Author shares story of the harsh treatment of Navajos during Long Walk

By Dalton Walker
Special to the Times

PHOENIX

Gary Nez knows the history of the Long Walk and what the devastation of the forced removal did to his Navajo people, yet he left a recent lecture with vivid details he didn’t know.

Nez was one of about 110 people to attend the lecture titled, “The Long Walk of the Navajo People, 1864-1868”, by long-time educator and Navajo elder Evangeline Parsons Yazzie. The May 4 lecture and visual presentation lasted more than an hour and is part of a popular lecture series hosted by the Pueblo Grand Museum in Phoenix.

“Some stuff I heard, but some stuff mentioned, like the harsher treatment to Navajo people, you don’t hear about it or read about it in the school books,” he said. “Being Navajo, this is important.”

Nez was not alone. The lecture attracted one of the series’ larger crowds and once Parsons Yazzie was done speaking, people lined up to chat with her and to take photos and ask for autographs.

Parsons Yazzie, 63, is a professor emeritus of the Navajo language at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and an award-winning author of books about the Long Walk. She’s recently retired after teaching 24 years and now focuses on her writing fulltime.

Her Long Walk research started in high school after her history teacher, a non-Native American, accused the Navajo people of being raiders and the cause of the forced removal. Parsons Yazzie said she was the only Navajo student in the classroom and was often teased by other students after her teacher’s remark.

“It really had an affect on me,” she said. “I told my father and I could tell he was very hurt.”

After she told her father, he hugged her and shared some advice in the Navajo language, which translates in English as, “my little one, search for the truth of your people’s history.”

She did find the truth and has educated many people over the years on the horrific history from a Navajo perspective.

---