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Creative Writing Currently: My First-Year Faculty Experience Teaching for the BFA Program at Diné College

Shaina Nez (Diné), Senior Lecturer, Creative Writing & English | May 2023

 

My first year as a faculty lead teaching and overseeing the Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) program in Creative Writing (CW) at Diné College was an eye-opening experience, even though I was not new to the tribal college setting. I have worked with the tribal institution since November 2019, starting as a BFA Program Coordinator, later transitioning to a Program Manager, and now a full-time faculty member with the School of Arts and Humanities.

 

Fall 2022

 

Teaching foundational and junior-level courses in the genres of Fiction and Creative Nonfiction allowed me to highlight contemporary Native American and Indigenous authors who paved the path of inquiry, transformation, and social justice. I’m also a doctoral scholar in Justice Studies at Arizona State University and believe this experience is informing my pedagogy to address the necessary inclusions for tribal college CWP’s to have a larger role in literary spaces such as AWP, including those literary communities seeking emerging diverse poets and writers.

 

With the support from the students and faculty, here’s what we achieved in the academic year 2022–2023.

 

To jumpstart the year, I hosted an online reading event in collaboration with Darien Hsu Gee, editor of the anthology, Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro-Essays on Being in the World published by Woodhall Press. Bringing this online experience to the undergraduate students was a reward in itself; we had over fifty contributors reading from the anthology. Event feedback reflected success in terms of recognition, belonging, and identity, engaging in our experiences as women together in the online space.

 

Dine college reading participants on a Zoom call.

 

Promoting our program with student involvement became the next step. With our twelve students widespread throughout the Navajo Nation and out-of-state, highlighting the students and faculty together in real-time is the continuing challenge to solve. One approach was establishing a program-led brochure encouraging students to engage with their aesthetic by answering the question, what does storytelling mean to you? Here are some student contributions from the forthcoming graduating class of 2025:

 

Jalen Smallcanyon softly smiling for a picture. She has long black hear and is wearing pretty turquoise jewelry.

“Storytelling is a cultural skill that has evolved over the years. Presently, storytelling allows us to reflect and listen to the past while nurturing our future storytellers to continue sharing human experiences. Poetry allows me to write freely from my mind and spirit, and to appreciate the abundance life shows us daily. It has changed from oral storytelling to written literature. Today, we are expressing our writing in different media forms.”

-Jalen Smallcanyon, Diné, double majoring in Creative Writing and Diné Studies

 

Zenaida Lee smiling for a photo. She is carrying a brown purse and is wearing glasses and a jean jacket.

 

“Writing to me is the key to a portal to the past, to the present, and to the future."

-Zenaida Lee, Diné, Creative Writing

 

Lambert Martin, Jr. wearing a cap and looking off in the distance in a black and white photo.

“Storytelling is an act of creation. And the act of creation is inherent in all beings. From the smallest fragment to the largest object, we are all part of a never-ending cycle of transformation. Storytelling is a delicate fusion of past and present reflected back to us from the universal. A narrative of our own making, in perpetual motion, etched into the bone. Story telling is our essence laid bare for all the world to see.”

-Lambert Martin, Jr., Diné, double majoring in Education and Creative Writing

 

Danielle Manygoats posing for a photo on a desert tree. She is smiling and wearing a red shirt.

“I am learning how to improve my self-expression with words I write in the Navajo language.”

-Danielle Manygoats, Diné, Creative Writing

 

What is unique about the students are their ways of knowing in writing and other art forms. For instance, Ruth “Bazhnibah” Kawano is a digital photographer and a daily contributor to the local newspaper Navajo Times. With a keen eye for shape, texture, and depth, Bazhnibah assisted with photographing faculty during our BFA CW Photoshoot at the second college campus located in Shiprock, New Mexico.

 

Navajo poets and writers Esther Belin, Sherman Bitsui, Jesse Maloney

 

The Saad Na'ach'aah Reading Series hosted by faculty member Orlando White (Diné) featured Navajo poets and writers Esther Belin, Sherman Bitsui, Jesse Maloney, and myself on the main campus in Tsaile, Arizona. The reading series is historically significant to the college campus—even when I was a former undergraduate student; I read my first published poem at one of his events in 2010. Orlando has hosted distinguished poets and writers at the college, including Joy Harjo (Muscogee/Creek Nation), Arthur Sze, Natalie Diaz (Mohave/Gila River Indian community), Luci Tapahonso (former Diné Poet Laureate), Santee Frazier (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), and Simon Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo).

                                     

 

 

Spring 2023

 

The spring semester began with acknowledging our partnerships with graduate programs, such as the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) MFA Low-Residency Creative Writing Program. MFA Director Deborah Taffa (Yuma Nation and Laguna Pueblo) along with Program Assistant, Rachel Marquez (Chicanx), visited our students online with special guest readers from IAIA’s current MFA cohort. This event inspired the undergraduate class to plan their future in writing—the hope is to continue these tribal institutional partnerships as part of expanding the representation of Native American and Indigenous worldviews in storytelling and publishing as a way of reclaiming our literary landscapes.     

                                      

 

Tribal institutions across the nation come together for annual gatherings, such as AIHEC (American Indian Higher Education Consortium) hosted in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Competitions in Indigenous knowledge, creative writing, and arts highlight the unique perspectives and practices our students are encouraged to submit. This year, Kelli Jo Ford was the guest judge for this year’s Creative Writing competition. The BFA CW program was pleased to see Jalen Smallcanyon’s piece ‘The Aura’ placed as ‘honorable mention’ in the Creative Nonfiction category for her work.

 

 

My first year concluded with seeking additional grant and research funding to further hear from the CW students about their experiences in the program. Becoming a justice researcher influences my ways of knowing, being, and learning in these Native community spaces. I’m grateful to be among these courageous creatives, as they are the future in telling their stories for our communities and themselves. Our goal is to attend AWP conferences to build our network with other literary programs in solidarity as mainstream and tribal institutions. Our program continues to blossom with the support of students, faculty, and literary communities. Ahéhee' to AWP for highlighting the Navajo Nation’s first tribal institution since 1968. 

 

 

About:

Shaina A. Nez is Táchii’nii born for Áshiihi. She serves Diné College as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing and English. She is a doctoral scholar in Justice Studies with the School of Social Transformation and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is a two-time Blanchard Pre-Dissertation fellowship recipient with the American Indian College Fund (AICF) for 2022 and 2023. Her forthcoming dissertation is “Emerging BIPOC Women Writers: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Experiences in Career Preparation, Social Capital, and Gender Inequality in Creative Writing Programs.”

 

For more information about the BFA CW Program at Diné College, contact Shaina A. Nez at shainez@dinecollege.edu, or by phone (505) 368-3664.


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