My name is Roland Jumbo and living in Arizona has given me a unique perspective on living with the diverse society that surrounds us. I was born in Chinle, Arizona in 1988, since then I’ve lived the major of my life in Chinle, Arizona. My part of Arizona’s region is distinctive because the Northeast is located in the Navajo Nation. I myself am a Navajo Native American, so life is fulfilling as I grew in soul and education in Arizona, because there’s no place like the place you felt the wind first. I had my first steps on Arizona’s soil and plan on taking my last steps on Arizona’s soil.
There’s a aphorism with the purpose of convention of the person and there nature can only be seen as a rising sun until the couple parts have combined. Living in Arizona is my recommendation because life is still the same but the cycle of life brings more obstacles and overcoming those obstacles gives you the greatest feeling on earth. I grew up on the eastside of Chinle, in my grandmother’s sheep-camp, with my cousins in the summers. When I first heard the spoken words of Navajo from my grandmother’s mouth, I didn’t know a word she spoke because it was alien to me. With harsh time I came to understand her with my heart. It started with the teaching of everyday language in the two-room house, where I learned first the spoken Navajo words. I was just a young Native with the American settler’s teaching, but I knew in my heart that I had to learn the Native way in dirt rich Arizona because if I didn’t no one will remember the pain and struggle of my people. I learned to value those traditions now lost with time and pride. Pride gives intention to develop but that just numbs the reason. For example, you can ask a Native in a Pride shirt and they don’t know a thing about where their people’s existence began or even words spoken in the deep nature of unwritten pages of history. They can’t tell you how coming from Tseyi to the ridges out in Chinle Valley to migrating to the western mesa’s. When I was seven, I couldn’t tell you a thing about my existence but with time my nature of “Nativism” preserved in thought has come to me like education of breath. Because of my expressed living in Arizona I can band back to my “Nativism”, and I foundered that without this land I couldn’t but now I would predict my Navajo people.
If it’s not a dust bowl in Chinle, it’s a heater day from that Sun that evolves around us. In temptation of my body’s want for gentle, tender storms, I plead a day I could go away from Chinle but it’s my nature to live in dust so I’m pleased, because I can feel the heat, I feel blessed with the sun. The weather is always at it’s best to make a killing on outsiders but this is home. I experienced my first invasion of hope to leave Chinle while working on a fence in the summer when I was thirsty and tired, but I have grown to associate with the dated weather. My need for a beach vacation but we have a wash and that’s enough to grow above the hope to know that my knowledge of the land can image my heaven. We have water here with windmills running, with bright artwork tagged on the well, so I can never go on a drought or forget that I can bathe in dirt if the water stops existing. I have a vacation everyday when I come to town to school, the brute icon gives me a feeling everyday I have the chance to prevail in society and because Arizona’s landscape never stops, I can find new lands but still located in Arizona. Born and raised in Arizona, bound to take those teachings and believe that I might just make a difference because of resources here.
I begin in a hospital bed in Arizona and plan to have my flat line in Arizona, because above all the struggles I mingle with time and realize you always end up were you began. Riding on a horse out in Chinle I can feed the visions of desert rattlesnakes and lizards. While riding I remember hard times and how I made it through them. To the sense in my point of view I see soil and oil in grains stocked, known that product came from south Arizona. I learned to ride that horse and that horse learned me. I can have a friendly conversation with a horse out in the desert when no one is around but the horse. That unique experience can invert colors of a rainbow to come at me with a vision of provision of myself. Because in cold echoes of canyon walls I can process the person I am and see I can walk the plateau and reverse the reflection of evil and count the days I will change bad days to good days. Because it was here I learned to harvest corn and rustle cattle, the battle is engaged in what’s really wrong and right but intent is I have that “Nativism in my voice” so I know only harmony can account. The balance can be solved that where I grew up is where I’ve prevailed over death and Arizona’s the spot I want to joust my last words.
Even though I never thought I’d say this, but Arizona had founded my life when no where else can define my mind. I am blessed to be birthed in dirt out in the desert. I’ve been to other places but no place is like the place I cased nature in a diverse tree line with a desert on my back door. I found my Navajo tradition and culture in the outcast of the United States. Where I learned to cage the influence and prevail in the mail outpost of most bounty. The harsh weather brought me to the bottom and made me overcome that’s why I still breath and have the instinct to brisk around and know my land well not kill me. The land knows me, I know the land, and that’s an education I hope to get a paper diploma from, figural speaking. I’d walk the line Arizona anytime and mind that birth I was made and wish to live my life out in Chinle, Arizona.
