High school teacher on a mission to preserve Navajo language for future generations
"I am saving my people's language from extinction."
Elfreida Begay is a high school teacher who is teaching the ancient Navajo language to students at Durango High School in Colorado. In fact, she is the only teacher in the state authorized to do so.
Begay spoke with ABC News' Linsey Davis about her mission and how it connects to her family heritage.
ABC NEWS LIVE: First and foremost, tell us why reintroducing the Navajo language is so important.
ELFREIDA BEGAY: Reintroducing the Navajo language to me is basically I am saving my people's language from extinction is how I view it. It is a personal mission of mine to continue to teach the language.
To date, we have more than 50% of our students, of our youth, especially at the high school age, who do not speak the language now. So my position in all this is simply, I want to teach something I already know.
ABC NEWS LIVE: And we understand that you design your course at Durango High School without textbooks or Chromebooks. What's your approach to teaching?
BEGAY: So my approach to teaching is based on traditional methods where, my parent or my mom, my elders, they teach the language completely in oratory methods. So it is more based on learning the language while you're immersed within experience.
My approach to that is being able to use your experiences to find yourself within the language as in yourself, being able to see how the how the language is spoken.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Why do you think that the Durango school district has put a focus on cultural awareness for Indigenous students in particular in recent years?
BEGAY: So we've always been here. Going off on a little tangent, one of the main reasons why I want to teach Navajo language here at Durango High School is because Fort Lewis College has a Native American tuition waiver which I was a student myself there.
So the spotlight on Native American issues here in Durango has more of a positive turn at this point. We're graduating more students from the high school. We're graduating, we're promoting more Native American students from middle schools. So it's our personal push. It is my personal mission to continue to perpetuate that. And what better way to do it than through language?
ABC NEWS LIVE And we know you just started teaching this class this past fall. Are you noticing an impact and what's your hope in the years to come?
BEGAY: My only impact that I expect at this stage is really for our teenagers, especially our Indigenous teenagers, to be able to know who they are, for my Navajo teenager students to sit in this classroom and know I have a mom who I come from, I have my dad, I have my grandparents on my mom's side, [and] I have my grandparents on my father's side; this encompasses all of who I am.
My identity all the way down to traditional wear that I would love to introduce to the students to be able to say, this is who your identity is.
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