Bernita Bedah:

Mom and dad were really proud of me. They would really praise me that I knew who I was, that I knew how to speak Navajo, I knew my mountains, I knew songs. And I was a really beautiful, sacred person at home. But when I went to school, it was a different kind of story.

Alec Patton:

This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton, and that was the voice of Bernita Bedah. Bernita is a kindergarten teacher in Newcomb, New Mexico, and her class is part of a dual immersion program in Navajo and English. This is one of two interviews with Navajo educators that we’re putting out this week. The other’s with Peter Deswood, the Assistant Superintendent of the Central Consolidated School District. I highly recommend listening to both episodes.

I spoke with Bernita at the 2023 Deeper Learning Conference. We talked about how she helps her students feel connected to their heritage and proud of their identity as American Indians. This was definitely not something she got from her own teachers, so we get into that as well.

One quick definition before the interview starts. Bernita mentions teaching at a BIE school. BIE stands for Bureau of Indian Education. Here’s the interview.

Bernita Bedah:

My name is Bernita Bedah. My clans are [Navajo 00:01:13]. Those are my four clans in which I identify myself.

Alec Patton:

Got it. What does that mean that you have four clans?

Bernita Bedah:

Well, my first clan represents my mom’s clan and we are “many hogans.” Translated into English, they say that’s what it means, “many hogans.” My second clan is actually my dad’s first clan, so I’m born into this clan. It is [Navajo 00:01:41], “salt people” clan. My third clan is my grandfather’s first clan, so that’s [Navajo 00:01:47], “water flow together” clan. And my fourth clan is my paternal grandfather’s clan and that’s [Navajo 00:01:55]. They can say “within his cover” or the “leaf” clan. So that’s my paternal grandfather’s first clan. Our mother’s clan, our first clan, is the one that we are. So for example, I have my daughters are all going to have my first clan, which is “many hogans.”

Alec Patton:

And what’s a hogan?

Bernita Bedah:

A hogan is a circular shape shelter, a home that’s built out of logs and mud. And it’s a dirt floor and it’s a one bedroom. It really signifies the earth. We live in an earth dwelling and the door always faces to the east where the sun rises.

Alec Patton:

Okay.

Bernita Bedah:

So that’s what a hogan is.

Alec Patton:

And why is that? Why is it faced to the east?

Bernita Bedah:

Our doors always face the east because that’s where the sun rises and that’s where they say the holy beings are the first ones that come out and see your door. And I remember that we used to run to the east early morning. When we go out running, my mom would pick up all our bedding and she would be sweeping out all the laziness, the bad negativity that’s in our hogan, and she would sweep it out the door. And the sunlight that hits that, it makes it vanish. So she would sweep out everything and then when the sun hits it, she’d say, “It’s all gone. Now, you can’t be lazy. You can’t have negativity in the hogan.”

So it was just our routine. You wake up. You get chased out to go run. By the time you come back, your bedding’s already picked up, so you can’t lay back down or crawl back into bed. The day starts there. You have food and then you go do chores.

Alec Patton:

So you go run, go for a jog?

Bernita Bedah:

Yes. Exercise was a big part of also our culture. So a long time ago, a lot of our grandmas and our grandfathers were really slim. They were really skinny because they ran every morning. That was kind of like their exercise. And also, they ate really healthy. They didn’t eat fatty foods, a lot of processed food. It was mainly a lot of corn and they drank a lot of water. So a lot of our ancestors back then were very slim. And as we started to colonize and get assimilated, we had processed foods and now, there’s a pandemic of obesity, a pandemic of diabetes, a pandemic of alcoholism, and people not really taking care of themselves anymore.

So back then, our families, we already had a lot of healthy ways we were living and as we colonized, we learned a lot of bad habits. To this day, a lot of our kids don’t even run to the east anymore. They’re more on their TVs or their devices. They’re not really out there active and not really farming or they’re not out there doing chores with the horses or the livestock or the animals and stuff. So it’s really getting pretty bad out there right now. And we, as teachers, are trying to reeducate and try to reteach them like the old ways so we can come back to that.

Alec Patton:

So that’s a nice transition to your teaching.

Bernita Bedah:

Yes, it is. With our teaching, with what I teach, we teach dual language, revitalizing our language and our culture. One thing with our program is we really try to build their self-identity. And a lot of our kids come from homes that are broken or that are not structured, meaning that there’s no discipline, there’s not really a way that parents are teaching their kids their cultural ways. So they end up coming back to the schools and relearning it there with our program with our dual language.

And we really feel the more we build their self-identity, they’re getting very rooted back into their cultural ties and that builds their confidence in doing really well in school, academically, socially. They’re very respectful to themselves because we teach them that they got to love themselves first before they love others. And with that, we teach them to revert back to [foreign language 00:06:26] and [foreign language 00:06:27] means “family, kinship.” So a lot of our kids in our programs are very respectful toward elders. They’re very respectful to each other, and they’re respectful to themselves. So we really want to come back to where they’re really proud of their identity.

And a lot of our children, they’re lost. And I wanted to say that our keynote speaker at the end of this, Rochelle, she said something about really knowing your identity will help you know what you want to do. And that really stood out to me. And she was talking about ancestors, saying that your ancestors wanted you to be here, wanted you to be at this conference. And we believe those same things because our ancestors are a big part of who we are as Navajo, especially that we are a matrilineal society, that our grandparents, especially our grandmothers, are very sacred. Our mothers are very sacred, our sisters.

And so we are the bosses in our culture, not so much the men, but the women are the ones that have the planning, the thought process, the life process, the reverence. So they kind of are the ones that make the families work. So a lot of women out there are the ones raising these kids. And we’re seeing that more often now, the men in our culture are not there as much as they were when I was little, only because they’re getting distracted by drugs and alcohol. There’s more abuse, domestic violence in our families, in our homes because mom and dad are not both in the home. A lot of our grandparents are the ones that are raising our children.

Alec Patton:

So in your school, you’re teaching kids their cultural ways?

Bernita Bedah:

Yes.

Alec Patton:

How did you learn your cultural ways yourself?

Bernita Bedah:

My mom and dad were non-English speakers. They spoke only Navajo. We were raised in a hogan, a dirt floor, one roof, one room, and it was kind of as tiny as this room. We had a fireplace and we were raised from the ground, literally. And when my mom cooked, we all sat at one table. We didn’t have plates and forks, of course. We all reached into one pot and we ate in that sense, which built our family community where our brothers had to respect the sisters and we, as sisters, had to respect our brothers. And we only spoke Navajo.

We were finally introduced to school, the Western way of living. And I really didn’t know English until mid-fourth grade, maybe? I spoke Navajo all the time at school and it was hard. My elementary, middle school and high school, my college education was very traumatic and I really got bullied, I think, more or less. In elementary, we only had Anglo teachers, so I was still getting slapped with a ruler on my hand for speaking Navajo in the class. It kind of really traumatized me. And when I started to learn to speak English, I would hear the Anglo teachers really whispering about me, how dumb I was and I’m a savage and I’m a dirty Indian and I smell and I could understand what they’re saying. Until about sixth grade, I started learning to stand up for myself.

And it was really hard because at school, I was really put down and it was really negative. But when I got home, mom and dad were really proud of me. They would really praise me that I knew who I was, that I knew how to speak Navajo. I knew my mountains, I knew songs, and I was a really beautiful, sacred person at home. But when I went to school, it was a different kind of story. I felt really ugly. I felt ashamed. I felt embarrassed. And when I got to middle school, I really started to be more embarrassed of my parents because they only spoke Navajo.

But I had a friend, a very good friend, who is also a teacher now. She’s actually an athletic director at a high school. She really brought me out of not being ashamed of myself. So in high school, I was really proud of who I was. And when I was graduating, I was actually allowed to do the benediction in Navajo. And that really gave me a boost of my pride that these things were still important.

And in college, I went to Colorado, Fort Lewis College. Only reason why I went there was the free tuition and I met people, but there were also Anglo people that went to that school. And it was just really people being discriminating towards me and my culture. It was a culture shock for me. And I didn’t go home every weekend like some people did. I kind of was there and I had to be there until I finished. So it took me away from my mom and my dad, my brothers and my sisters. Even though it was only like an hour and a half away, I still had to finish it out.

Traumatic thing that really happened in my college was that my father had passed away March 9, 1999. And it really brought me down because I felt like I was really trying to get a degree for my dad. I wanted him to see that I had a college degree. I finished college. I did it kind of in that sense. And when he died, I just absolutely had no motivation.

And I kind of went into a depression stage. One day my roommate says, “Someone’s at the door.” I went to get the door and my mom and my brothers were standing there and I knew I was in trouble because they learned that I wasn’t going to class, that I had just been sleeping through the day. And my mom and my brothers really gave me a talk that this education that I’m going through right now was not for my dad, not for my mom, not for my brothers or sisters, but for myself. And that realization really helped me see that school was for me and not for anybody else.

So that week, I finally got myself out of it. I pulled myself out of it. Of course, my brother and my mom, they did prayers and stuff for me. And that week, I went back to school and I finished the next year with a bachelor’s degree in social work. So I guess I was really kind of confused and all along, I guess I was thinking that I’m going to school for the sake of my parents not really realizing it was for myself.

So I had traumatic experiences and I really got into the work of social work and realized that that’s really negative. I learned about how homes with domestic violence and things like incest and things that shouldn’t be happening in the home. The way I learned a home should be was not how it was in social work. And I was a child protective service worker, and I actually had to take some kids away from their families because they were unstable. And in a way, it got really personal to where I would take a child from an unhealthy home. Those families would come after me personally, bust my windows, come to my dad’s house and bust his windows and just threats. And it was a really scary time and that’s when I was pregnant with my first child. And I really did not want to have that kind of energy while my daughter was inside me. And my mom had always told me, “Everything that you feel, the baby’s going to feel. So you’re going to have to be positive. You’re going to have to have good energy so that labor will be easy for you.”

But when I got into the social work field, it wasn’t that way. So I decided that I really don’t want to do this. This was something, another thing that I learned that, “Wow, I grew up in a real strict, healthy home,” but when I saw what domestic violence was doing to our families, it really scared me.

So I got out of that field immediately and decided that I wanted to be a teacher. And I’ve always told myself that the way I felt when I was in kindergarten or when I was in elementary, middle school, and high school, I would not ever give those kind of experiences to my students, that I would make them feel the most beautiful, smartest person in those eight hours that I have them and it was nine months out of a year. And I really want them to feel really special, real precious, and really sacred.

And so I really, truly think that helps our students, help my students to be who they are. And I taught with the Gallup McKinley County Schools and I taught with them Central Consolidated School District. I taught at a BIE school for a while and some of those kids, they actually come back and they talk to me and say, “Thank you for being a positive catalyst in my life, that I wouldn’t be here today.” And I had a student, his name is Darnell, I ran into him at TNR in Gallup and he says, “Oh my God, Ms. Bedah. Thank you very much for all you have done for me that’s made me a very strong person and I am there for my family.” And he really appreciated me and he couldn’t believe that I was still in the teaching field.

And those kinds of testimonies really, I guess, motivate me to keep teaching, especially the culture and language and this kid that was so appreciative said, “Now, because of you, I know who I am. I’m proud to say my clan. When we have occasions that we are celebrating something, I always choose to dress up. I wear my moccasins and I feel proud of my turquoise that I wear where I’m not embarrassed of it anymore and I’m really still trying to keep speaking my language.” And that really made me feel really happy and really proud. So I know I made a difference in some young people’s lives and I want to continue to do that for them.

So this program really helps our students be proud of who they are. And what I believe is that our culture will never die as long as we keep passing it on to the next generation. And I believe what our ancestors left for us will still be alive. Some people doubt it, but if you really believe that it’s going to live on, it will happen.

Alec Patton:

Tell me more about the program that you’re doing now.

Bernita Bedah:

We are a dual language program. We started out as an immersion program where we had 50% instruction in Diné Bizaad, Navajo language, and then we had 50% in English. So this kind of started out the whole thing with our dual language program. We had one teacher specifically just teach Navajo. We had another teacher specifically teach just the English side. So the kids would kind of rotate. They go to their English class and I have another class and then we would switch them. The fourth graders go to English. The fifth graders come to Navajo. And that was really working out. I think that was the best program I think we had. And then, they decided to change it where the one teacher does the Navajo portion and the English portion, both languages. And they decided to make it a dual language program, meaning that 90% of the time, the kindergarten teacher is speaking Navajo.

We decided that oral language development would be the big focus connected to the cultural identity. So then, they decided second grade will do 70% Navajo, 30% English. Third grade would do 60% Navajo, 40% English, and then 50% for fourth graders, 50% in Navajo, 50% in English. Our fifth graders would do 40% Navajo and 60% English. So that’s what the district decided to do and we are continuously doing it. We go back to the drawing boards and talk about things that are not working, things that we should implement, things that we should take out. So it’s a constant communication process with teachers and administrators.

And when we first started our dual language program, kindergarten kids that were in our immersion program are now actually seniors this year in high school and they’ll be graduating. That’s the cohort we started with way back. And when we were told that when we get to fifth grade, there will be a sixth grade immersion teacher or dual language teacher and the seventh grade as they moved along, but somewhere, there was a lot of miscommunication. So we felt like they pulled the rug from underneath us and the kids just went to regular school in sixth grade and we came back again to the drawing boards and said, “No, this is what we agreed on and this is what’s supposed to happen.” So we are still working on that.

And right now, our dual language program is from K through fifth grade. Eva B. Stokely is the main place that the dual language program started. And I teach in Newcomb the dual language program there. We had a big number of interests in parents that they wanted their child to be a dual language student. And as we were about to start this whole thing in Newcomb, the pandemic happened. So then we waited and waited and just this year, they finally put me in a kindergarten dual language position where, again, I teach 90% Navajo and 10% English.

Alec Patton:

So what’s that been like?

Bernita Bedah:

It’s a challenge. It’s a real big challenge because our students, they’re not Navajo speakers. Their first language was English. And so probably only 2% of the whole student population in our schools understand Navajo. So it was really difficult when I gave a lesson in Navajo, the kids would just sit there and had no idea what I just said. So then we decided to kind of go into it slowly where I’m code-switching back and forth, but we had professional development in how to teach a language. And a lot of the people that came and they talked to us and said, “Code-switching would not be something that’s going to be effective. So just stay in the language even though the kids are not understanding it and then they’ll start to start picking those things up.” And so we just pretty much stay in the language of Navajo and try not to code-switch.

And for my students, I noticed the understanding has gotten better. So I speak Navajo. I give directions. I tell them what to do in Navajo. I’m getting… some of the little kids are coming back to respond like, “Yes, I understand. Oh, [foreign language 00:23:12]. Oh, [foreign language 00:23:14].” They’re responding, so I really think that just speaking in Navajo, even though they don’t understand, using a lot of hand gestures, they’re starting to really understand. And again, behavior-wise, they are so different as far as regular ed kids are. Not as respectful as our students.

Alec Patton:

Why do you think that is?

Bernita Bedah:

Only because we teach with kinship and we tell our students that they can’t misbehave. They’re supposed to respect their elders, their moms and their dads. And we have parents that tell us like, “Wow, what did you guys do to my child? He’s so respectful at home. He does his chores. He says, ‘[foreign language 00:24:00].’ He says, ‘[foreign language 00:24:01].’ He says, ‘[foreign language 00:24:03]’” and we are getting really good positive feedback from parents.

Alec Patton:

All right, there’s got to be a little more to it than that because every school says you should respect your elders, but not all of them get those results.

Bernita Bedah:

Yeah. Well, I think it’s because we tell them the stories. We come and bring up all the stories like how we emerged from the earth and how there was chaos in each world. We kind of really go in depth and just sitting there, telling the story and the kids just staring at you with their jaw dropping like, “Oh my God.” And they really internalize these stories and we believe that these stories really happen. They’re not myths. They’re not fairytales. And when you tell the kids, they ask, “Tell us a story again.” And a lot of our stories, especially our winter stories, [foreign language 00:24:57], it deals with the coyote. And the coyote in our culture is known as a trickster, as a person that’s really naughty, someone that never follows the rules, but in the end, he’s always the one that gets burned. And our kids know like someone’s getting out of hand. Someone would say, “Hey, don’t act like that. You’re acting like the coyote” because they know those stories and so they don’t want to be like the coyote, the [foreign language 00:25:24], so they’re pretty much kind of start to control their own actions in class.

Alec Patton:

When you’re telling these stories, are you mostly telling those in English or in Navajo?

Bernita Bedah:

For me, I do it in Navajo and I use a lot of visuals. So I use a lot of picture cards and just them reading those picture cards, then they understand what I’m saying. And since they hear it a lot, all the time, they can tell it to me, back to me a little bit and that’s where the retelling stories comes in from ELA. The sequencing and all these different things, I’m actually doing it and kind of training them. So when we do get to that part, they already understand and they know what to do.

Alec Patton:

What would it have meant to you as a kid to be taking class, having your teachers speak Navajo with you?

Bernita Bedah:

Oh my gosh, I think I would’ve went farther in my college education. I wanted to become a electrical engineer. And somewhere along the line, someone says, “Oh, you’re Navajo. You’re not good at math. You’re stupid. You’re not going to do it. You’re not going to amount to anything.” And that really brought me down. And if my teacher spoke to me in Navajo, I think I would’ve excelled at my highest level. I could have bought my mom a home with a good degree, and I could have bought my dad a truck. I could have came back and helped my family. But that never happened because all these years, I felt so low about myself. And I had, I guess, really low self-esteem that somebody just brought me down.

And I remember a teacher in middle school says, “Why are you trying to hang on to that? It’s eventually going to die. Everything dies,” kind of like that. And that really stood in my brain. It still does to this day. And I really just wanted to show her I could do this. And sometimes, I think I wonder what my elementary teachers would’ve said about me today. I’m really thriving in what I do. I actually have a passion for teaching and money doesn’t matter to me, but as long as I love what I’m doing, and I just wanted them to see that you guys said I would never have a love for learning. But I do have a love for learning, and I don’t want anyone to teach my students that. I want to be the teacher that tells them they can and they will. I want to be that teacher to them, not what I’ve experienced.

Alec Patton:

Thank you so much. All right, I have one other question, which is you mentioned that you said in sixth grade, you started standing up for yourself. What happened?

Bernita Bedah:

I used to wear a [foreign language 00:28:17], a hair bun to school and people would make fun of me and they would call me, “You’re just a res girl. You’re just a John and you won’t amount to anything.” And then, kids walking down the hallway, they really pulled my bun. They would yank it and they would hit me and they would call me like a savage and they would say, “Oh, you stink” because I always wore the same clothes over and over. Every evening, when our clothes were dirty, my mom would actually sit there and hand wash it and then dry it out and then we’d wear the same thing the next morning. And so they would tease me and they would make fun of me and they would say that I was poor and that my parents were stupid only because they weren’t English speakers.

And finally, one day, I told my dad what was happening. I said, “This is what they’re doing to me” and then he says, “You know what? It’s okay to fight back. Go ahead and fight back.” So the first kid that pulled my hair that day, I pushed him and said, “Try that again” and he tried to do it again and I kind of slammed him on the ground. And I said, “This is my sacred hair bun. This is where my knowledge sit, and if you touch it again, I will punch you in the nose.” And so I finally really stood up for myself at that time, and all the kids in the cafeteria were like, “Oh my gosh” and they started to kind of stop doing that to me.

Alec Patton:

Did you get in trouble?

Bernita Bedah:

I did get in trouble and I did get suspended, but my dad told me, “That’s okay. You stand by what you did as right for you because those kids have no rights to do that to you.” So we came in, brought their mom, his mom in, and come to find out they were related to my dad. And it was kind of more embarrassing for them to be confronted by my dad and say, “Your child [inaudible 00:30:12] leave his hands off of his sister. This is his sister.”

And so that’s when everything stopped and people started having a little bit more respect for me. They started to treat me a little bit more nicer, especially the boys. And I used to tame horses with my dad and so I was really tough. So it felt like my dad had to give me permission to say, “Go ahead and defend yourself if you need to in order for me to do it” because I just didn’t want to get in trouble.

So that’s, I guess, that’s where I’m really verbal now today. To this day, I’m very verbal and sometimes, I’m at my children’s school constantly saying, “This is not right. Why is my child going through this? Why is this teacher saying this to my child? I went through that. I don’t want my child to go through it.” And it’s sometimes, they’re really embarrassing for my children, but I always tell them, “You can’t be treated that way. You’re a person just like them and you’re sacred and you’re always going to be sacred and you treat yourself like you’re a sacred person. You’re a five-fingered being that needs to be respected. Even though you’re a woman, you’re a minority, you still have a voice.” And in our family, we couldn’t be very vocal and expressive. But as the years came along, I became very vocal just because my dad and my parents really said, “You can’t just lay down for that. You got to say something. You got to put a stop to it.”

And so that’s what happened to me in sixth grade. So some days, I wish I would’ve had a better elementary experience or middle school or high school or even a college experience. I wish it would’ve been more positive. And again, I think I would’ve really excelled. And that’s why I don’t want to do that to other kids. I want them to excel as much as they can, push them to their potential, and let them go from there. Thank you.

Alec Patton:

Thank you. Thank you so much.

High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and edited by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by brother Herschel. Huge thanks to Bernita Bedah for this conversation. Check the show notes to find a link to the companion episode to this one. My interview with Peter Deswood, the Assistant Superintendent of the Central Consolidated School District. Also, in our interview, Bernita mentioned the keynote speech by Rochelle Gutiérrez from the 2023 Deeper Learning Conference. We put that keynote out as a podcast episode in the spring, so we’ve got a link to that as well. Thanks for listening.