My Dilbaa Dreams: Saad Part Naakí   To begin, I offer a poem to the language that is yet to be made: we declare via our tongue (can you hear us?) we move together with purpose with deliberate speak..deliberate literacies… this is us…who we are…how we talk… learn it, respect it, we made it, for us,... Continue Reading →

Saad. Words. Werdz. Word.  You know, units of speech (written or spoken) that hold meaning?  Mmm…words are COOL and mysterious and have a lot of power, we give them power.  I’m learning my language, slowly (it’s an experience that I’ll write about someday).  Sometimes I’ll hear a saad being spoken in my dreams, or I’ll... Continue Reading →

Roll Call!!  WYA!?   These days I’ve been leaning into the glitter-anointed magic that is our 2SLGBTQIA+ youth, all y’all’s creative genius has sustained me and has me looking to the horizons of gender/gender expression, gender talk, gender walk, gender everything.  Ahé’hee for building your own theory and gender practice you are showing us just the... Continue Reading →

Meeeeeeee! haha  Well, I feel like I’ve been talking about myself throughout the blog.  So I don’t have much to say.  This post is a footnote of sorts, a link in the chain of our discussion and our lineage of dilbaa and nádleeh.   For Diné cultural teachings context is foundational.  Words are “the how” of... Continue Reading →

“The Holy People gave me a female body and a male embodiment: as mother earth and father sky” –Carrie House1  Carrie House is a filmmaker, poet, and essayist.  And they self-identify as a fourth-gendered Diné person, like me.  House’s life as a non-cis man showed me that we do exist in the world, in context... Continue Reading →

In part one of this post, I outlined a framework for reading I call reading in kinship. This post is a continuation in that it’s an  introduction to one of many of my nádleeh relatives/teachers.  I recently read excerpts from a biography of Hastiin Klah[1].   Klah is  frequently referenced as an example of a prominent nádleeh in Diné... Continue Reading →

I find reading and learning about myself from the ethnographic record is…an experience, good and bad, and requires a lot of reading beyond the words and taking a lot of it with a good heap of skepticism.  Looking for scraps and slivers of nádleeh and dilbaa is wonderfully affirming, but also frustrating, sad, addictive, immersive in the... Continue Reading →

Dilbaa is the Diné word for a fourth-gendered person who’s biological make up is female but they live out their daily life as a male warrior, in other words they are a Male-bodied Female.  Along with nádleeh (along with asdzáá and hastiin, the Diné gender system includes four genders, I chose dilbaa for the title... Continue Reading →

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