UNM (University of New Mexico), Albuquerque,
first semester of my master’s in Cultural Studies
first semester of my master’s in Cultural Studies
“Let us introduce ourselves”, and
the introductions began. I felt a little awkward when my turn came in this
Native American Studies’ course, “Politics of Identity”, taught by Professor
Lee. I was the only “white” person there, whose last home was Granada, Spain,
the very place where Columbus had been given the green light (and huge funds partly
taken from the Jews who were expelled from the Kingdom) to go “discover the New
World”. Many of my peers introduced themselves in Dineh, in the traditional
Navajo way, which gives utmost importance to stating the clans and places one
is from. This was my first ‘live’ introduction to what I knew in theory, and it
was a good way to show how profound is the connection to the Earth, one of the ‘identity
markers’ that would be thoroughly studied during the whole semester.
