Navajo elders invited to share, record stories during May 18 event at Aztec Museum

• The event will begin at noon on Saturday, May 18 at the Aztec Museum and Pioneer Village.
• Olsen will deliver a presentation on the importance of oral histories to the story of the Long Walk.
• Interviews with Navajo elders will follow at five stations scattered around the museum and village grounds.

After serving as a newspaper reporter in Farmington for the better part of the 1990s, Debi Tracy Olsen left the Four Corners for many years, not returning until two years ago.

One of the first things she noticed that was different about the area was the way so many local Native Americans had seemingly experienced a change of heart when it came to talking about their history.

“I was seeing that people were more willing to share stories of their lives and culture,” said the former reporter for The Daily Times, who wrote an exhaustive, 26-week series in 1991 and 1992 on the Navajo perspective on the Long Walk, the forced march thousands of Navajo people endured in the 1860s from their ancestral home in the Four Corners to an internment camps at the Bosque Redondo, a journey of between 250 and 450 miles.

Compiling that series — which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize — was the highlight of Olsen’s journalism career, she said. But it wasn’t an easy story to report, even though she was given six months away from her normal duties at the paper as the features editor by her boss, then Managing Editor Jack Swickard, to concentrate on the project.

“Back when we did this 30 years ago, there was a lot of reluctance on the part of many Navajos to talk about it,” she said, explaining that in Dine culture, bad episodes from the past traditionally are not revisited, especially with outsiders. “But as time goes by, those attitudes have changed.”

Olsen said she hopes they have changed enough to make a success out of a new project she is leading. On Saturday, May 18 at the Aztec Museum and Pioneer Village, 125 N. Main Ave. in Aztec, Olsen will deliver a presentation on the importance of oral histories to the story of the Long Walk. Following that presentation, Navajo elders will be invited to share the stories of their lives and culture in short interviews or conversations with Navajo young people.

Those resulting exchanges will be recorded, preserved and stored at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. through the database of StoryCorps, a nonprofit organization based in Brooklyn that for 30 years has collected such stories across the country as part of an attempt to illuminate the nation’s shared humanity.

The format for the interviews will be simple and straightforward, Olsen said, noting that she came up with the idea for the project after Joan Monninger, the executive director of the museum, approached her with the idea of putting together a program based on her early-1990s series for The Daily Times.

“We’re not doing typical oral histories,” she said, explaining that while this project is not being conducted under the auspices of StoryCorps, its interview format is being employed.

More:Native American author Deborah Jackson Taffa chronicles her youth in new memoir

That means Navajo young people — as young as 13 years old, in fact — will lead the conversations with the older Navajo subjects, prompting them to talk about whatever aspects of their lives and culture they wish to discuss. The conversations will be limited to 30 minutes.

Olsen said there is space for 20 interview subjects during the program, and seven people already had signed up by May 8, including a retired uranium miner, a jewelry maker and a storyteller. She is hoping to have all those spots filled by the day of the event.

Explaining that the Aztec Museum had no equipment of its own, Olsen said the project is being aided by the loan of recording gear from San Juan College and the Aztec Municipal School District.

The recordings themselves will be invaluable, Olsen said, explaining that she hopes it will give Navajo young people who haven’t been born the chance to someday hear the voices of their ancestors. Hearing about someone’s lived experience in their own words is something that can’t be duplicated in another format, she said.

“That’s one of the most powerful things there is,” she said. “When you hear people speak their story, that’s when the humanity comes in.”

Olsen said she views this oral history project as a bookend for that 26-part series she wrote 30 years ago.

“It is very much,” she said. “It’s not the ending, but I would say it’s another chapter.”

Olsen’s presentation will begin at noon at the museum, and the interviews will take place afterward at five sites scattered throughout the museum and the village grounds. Anyone interested in participating is asked to call the museum at 505-334-9829 to reserve a time.

Support local journalism with a digital subscription: http://bit.ly/2I6TU0e.