Restoring Relations Through Stories

Restoring Relations Through Stories: From Dinétah to Denendeh
by Renae Watchman
Published by University of Regina Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$35.95 ISBN 9781779400031

The striking cover photo of Renae Watchman’s Restoring Relations Through Stories: From Dinétah to Denendeh features green aurora borealis dancing above the natural monolith Tsé Bit’a’í (the Rock with Wings), Watchman’s “maternal family’s hometown landmark” on Navajo Land near Shiprock, New Mexico. In her new book, the Diné author and associate professor in Indigenous Studies at McMaster University (Indigenous Literatures and Film) frequently addresses the “sentinel’s” cultural importance to the Diné (Navajo), and she discusses ties she discovered between the American Diné and the Dene people north of “the medicine line” in Canada.

The scholarly text examines traditional stories by Diné and Dene storytellers, writers and filmmakers and explains their significance. Watchman advocates for “the recognition of hane’ [story, narrative, wisdom] in oral, literary, and visual formats (spoken, published, directed, and beaded) to demonstrate “Hózhǫ́,” an important Diné precept that encompasses beauty, order, harmony, and the idea of striving for a balanced life. The tragic effect of COVID-19 on the Diné; ceremonies; beadwork; and “pretendians” are also some of what’s covered.

Watchman introduces herself by acknowledging her Clan relations, as is the Diné custom. She explains that in 2011 she met members of the Tsuut’ina First Nation, a Dene community in Alberta, and, though the nations are now “geographically, culturally, politically and economically distinct,” through sharing stories, she learned of their “kinscapes.” The Dene she visited recommended she “include their stories in [her] book,” and she has done so in this literary journey that “encourage[s] reading for restoration,” and “demonstrate[s] the narrative arc of restoration and restorying of relations.” Again, out of respect on her “story-gathering journey,” she “only shares[s] oral stories that have been previously published.”

The author’s chosen not to italicize Diné bizaad (the Diné language) words in her five-chapter book; it’s an act of “decolonization,” she writes, and quotes an online article which proports that italicizing every word apart from English “̒only serves to set them apart as exotic, deviant or as part of a particular colonizing anthropological project.’” (A sound argument, and the reason I’m also not italicizing other-than-English in this review.)

The photographic Shiprock pinnacle has appeared in “at least twenty-eight documentaries and motion pictures,” Watchman writes, including a Disney feature film, John Carter. The scholarly writer discusses both non-Diné and Diné productions shot in the area, and argues that “non-Diné storytelling erases, replaces, and displaces.” When the Tsé Bit’a’í image is appropriated for items like “postcards … billboards, mastheads, and coffee mugs,” and used in films without Diné context, this “ironically contributes to her epistemic erasure.”

Watchman says it’s not the presence of Indigenous actors in a film that deems it Indigenous, rather “indigenous agency as a creative behind the camera” make it so. I appreciated her analyses of Diné filmmaker Sydney Freeland’s Drunktown’s Finest and Diné Larry Blackhorse Lowe’s 5^th World, and while I wasn’t able to access the full films, I found scenes and interviews via Youtube that heightened my appreciation for both the films and for Watchman’s well-researched and well-written treatise.

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