Striking a balance between 2 worlds (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Striking a balance between 2 worlds
http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=85127

By SARA KINCAID
Sun Staff Reporter
04/08/2004

[photo inset - Brian Drake/Arizona Daily Sun.  Angie Maloney, of the
Navajo tribe, sits on a panel that discussed Native American women and
their place in soceity Wednesday. To order this photo, go to
http://photos.azdailysun.com Buy this photo online!]

Preserving language and respecting tradition is how two Native American
women balance their professional lives and their heritage.

Angie Walker Maloney, the director of environmental health at the Tuba
City Regional Health Care Corporation, and Muriel Scott, a deputy
prosecutor with the Hopi Tribe, spoke at a panel discussion about
"Sacred Duties: Indigenous Professional Women and Preserving
Traditional Ways."

Maloney is a Navajo woman who works in the health profession, primarily
with prevention, but has had to find ways to balance her beliefs with
what she does with her career.

She said when she has to dissect animals or other things that go against
her traditional beliefs, she tells herself it is required by her job
and is for the betterment of her people.

"That is how I make peace with myself," she said. "We're caught in the
middle if we're brought up traditionally."

In her personal life, she is a weaver and participates in some of the
ceremonies her mother, a medicine woman, performs.

Her native language is important to her, but when she attended a
boarding school, she was taught not to speak it.

"We were told not to speak our language," she said. "My sister and I had
our mouth washed out with soap and we were spanked with wet leather
(for disobeying)."

But she said she is from the generation that fought back against those
who tried to take away their language, and because of this, other
generations know the language.

Scott, who speaks Hopi, said speaking a native language is important. In
her job it helps her convey meanings to the defendants that may be lost
if she attempted in English.

"One word could have a thousand meanings," she said. "It is coming
directly from the heart. When you do it in your own language there is a
feeling you are conveying that is much stronger than using the English
language."

At one point in her life, however, she was ashamed to speak Hopi. It was
important for her to speak English fluently and without an accent, she
said.

"I was so desperate to fit in," she said. "It is rough to balance
traditional ways and be a fluent speaker in the English language."

She reached a point where she mastered speaking English fluently, even
after some mishaps, such as telling people her boss was at a "rodeo"
meeting when he was at a Rotary meeting. But then she learned she had
to make adjustments for how she speaks English when she would go back
to her village on the Hopi reservation. She said she found she could
speak slower and quieter than she did at her office.

The panel was presented by the Applied Indigenous Studies program and
the native forestry program at Northern Arizona University. It was
funded by a grant from Fort McDowell Casino.

Reporter Sara Kincaid can be reached at 556-2250 or
skincaid at azdailysun.com.