Tó Nizhóní Ání project documenting traditional plants and their uses
Navajo Times | Kianna Joe
Arnold Clifford, a botanist, shows the plant-picking crew the different features to look at on a plant because it may look the same as another plant from a distance. Up close, the plants are different.
WINDOW ROCK – To preserve traditional knowledge and help save barren areas, a group of youth set out to learn everything about Dziłyíjiin plants.
Navajo Times | Kianna Joe
Arnold Clifford, a botanist, was brought onto the plant-picking project by Tó Nizhóní Ání because of his extensive experience and knowledge of traditional plants in Diné Bikéyah. Clifford holds the flora book he helped write and wants to do the same with the documented plants from Dziłyíjiin.
In October 2022, Tó Nizhóní Ání (TNA) held a “Native Plant Identification Workshop” with Diné geologist/botanist Arnold Clifford from Bitł’ááh Bito’, New Mexico. The workshop kicked off TNA’s plant documentation project, “Dził Yíjiin Nanise’ Project.”
Ch’il, nanise’
Some Dziłyíjiin residents gathered plants growing around their homestead, dropped them off at the workshop, and included what they knew about the plant.
Raeanna Johnson, the project lead, said people left note cards with the Navajo name of the plant and some of the uses the plant had.
Johnson said that even though she couldn’t attend the event, she was tasked with organizing the plants and putting them into a catalog. By the time Johnson got her hands on the plants, they had dried up and were mixed and matched.
Johnson reported to Nicole Horseherder, the TNA director, that they would need to wait another year to look at the same plants if they wanted to produce valid information and results from the workshop.
“I was kind of like, well, this is something that we can grow and utilize,” said Johnson.
Johnson then created a team with Clifford and two other youths, Taylor Yazzie and Tracy Whitehair, to pick plants in as many places as possible.
Navajo Times | Kianna Joe
Raeanna Johnson, team lead for the plant-picking project on Dziłyíjiin, begins the pressing process of the plants the group had picked on a Saturday afternoon.
Clifford, who’s Oozéí Táchii’nii and born for Tábąąhá, said a rough estimation of locations they’ve picked from so far is 12. The sites that they do pick from are on residents’ lands.
Johnson said they always ask for permission to pick plants, and often, the families have the knowledge to share about the plants around their homes, and they go out with the TNA group to gather.
When documenting the plants, Johnson said they look at all aspects of the plant – where it grew, what it looks like, what’s around the plant, whether there are a lot of these plants or just a few, and what other plants are growing around it.
Read the full story in the Sept. 21 edition of the Navajo Times.
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