona to Hweeldi in New Mexico--a distance of 300 miles-- what's widely known as the Long Walk. 

You'll hear from Navajo historians, anthropologists, young adults, medicine men, poet laureates, and from producer Jaclyn as she traces her family history and reckons with the hardships that come from a deeper understanding of historical trauma. In this story is the tension between the practice of not speaking of the past, and young Navajo people who want to know what happened to their ancestors. You'll learn how, at the signing of the peace treaty, the Navajo prayed not for the defeat of their enemies, but that their enemies would try to understand them and find empathy. Most importantly, this story roots in indigenous collective memory and confronts the absence of native people's histories from general American knowledge.

This story asks of you to greet it like a friend and for your to sit with it, even if you are uncomfortable, even if you do not understand everything along the way. 
  

Consulting Editor: Ruxandra Guidi
Sound Designer: Seth Samuel