Canyon Boys

Mitchell, Tyler (2022) Canyon Boys. Masters thesis, Northern Arizona University.

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Abstract

My first creative writing sample came in the form of a short story, written when I was in the third grade. The story itself followed a young child, lost amongst an animal farm, on the search for his missing teddy bear. What I remember next, was a poem, a haiku written in sixth grade about a bat. For years, I’ve thought about stories I’ve always wanted to tell, coming of age stories, horror stories, stories about my family, all inspired by storytelling within my family. It wasn’t until college under the guidance of Diné poet Orlando White, that I would first learn about Diné poetics, and literature. White introduced myself and other Diné students to his own poetry and writers like Sherwin Bitsui, Laura Tohe, and more. I’ve always held an interest in creating my own stories, but it was this experience that grew my admiration of poetics, and poetry’s ability to teach about love, history, and healing. During my time here at Northern Arizona University, I’ve chosen multiple classes that allowed me to study Indigenous literature. This genre often focuses on eco poetics and location-based storytelling, often dealing with historical events and the ways that generations of people survive. My experience with writing has always been informed by Indigenous authors and so my own writing is often based in landscape focusing on setting to tell a story. Canyon Boys is a collection of poetry influenced by my hometown of Chinle, particularly my time growing up in and around Canyon De Chelly. As a Diné, I am always connected to the Canyon and this connection is felt within stories shared and experienced by my family as well and our stories as a family and as Diné people are shared throughout this collection. As a Diné male, I look toward my own male relatives for advice in growing. These past few years at NAU have turned me to think about my brother, my father, my grandparents and how their lives have influenced mine. This collection features several poems dedicated to these individuals to inform myself and readers of our identity as Diné men. The landscape that these characters interact in are often sandstone cliffs, cornfields, within huge red and brown canyon walls all influenced by the canyon’s influence as a place of survival, war, removal, returning, and healing. With this work I want to illustrate the experience of a Diné individual and what lessons can be learned when one reflects on their relationships with family, loved ones, and the landscape they choose for themselves. Canyon De Chelly is significant to Diné people as it served as their homeland for thousands of years. It has also more recently served as a place of refuge for Diné hiding out during the forced relocation of southwestern tribes seen at the hands of the U.S. Government. There are stories of trauma as well as healing that people remember the Canyon for. Diné Poet Laureate, Laura Tohe has written about this extensively in her poetry. Her poetics inform us how landscape is essential to Diné identity and can be used a reference point for others as a way to navigate their own identity. I write poems to showcase stories and moments I experience as a Diné male and how each instance, no matter how small or brief, can offer healing and understanding of my cultural identity. Women are vital in any culture, especially Diné culture and their presence is felt heavily in community efforts of storytelling and healing. These past few years I have felt a lack of this guidance in the Diné community and in my own familial structures when thinking of the male individuals. I want to attribute my own understanding of healing and communicate my own struggles through my poetry, as a way to begin conversations for healing within my family. In writing poems dedicated to individuals and the landscapes which influence me, I explore that level of kinship, of connecting to my community through storytelling. Though inspired by the narrative storytelling of Laura Tohe and Luci Tapahonso, I feel my strengths often come in imagery heavily influenced by writers like Sherwin Bitsui and Orlando White. These writers have served as my poetry teachers over my years of Undergrad and Graduate studies and their image-based poetics have given me insight as to how poetry can illustrate landscape, and how that landscape, given the time to tell the story, can offer guidance to historical events, generational healing, and powerful instruction into Diné identity. I want my poetry to be seen as a guide to healing, how our relationships to others especially landscape can influence our identity. These short moments of memories, of raw landscape and tradition, have helped me immensely to grow as an individual, and showcasing them through poetics provides me a way to connect back to my community. With love and honesty, this collection and others in the future will be dedicated to my fellow canyon boys.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Publisher’s Statement:	© Copyright is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the Cline Library, Northern Arizona University. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.
Keywords:	Canyon; Landscape; Literature; Navajo; Poetics; Poetry
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PE English
NAU Depositing Author Academic Status:	Student
Department/Unit:	Graduate College > Theses and Dissertations College of Arts and Letters > English
Date Deposited:	25 May 2023 22:16
Last Modified:	25 May 2024 08:30
URI:	https://openknowledge.nau.edu/id/eprint/5907

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