Stories of a Healing Way: A Navajo Woman’s Media Production for Cultural Representation and Identification

Abstract

Little research has been conducted on the multimodal writing of contemporary Native American women that would refute stereotypical and outdated notions of Indigenous peoples as a dying population. This case study was undertaken to address that gap in the extant research by examining the writing practices of a young Native American woman to determine why and how she composed and participated in participatory media of personal zines and social media to represent her gender and cultural identities. The inquiry was conducted from multiple perspectives of literacy as a social and semiotic practice, the new literacies, tribal critical race theory, and Indigenous feminist theory. Data were triangulated by observations, formal and informal interviews, questionnaires, screenshots, and the participant’s video recordings of her storytelling. I analyzed these data by thematic and semiotic analyses. Findings demonstrated how she crafted comic strip stories and do‐it‐yourself media to create, teach, and preserve Navajo customs and language as a living culture through story lines, settings, illustrations, genre, and teaching devices in her zines. Descriptions are provided of how Navajo women were positioned as strong and independent participants in traditional and contemporary life. Results revealed the ways in which a Navajo woman engaged in practices of the new literacies for resistance against gender and cultural oppression and colonization. Implications are drawn for positioning Native American women within contemporary culture and for culturally responsive literacy education.

Rural Women, Creative Writing, and Resistance

“…Much of what we know about the critical purposes for women's creative writing has come from research examining creative writing as a tool to resist oppression based on gender in conjunction with other intersectional aspects of identity (Crenshaw, 1991). This examination has included African-American women's poetry (Blackburn, 2002; Kelly, 2020; Muhammad, 2012; Wissman, 2007, 2011) and plays (Winn, 2010); Indigenous women's narratives (Cisneros, 2021) and zines (Guzzetti, 2022a); Latina women's poetry (Abril-Gonzalez, 2020) and zines/do-it-yourself-magazines (Guzzetti, 2022a); as well as white women's poetry (Vieira, 2019). Notably, while these studies are mainly situated in urban contexts, findings did not indicate that women drew upon place—as an intersectional aspect of identity—to inform their critical purpose.…”

“…Guzzetti (2022a) and Clark-Parsons (2017) documented a different kind of critical purpose: Women sought to control, shape, and disseminate knowledge in the creation of zines, which were widely disseminated out into the world (Guzzetti, 2022a; Clark-Parsons, 2017). Guzzetti (2022a) documented a Navajo woman, Tatum, who wrote zines in response to colonization and the erosion of her language. Tatum incorporated Navajo language and cultural values into her zines.…”

“…Across studies, creative writing was used as a tool for developing critical consciousness in response to self-definition as well as the articulation of lived experiences and marginalized knowledges. Guzzetti (2022a) and Clark-Parsons (2017) documented a different kind of critical purpose: Women sought to control, shape, and disseminate knowledge in the creation of zines, which were widely disseminated out into the world (Guzzetti, 2022a;Clark-Parsons, 2017). Guzzetti (2022a) documented a Navajo woman, Tatum, who wrote zines in response to colonization and the erosion of her language.…”

“…Like Guzzetti (2022a) and Clark-Parsons (2017), Tilly used her fiction and screenplays to go beyond the use of creative writing as a means to develop critical consciousness. Her writing took on dimensions of praxis (Luke, 2019) in offering her audience alternative, marginalized visions of reality and truth (hooks, 1990).…”

“…In addition, women's creative writing has interrogated oppression based on gender, race, and sexuality (Blackburn, 2002; G uzzetti, 2022b). Women's creative writing has also resisted oppression regarding gender and ethnicity (Abril-Gonzalez, 2020; Cisneros, 2021; Guzzetti, 2022a). However, these studies have mainly examined the critical purposes of women in urban contexts.…”