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INTRODUCTION The Glittering World is a collection of zines about what it means to live as an Indigenous person in a world shaped by colonialism, while still reaching toward something beyond it. I began making these zines while reconnecting with my Diné culture. At first, I thought I was searching for answers. I wanted to understand where I came from, what had been lost, and what had survived. Instead, I found more questions. I found histories I had never been taught. I found traditions that had endured despite enormous efforts to erase them. I found grief alongside pride, anger alongside tenderness, and the strange experience of recognizing something as yours even when you are still learning how to hold it. These zines came from that process. Some are about colonialism and the ways it continues to shape Indigenous life. Some are about solidarity, appropriation, violence and the responsibilities of people who call themselves allies. Others are more personal: family, memory, language, ceremony, land, death, identity and my own attempts to understand what it means to reclaim a relationship that colonialism interrupted. They are not meant to be a complete explanation of Diné culture, or a guide to being Indigenous. They are pieces of one person’s experience, created at different moments in an ongoing process of remembering, questioning and creating. 3

The idea I keep returning to is Hózhó. Hózhó is often translated into English through words like beauty, balance, harmony and wellness, but no single English word contains it. I have come to think of it less as something we possess and more as something we practice: a continual effort to live in right relationship with ourselves, with other people and with the world around us. That is why I called this collection The Glittering World. Colonialism is part of the story, but I refuse to let it become the whole story. Our history does not begin with colonization. Our identity is not defined only by what was taken. And decolonization cannot only be about dismantling something. Eventually, we have to ask what we are making in its place. These zines are pieces of my answer. A world in which we remember.
A world in which we resist.
A world in which we create.
A world in which we continue walking toward Hózhó 4

REDISCOVERING HOZHO I wish that I had some type of warning that rediscovering my Navajo culture would mean mourning it too. In my naivety, I thought finding the answers I was searching for would be easy. That the puzzle pieces would begin to fit and that I would find a profound sense of pride and belonging. I did find those things, but I also found grief waiting beside them. Every sacred word I learn. Every story I uncover. Every teaching I receive. They remind me not only of what survived, but also of what was taken, silenced, and nearly lost. Some days it feels like I am holding both a gift and a wound in the same hand. The gift is knowing where I come from. The wound is realizing how much was interrupted. I remember the moment I learned that what the word Hózhó meant and that it is not just a vocaublary word, it is a worldview. Hózhó is a way of understanding life itself. Hózhó means balance, harmony, peace, beauty. Hózhó teaches that we are connected to everything. The Earth, the sky, the plants, the animals, the water, the ancestors, each other, ourselves. Living in Hózhó means living in right relationship. Not above the world. Not separate from it. But as a part of a sacred web where everything matters. 5

As I began learning my ancestral language, Dine Bizaad, something unexpected happened. The act of speaking these words awakened something within me, the feeling was visceral. Like a spark.
Like a memory.
Like coming home. My mind felt sharper. More fluid. More alive. Literally. Understanding complex concepts was easier. What took me hours to read the day before was a cake walk the next. I started to paint, I learned how to play an instrument. It is as if all these talents were awakening. And then came the sadness. I began to understand how much colonization had taken: languages, stories, ceremonies, ways of thinking, ways of knowing. I think about the generations who were taught to doubt themselves. Who were punished for speaking their language. Who carried knowledge that never reached me. I mourn what was lost. I mourn what will never be passed down. Sometimes that makes me angry. Sometimes it makes me cry. Sometimes it leaves me feeling empty. But I am learning that grief is not the opposite of healing. It is part of healing. 6

My grief is sacred. It exists because what was taken had value. It mattered. And despite everything, I still carry pieces of it. Enough to remember. Enough to rebuild. Enough to continue. We are still here. Our stories are still here. Our language is still here. Our ancestors are still here. And with every word remembered, every teaching shared, every act of reconnection, we continue walking in beauty. 7

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In Diné culture, Warrior names are traditionally given to women. My mother's name is Tzennibah. It means: She who wars from within the canyon. When you are not on the reservation, identity can feel like something you carry quietly. But my mother's name never goes quiet. As a little girl, I love listening to my mom talk on the phone. My favorite conversations were the ones where she had to spell her name. She had a script: "T as a tiger.
Z as in zebra.
E as in elephant.
N as in Nancy.
N as in Nancy.
I as in igloo.
B as in boy.
A, H." Then she would usually add: "I'm full blooded Native American. It's a Navajo name." I can honestly say that her name single handedly kept me connected to my native culture. I asked endless questions about it. Was it hard to learn how to spell? Why didn't her sisters have Navajo names too? 10

those questions would send my mother into stories. Stories about spending summers on the reservation. Helping her grandmother with a sheep. Traveling the powwow circuit. Dancing fancy shawl. I tried to imagine what that life was like. It felt like a completely different world. Then one day, my mother told me she had been named after her own mother. "I thought Grandma's name was Helen," I said. "It is. She has two names. Tzennibah is her navajo name." My mother explained. I wondered why Grandma didn't just go by her Navajo name. I wish I had a Navajo name.

Eventually, I would come to understand that the answer could be reduced to a single word: Colonization

I wasn't raised on the reservation. I didn't grow up speaking, Navajo. There were times when I wondered what made me Navajo enough. But every time I heard my mother spell her name I was reminded that identity is not measured by geography. It lives in stories. It lives in memory. It lives in the things our families refused to let disappear.

My grandmother lost her name. My mother carried it. Maybe that's why whenever I hear Tzennibah, I don't just hear a name. I hear a lineage finding its way home. 11

MUTTON STEW "Who here has ever tired mutton stew?" My professor asked the class. I was in my sophomore year at Cal State Long Beach, taking U.S. Western History. The class was held in a theatre. Our professor lectured from the stage, a spotlight following him as he spoke. I was busy writing notes when he asked again. "Who here has tried mutton?" Without giving it much thought, I raised my hand. "You! Yes, you" I looked up. "Where have you tried mutton?" I looked around the theatre, I was only person with their hand raised. That's when I realized that the professor was talking to me. I felt my face flush and my ears got really hot. They must have been bright red. "Oh," I said. "On the reservation" My professor smiled big. I think this answer excited him. "Are you Native American?" he asked. "Yes. I am Navajo." I replied. He asked me my clans and I didn't know them. I felt a wave of shame come over me. He said "that's ok, I only ask because a colleague of mine is also Navajo." He moved on to his next question. "How was it prepared?" I told him that my great- grandmother butchered a sheep and we cooked it over a fire or made a stew. We always ate it with fry bread." 12

He asked me a few more questions and I answered them as best I could.
The moment felt strange.
On one hand, I felt like a specimen being pried open for examination. Maybe that was just my private, shy nature. I hadn't raised my hand to tell a story. I had only raised it because I had eaten mutton.
But on the other hand, I felt proud. I knew answers to his questions. Answers that you couldn't find in the textbook. I knew because I experienced them. I had watched my great- grandmother butcher sheep. I had eaten mutton cooked over a fire. I had dipped my fry bread in mutton stew. These were not facts I studied, they were my memories.
When he was done with his questions, he thanked me. "Let's give Alexis a round of applause for sharing her experience."

The theatre filled with clapping. I smiled, awkwardly and looked down at my notebook. The spotlight was on my professor but I still felt it on me.
The rest of the lecture passed by in a flash. I don't know what else he talked about. I had walked into that theatre thinking I was there to learn about U.S. Western History. I didn't realize that I would become a part of the lesson. 13