 Aloha mai kakou and welcome to another broadcast of Roots Hawaii. My name is Walter Kauai, I am your host. We are here at the wonderful studios of Think Tech Hawaii located in downtown Honolulu in the Pioneer Plaza building. Joining me today is my very special guest, Nijoni Chan, who is part Native American Indian and grew up on the Navajo Indian Reservation. Aloha Nijoni, thank you so much for joining us here and taking time off from your extremely busy schedule. Before we talk story with Nijoni, I'd like to share a little bit about her to our viewers that may not be familiar with her. As one world leader once said, and I quote, no success can compensate for failure in the home, end quote. Nijoni says, my family, my faith are the most important things in my life. And because of that, my pursuits for degrees and recognitions are secondary, my family, my children are my priority. After attending BYU Provo for one year, I met my husband and our family began. It's been a balancing act between school and motherhood. Nijoni shared with me one of her favorite Bible quotes, quote, to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heavens, end quote. Nijoni is grateful to have had many opportunities to serve in her community and the church to which she belongs, even the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Aloha, mahalo once again, Nijoni. Aloha. Tell us a little bit about where you're from. I think that's quite intriguing that you, in this century that we live in, that you grew up in a Navajo reservation. And tell our viewers what that experience was like for you. Sure. A little bit about the reservation. It's on the four corners area of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. And I lived in the Utah for just a bit of time in the Monument Valley. We were raised there for about 10 years. And it was wonderful waking up every morning and seeing the sunrise and seeing the sunsets behind the red rock. And then we moved into Quanta just over the border. My dad's a school teacher, so he took a job there. And that's where my parents still reside. And I claim I'm from Quanta. And people ask me where I'm from. And Quanta is in Arizona. Quanta is in Arizona. So I mean, OK, forgive me if this sounds crazy what I asked this question. But so if I were just driving, just driving throughout Arizona, would there be something that would tell me that I'm now entering the Navajo reservation? No. It would just blend in like any other city? It would just blend in. You would see probably a lot of native people. OK. And that would be a clue. That would be a clue, some native words on buildings and things like that. But other than that, I don't think you'd be able to tell really that you were on the reservation. I guess that's a good thing. Yeah. Yeah, so wonderful. Tell me a little bit about the historical background of the Navajo Indians. I know there are a lot of Native American Indian tribes in the United States. And by comparison, in terms of the Navajo nation, how is it ranked? Is it one of the largest, the largest? Right. I thought I read somewhere that was like the second or third largest. Is the second largest? Second largest. Cherokee, I think, comes up before the Navajo nation for federally recognized people who've claimed that tribe. The Navajo nation, though, as a whole, the land is the biggest, the biggest in the US. What is the largest? So it's the largest as far as the reservation. You know, tell me something because in preparing for this show, I googled some, you know, I tried to educate myself. And I saw an area that had, like, four mountain peaks. And within those mountain peaks was the reservation. Can you share with us, I mean, that's quite unique. Yeah. Our people from the very beginning, I mean, our orally, our history has been passed down orally. And it's been told that our people believe that if we were lived between the four sacred mountains, there's a mountain to the north, to the south, to the east and to the west, that if we were within that, that we would be safe, we would be protected. It's sacred. And so there was a point in history where the government came and tried to take, you know, remove our peoples from this area. And they did. They were removed for a time. But when it came time to work with the government and treaties and other things, we were able to reclaim that area within the four sacred mountains. And our people still live there to this day. The reservation sits inside those four sacred mountains. And that's where you grew up. And that's where I grew up. So, you know, looking now, you know, fast forward to, you know, this time in your life, when you look back on that experience, tell us the positive things as you refer. Because maybe growing up as a child, you may not have seen that as being, yay, best place to grow up. But when you reflect now as an adult and in the times that we live, what are some of the positive takeaways, you know, as an adult? As an adult. I'm able to teach recently. I wish I had a picture of my son, but he is serving a church mission in the Marshall Islands. And there, the people have nothing. They, you know, wait for the rainwater. They collect the rainwater and he washes his clothes in the bucket. And he, you know, he's gone on and on told us he climbs coconut trees for his breakfast in the morning and fishes for his dinner. And I, as I shared with him before his mission in my mother, we shared, he knows. He knows that that's the way my mother grew up. And that's where I'm from. There are people still, you know, in the United States that live that way. And on the reservation without electricity, without running water. And so I think for him, it was, there was a appreciation for their culture, knowing that, you know, he's, our Navajo side is very alike in that way. There was an appreciation and an understanding. And I think, I think it built in me an empathy for others. And it doesn't matter where I go. I know that, you know, in those circumstances that I, I've lived there. And I've, my grandparents, and we've been, you know, we've seen those, those things. And I can see that. Yeah, that's, that's a blessing, as you mentioned earlier, earlier. I know we have, we'd like to show a picture of your mom. I believe this is your mom. Yeah. What a beautiful lady. Mom's still alive. Mother's still alive, yes. She is full Navajo, born and raised on the Navajo reservation. And I could say so much about my mother that she's been through so much. Just trials and hard things. And I'm just grateful that she taught us and made it, you know, it was very important for us to, to go, go to school, to know about our family, to know our culture and to, and as members of the, you know, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she is very, very strong and faithful member of that church. And this taught us and instilled in us a lot of those values and standards as well. So your mom, I mean, just looking at that picture that we got to see, you know, do you see some similarities in the Navajo Indian culture that, you know, because you live here in Hawaii, you're obviously exposed to the native Hawaiian culture and being where you actually live and we can get there, talk about that later. What are some of the similarities you see? You know, being raised by your mom and now you have your own children. And, you know, you're trying to provide, I would assume, to your children the best of both cultural, indigenous peoples' worlds, if there's such a phrase, being the Navajo as well as the Hawaiian. How is that being blended in your family now as you're raising your children? Sure. My, I talked to my mother this morning and she reminded me that, you know, with my genealogy, I have my Navajo side and my dad's side, which is white, we call it a Navajo Bilagana. And she said, your children, they're going to have, and she said, you know, listed on my husband's side, the Hawaiian, the Chinese, the Filipino, and then, you know, your Navajo and your Bilagana side. And she reminded me that I need to, you know, I need to do my part in teaching them, you know, about where they, you know, about the Navajo culture and about where they came from and as much as I, you know, I can, I can share. And so, family's very important in our, and that's the first thing that, you know, my mother taught me was my clans and where I'm from and my grandparents and their clans because they help us to know in our, you know, in our genealogy where our families are from. And it helps us to tie into, you know, who we're related to or who we don't marry because they're cousins or they're closely related. So we, we know we have a clan system. And yeah. You know, that's similar to the Hawaiians, but I'd like to have our engineer bring up our next picture. And I think this is a picture of your dad. So tell us a little bit, you know, we're going to diverse a little, get away from the Navajo side. But your dad has an interesting story and his connection to the Navajo, doesn't he? Can you share that with us? Yes. He is in this picture at West Point. He lived in Pennsylvania and played football and did really well. He was really, did well with football that West Point wanted him to come out and play football for them. So he went and was there for a while for a time playing football and realized he just didn't enjoy it, didn't want, he wanted something different. And, and his, you know, just trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He found, came upon a magazine of some sort and saw about a story about Brigham Young University and their football program. And he was very intrigued and wanted to, you know, wanted to know more about it. He had a car and he packed it up and he drove out to Utah and he made himself part of that football team. He was able to play football for a while. So he was a good athlete. He was a good athlete. Yes, he has. Your dad wasn't a member of the church. He was in a member of the church. But he headed off to the Midwest. He headed off to the Midwest in hopes of being able to, you know, play football. And, and he felt like that was where he needed to go and play. And I assumed dad played football, graduated from Brigham Young University. Yes, he did. So how does, how does he meet your mom? Yeah, so in his, you know, being able to be on the university campus, I shared the story with you. But he one day it was a Sunday and he was out running. And everybody else was dressed in white shirt and ties and dresses and they were all headed to a building. And he asked, he asked, where's everybody going? I can't, I'm, you know, I'm wondering. And they said they're well, there's a profit, a profit that is visiting today. And so he decided to go and follow. He had been brought up with the Bible and knew there was profit and wanted to know. And, yeah. And then he went to this gathering where he saw and knew that the profit at that time was President Spencer W. Kimball. And he, from there. That would have been in the 70s, right? That would have been in the 70s, yes. From there he took missionary discussions and learned more about the church and wanted to serve a mission. So he was called to serve on the Southwest Indian Mission, which is the Navajo Reservation. And- Is that where you met your mom? He didn't meet my mom on his mission. He ended up serving his two years and he actually met my mom's, the family. He served in the area where my mom's family but never met my mother. And they, when he went back to Brigham Young University, later met my mother. She was attending? She was attending Brigham Young University. Okay. So in the universe, that is not happenstance. When you think about it, you know, the odds, your dad's at, he's a cadet at West Point, for whatever reason, decides he doesn't want that and flips open a magazine of all things and then finds Brigham Young University. Probably didn't know anything about Brigham Young University. Other than, as you said, a great football program. And, you know, he was a good athlete, got into the university and played football. Still hadn't met your mom yet, served during the church, served the mission, and ironically in the Navajo Nation, met your mom's family, still didn't meet your mom, goes back to school after serving a successful mission and then they're on campus. So you kind of get the notion that, you know, somebody had their hands in the preparation of this. You know, when you fast forward and look at where your life is, your children and everything that's happened to all of you. Maybe we can have Rob put up our next picture here, your family picture. So I'm not even gonna, I love black and white photos because, you know, just, wow, this is old. So maybe you can describe to us. Yes. So that's my grandmother that's there at the bottom and I included her because that's my mother's mother. She never got to go to school. She was, during that, you know, those years, her brothers and sisters were rounded up by soldiers and she should have been too to attend boarding school and her parents who are in the picture, her father standing there and her mother's next to her decided to hold her back and hide her in a water barrel so that she couldn't leave. That she would be there to work hard and help them with the sheep and whatever it was and so she stayed behind and we're really grateful for her, my grandmother because she's instilled in us the importance of, you know, education, she never got that and she really wanted that for her posterity and so she shared it when she could, her story and that she wanted us to have that. That was a good motivating factor to pass on to our children and her posterity. Well, folks, we are talking story with our special guests this afternoon here at Roots Hawaii, Nezhoni Chan. But we're gonna take a 60 second break and you're watching Roots Hawaii. I'm your host, Walter Kovaiyaya. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years and we're fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championship. This show is based on my book which is also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, achieving and sustaining success and finding greatness. If you're a student, parent, sports or business person and want to improve your life and the lives of people around you, tune in and join me on Mondays at 11 a.m. as we go Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Aloha, y'all. My name is Mitch Ewan. I'm from the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute and I'm the host of Hawaii, the state of clean energy. We're on every Wednesday at four o'clock and we hope that we have interesting guests who talk to us about various energy things that are happening in Hawaii all the way from PV, to windmills, to hydrogen, close to my heart, electric buses and electric vehicles. So please dial in every Wednesday at four o'clock on Hawaii, the state of clean energy. Aloha. Aloha mai kākou and welcome to Roots Hawaii. I'm your host Walter Kauaiā and we're here talking story with our special guest, Nezhoni Chan. So, you know, we were talking about that picture that was shown of your grandmother. My grandmother. And so she was one of 14 children? One of 13. 13. And you're sharing with us how your mother, I mean her parents, your great grandparents decided to hold her back and allow the other children that were being taken really for school to be school. She stayed home. So she lost out on that opportunity. Right. Literate. A formal education. But, I mean, thinking back, I mean, obviously your family became the beneficiaries of her trial of not being educated and literate because as you were saying before the break, she really, as she grew older, she really promoted that, if I could use that word, amongst her family, to how important it was for them to get an education to become literate in that way. Tell us more about that. So, I mean, you're a generation removed from that, but did you know her? I did. We would go regularly to visit her. My mother was always very good at taking care of her mother and would go and especially after my grandfather passed away, but even before that, and there were responsibilities to do, she still did corn. We had acres and acres of blue corn and sheep. She had hundreds of sheep. And so when we would go visit grandma, if she wasn't home, we knew she was probably at the corn field or she was at the, you know, doing the sheep. And so my mother would know, okay, let's go find grandma. So we would go out and we'd go drive. And when we get there, grandma had responsibilities for us when we got there. It was to get out, you know, go water the corn or, you know, she gave us something to do to help in those tasks. And were you, as a, how old were you back then? I probably, when I can remember, probably about five, five or six that I can remember. Maybe a five-year-old might be thrilled about going out there and helping grandma if she's sharing the sheep. But, you know, if you're a teenager, maybe not. So do you value those experiences? I do. What lessons, I'm sure you've shared those experiences with your own children in raising them. And so what would have been your takeaway from that, even though you were five years old, how have you translated that into a learning opportunity to share with your children? Yes, I, we have always had a garden. My mother and dad, you know, father have always garden, but I do that myself. I live up on Kamehameh school's campus right now and I had to ask, you know, please give me an area to grow a garden. And they didn't, but we weren't ahead and we figured a way to work with it and we've still got a garden. And my kids help. And there's a piece of property that, you know, that we live on and they have people that do it for us who come and mow and want to do it for us. I said they were going to take care of it, but I've said, no, my kids are going to do that. And so I make a mow and it takes them a good part of the day to get that whole yard done. Not only mow, but you know, there's other responsibilities as well. But I was brought up that way. My mother was brought up that way. And that's values that, you know, my grandmother, I grew up seeing. And that's the good part of what grandma had to go through. Yeah. Her posterity reaps the benefits of that. Right. You know, cause we live in a very different world. Our kids, so many kids don't necessarily have that opportunity or choice. So I've been wanting to ask this question. What actually brought your family here to Hawaii? Yes, so my husband's job. He was, two years ago, we were living comfortably in Utah. And we were near all of our, my family. And his family actually migrated since from Wahiwa move to Utah. And so we were surrounded by family and friends. And my husband was actually asked to apply for a position here on the islands at Kamehameha Schools. And he did. And it was a prayerful effort to whether we would accept and to do it or not. And I wouldn't have been able to do it had I had that assurance. And that this is where we're supposed to be. I mean, that's a huge move for your whole family. And maybe you and your husband could make that kind of move. But then you have your children. I mean, you're literally uprooting your children from the place they were born, the friends they have, close to family. Has that all worked out? Were your children, yay, let's go to Hawaii? I think for a while it was kind of the honeymoon period. We're a beach and all kinds of fun things. And then it was, oh, who are we going to spend Thanksgiving with? And a lot of the understanding that. But in that, we have learned that there is family here. And there is distant family that we're learning of and we're gathering with now that we would have never had that experience had we remained where we were at. And so we have learned a lot about family, family here on the island and that we do have it. We just have, we've had to do the work to find them. That's the positive for the kids and for the whole family. Okay, I'm sure our viewers out there who may not still be familiar with Nizhoni Chun and her husband. So we won't keep it a secret. This show is not about him and it is about Nizhoni and her growing up in the Navajo Reservation. But Nizhoni's husband is Dr. Taren Chun who is the headmaster up at the Kamehameha Kapalama campus. I'm sure all of the students up at Kapalama campus knows who Nizhoni is and of course loves their family as much. All right, you mentioned a connection you felt with your tribe and to the Hawaiian islands. And the experience it's been, the honeymoon period is over but now you're growing, the family's going through that. What similarities have you and your family, you see in the two cultures? You know, it's like you have two worlds that your children are part of the Navajo because they have Navajo blood in them as well as Hawaiian, Chinese and all the other ethnicities. So they're really in the right setting in terms of the ethnic background that they have within them because Hava is known for the camaraderie and the complex of all of the ethnic races that grew up here. So do you see similarities? Yes, I do. Something that I just share to remind us that in the beginning we were all one people. My mother recently did a DNA test to see she's full Navajo, right? Well, her DNA test came back 86% Native American, 13% Asian and then the rest was Polynesian. And she said, I didn't know I was Polynesian but we know and we have records. In our church, we have a record called the Book of Mormon that shares. We were all one people at one time and there was a man named Hagoth that came across the ocean and brought a group of people. And so with that, I know that there are similarities that we enjoy as people. It's one of them being strong connection to our families. Our family, there's in the Hawaiian culture, we talk about Hanai and Native Americans or Navajo is the same way. Grandparents raise children, family help each other, we take care of each other, it's a family, it's important. Yeah, I think the way that we identify, we connect is the way we introduce ourselves and there's a way that we do that in Navajo. We talk about, I shared with our clans, there's a way to find ourselves orally, we don't have that written. There's oral traditions and history that's been passed on. Okay, I'm glad you brought that oral. So we know across, and you and I were talking about this as we were driving down Seoul. Hawaiians had oral tradition, meaning they had no written language. And not until the arrival of Westerners whether they be missionaries or European travelers, that began the process for them of identifying the language and writing a language. I understand the Navajo as the same tradition, they were oral tradition. You wanna share a little bit with our viewers and kinda when did that change? I assume we have a written language now. Yes. Talk about the Navajo language and how all of that tradition got written. Yes, so the Navajo people up until the 1800s didn't have a record. And so about the 1800s when they began reservations and government removing people from areas and they began taking censuses of families. And that began, okay, the head and then the children. And because of those records, we have back to the 1800s. But after that there were other, I mean it took a while before, there was boarding schools that strict and didn't allow the children to know their language and have tried to squeeze that out of families and out of people. So it wasn't written until even later and I think in the early 1900s. And thus I shared with you the story of the Navajo co-talkers and how that plays a part and how I feel some connection to Hawaii because of that piece of history that we have. So Nishoni just mentioned the word talker, the Navajo talkers. There was a movie that came out about that and we're running out of time. So we'll have to come back on another show. And tell us a little bit because your mother, you were sharing with me, your mother's maiden name was talker. So share a little bit about that. Yeah, she, we don't know where, we began with our great grandfather but we don't know why that name except that maybe he, like we were talking about maybe he was a historian. Maybe he just talked a lot but he was given that as an English name. That wasn't his Navajo name. And, but the Navajo, you know, the Navajo co-talkers was just a slightly different, you know, it wasn't anyway related to that. I think what you shared with me earlier was that because the Navajo language was so complex in terms of its, you know, language itself, that I guess the US government saw that as an opportunity to use it in code form during the Second World War. And that's how this whole thing, the novel whole talker. That's really interesting. Well, we're running out of time folks. And so one last question before, and I could, I'd like to ask Rob to throw up that it's really the last picture that we have, the whole family. Yeah, there we go. That's a beautiful picture. That's your family, I see your family and your children in there. And I guess your extended family, beautiful. And is that, would that be somewhere in the Navajo reservation area? No, this is actually in Utah where everybody was living at one time and now we're all over the place. All over the place, yeah. That was a good time to take a picture because we're all there. Briefly, tell us what kinds of records would people be able to use today to find if they wanted to search off their novel ancestry? I shared with you the census records. It started in the 1885 for the Navajos. There is an index on ancestry.com as well as family searches, getting those ready to put out. And those are probably very key. The Navajo government as well has records, family group cards and records that they began keeping about the same time in chapter houses. And those are accessible only going to the reservation. There are also, I shared with you as well, about Doris Duke. There was an heiress of a tobacco company. She had lots of money that she used to collect oral histories. And so there are a couple places on this, well, a few universities in the Southwest, University of Utah. There's one in UNLV. They house those oral records, those oral histories that were collected. Well, invaluable. Well, we are definitely out of time folks and I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge our special guest, Nijoni Chan. For all that she's been able to share with us today, some wonderful stories about her life, on the reservation and her family, her extended family and her roots and about that beautiful family. Thank you for joining us here at Roots Hawaii. I'm your host, Walter Gawaiiaya. And until we meet again on our next episode, take care everyone. Aloha, no.