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Image by Bassoonstuff (Bobby C. Hawkins),
CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
On a clear and icy morning in February of this year, I picked up Rene Begay from the Albuquerque airport. We headed west toward the Navajo Nation reservation, the largest tribal land base in the United States, spanning 27,500 square miles between Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. Begay, a 31-year-old Navajo scientist with a background in genetic research, spent her childhood in various towns throughout the reservation. She’d just flown in from Denver, where she works as a research assistant at the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. She wore a blue velveteen blouse — a garment customarily worn by Navajo women — and jeans. “Something traditional and something modern,” she said.
Our first stop would be Chinle, Ariz., a town of about 5,000 people, where Begay’s mother lives. The two are very close, and Begay flies down from Denver as often as possible to visit. As we exited the Albuquerque city limits, Begay told me I...
