Page 2 - An Intersectional Exploration of Disabled and Native Identities

“Understanding and Acknowledging

Disabilities from a Native Perspective”

https://www.
youtube.com
/watch?v=U98
nkgcYZyg

In this video Hoskie Benally, Jr., community and government liaison for the Native American
Disability Law Center (NADLC), shares a traditional Navajo story that “belongs to the people and is
for teaching” about Early Dawn Boy. Once, parents and relatives of disabled children decided to isolate
the burdensome children from community, expecting them to care for themselves. A young man
decides to take care of the children and assist them in travelling in all directions to experience nature
and quality time spent together. When the tribe sends out a spy to see where it is the caravan of
disabled children and their caretaker go to, he finds them playing together on the shore of a pond. Four
spiritual beings from the groves of trees across the pond came to play with the children. A cloud then
floats down and takes the children away into the sky.

The man who was spying notifies the community and they go to the shore, finding gifts the children
left for use in sacred ceremonies. Distraught, the families of the children ask a Crystal Gazer to seek
why they left and where they went. He told the community that they “did this to themselves,” because
they did not want the children. “The Holy people took [our Disabled children] back,” the Gazer says.
He prophesies that early the next morning, a bird will be chirping, and that this will be Early Dawn
Boy, who had been taking care of the children. Sure enough, early the next morning there was a
birdsong erupting from the dwelling the disabled children had lived in, but there was no bird to be
found.

Another story in this video, shared by Leonard Talaswaima, tells of a cross-legged Hopi Katchina,
who has “qualities to share with the people [and is] a storyteller by his actions and his motions by his
hands”. He is a dancer, songwriter, comedian, functional in his own ways, and a teacher to others.
Other Katchinas do not discriminate and are happy to carry the disabled Katichina on their backs to
“bring him with them” to sacred events.

This video can also be accessed with the link included above,
as well as via the Native American Disability Law Center’s official website.