Native American had no reservations about leaving home

Growing up in the small town of Chinle, Arizona in the middle of Navajo Nation for a girl in the 1970’s meant that school ended after eighth grade. However, Del-Jean “D.J.” Carroll found a way to extend her education and expand her horizons.

“I was walking home from school one day on the reservation, and I found a pamphlet by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,” she recalled. “It was about a placement program they offered for the Navajo kids that wanted to get off the reservation and go to high school.”

D.J., who’s Navajo name means “Curly Hair,” was so excited that she told her father, the local Medicine Man, that if he didn’t agree to let her join, she would run away and join anyway. Little did she know how that decision would change her life, and her family.

“My father was also a carpenter and at work he asked around and found the Mormon missionaries and invited them to the house,” she said. “I had to convert to Mormonism. I passed the six steps and my baptism was scheduled for that Saturday.”

When she arrived for her baptism, she was surprised to discover her father had arranged for her siblings to also be baptized in the Mormon church. D.J. was placed with the Schlosser family in Tucson, where she lived with them and attended high school.

“When I came home four years later, I was told I wasn’t part of the Navajo tribe anymore because I left,” she said. “I told them I left to better myself but they did not understand. So, I moved back in with the Schlossers.”

When the Schlossers moved to Atlanta, Texas in the late 70’s, D.J. came with them, leaving her nine brothers and four sisters on the reservation. In her foster family she had four brothers and two sisters.

In the Navajo Nation, the clan system still pervades, and genealogical records are passed down verbally from one generation to the next. Each Navajo belongs to four different clans: Their mother’s clan – they are “born-to” their mother and her clan; Their father’s clan – they are “born-for” their father and his clan; Their maternal grandfather’s clan (their mother’s father); Their paternal grandfather’s clan (their father’s father). When people meet and introduce themselves, they say their mother’s clan name, their father’s clan name, their maternal grandfather’s and paternal grandfather’s clan names in that order.

When two Navajos from the same clan meet for the first time, they call each other ‘brother’ or ‘sister.’ Navajo cousins think of each other as brother and sister also. Adults are expected to marry someone from another clan.

One clan member of D.J.’s has a special place in American history. Chester Nez was one of the original 29 Code Talkers of World War II. He helped to invent the code, based on the Navajo language, that helped end the war. The program eventually included 420 Navajo in the Marine Corps.

“I remember hearing my clan talk about the code talkers,” she said. “It was top secret until the 1970’s when they were finally acknowledged.”

Many of the residents of the reservation still live as they did decades ago, and money is made from their silversmith jewelry making, basket weaving, and farming.

“My mother only got electricity in 1979. Then she had to figure out how to pay for it,” said D.J. “While my father was alive, most of the tribe lived the Navajo way, but those of us that were baptized replaced the traditional Navajo way with Christianity.”

The Navajo Nation territory covers over 17.5 million acres, or 27,413 square miles in northeastern Arizona, southeastern Utah, northwestern New Mexico, and the southwestern corner of Colorado. As of 2016 the population was about 350,000. Chinle was the site of the 1864 peace conference between Kit Carson and the Navajo people that ended the war between the Navajo and the United States.

While D.J. and her family are Navajo’s, they are only 90%, with 10% being Spaniard. When Carson rounded up their people the Spanish Army was pervasive in the area. One of the Spanish soldiers kidnapped D.J.’s great-great-grandmother and took her for his wife. When it was time for him to go back to Spain, he couldn’t take her with him, so he returned her to her parents, pregnant with his child.

“In the Navajo people, the number four is very important: There are four seasons, four directions, four sacred mountains surrounding the reservation,” D.J. explained. “We believe that you should try something four times and if you don’t succeed, it’s time to hang it up.”

After 10 years of living in Atlanta, D.J. went back to the reservation in 1988. Although her mother never forgave her for leaving the tribe, “I forced myself on her. She embraced my kids and taught them the Navajo language and ways.”

D.J. ended up moving back to Atlanta in 2008 and is now living just outside of town in Douglassville. She loves to share her native history and speaks to groups whenever she is asked.

“Whenever I go back to visit Chinle I see no progress. It hasn’t changed at all. They are happy there the way things are, and have always been,” she said. “But out here I can speak my own point of view. At 16 I saw a different world and got frustrated. I am more free to be me out here.”