Looking Back – Marching Forward

By Sylvia Webb

I’ve got all year to celebrate and remember what it was like fifty-eight years ago when I arrived on the Navajo Indian reservation.

It is so easy to do everything wrong in a foreign country, I was from Conn. I felt and acted lost.

I learned a few Navajo words, and to be friendly, I would ask the Navajo sheep herder how many sheep he had. He responded in Navajo “wolah” I don’t know.

I learned much later that the people thought I was from the US Govt., and I was nosy about what they were doing. They feared the Govt. and they feared me.

One summer, there was no rain, the corn did not grow, and melons and squash died on dry vines.

I got blamed for it because I cut my long black hair. That was my first time having head lice.

Cutting of the hair will stop the much-needed rain from falling.

One day, I was on a dirt trail. I saw a body lying on the side.

I stopped to see if I could help. I thought it was breathing.

I drove to a shack where people lived and called it home. I told them about the body, it was covered with dirt.

Would they help me move it?

I was told to leave it alone; it’s his choice. If he doesn’t like where he is he’ll move.

Maggie and I were young together. We became fast friends.

She was totally deaf from a fall off a swing at school.

Maggie learned to lip-read me, we talked and laughed. As long as she could see my lips, she knew what I was saying.

One day, I decided to tell Maggie about Jesus the Savior. She had many questions and wanted to see the book that talks about him.

The book and my lips brought Maggie into Salvation.

Now years later people are Christians because deaf Maggie told them who Jesus is to her.

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The grown daughters were crying because their mother had passed away.

They talked it over with her about where they should lay her to sleep.

The normal way on the reservation was by the sheep corral. All family members’ final sleep is there.

But lately on the reservation, the natives are encouraged to bury at the new idea of a cemetery.

Our mother does not want to go to the cemetery and be left lying beside someone she does not know.

The biggest fear of all is to be sleeping beside a man who is not her husband.

I will crawl out of that hole she told her daughters.

Don’t put me there with strangers, I will be afraid she told them.

Put me with my relatives at our sheep corral, and they will take care of me.

I won’t be afraid with them near me.