"Until I was 5 1/2 years old, we lived in a nomadic way . . . summer here . . . winter there. On my sixth birthday, I was sent to boarding school in Shiprock. I remember being so homesick."

"It was special to be there [at the Bears Ears Summer Gathering] this year with my husband, my son, my daughter, sister . . . last year, I went by myself. Being a teacher, I am always in the moment, [last year], it was more of an observation. This time helped me reflect more on my heritage; I am learning to become more grateful and positive. When I come here now, it is always a homecoming."

"In 1974, during the last round of relocation litigation, I visited a place in Comb Wash with my mother and an official of the tribe. My family had always lived on the San Juan River. We would spend the summers in Fish Creek, trading with the Utes in Allen Canyon. In the 1930s, boundaries were re-drawn and my family was chased out. My mother talks about being chased out by the cowboys. They had to leave so quickly that my mother stashed her cast iron pan. Forty years later, upon her return, she said, 'I remember this place. we had to leave in a hurry. I left my cast iron pan.' All those years later, she searched and found it. I have a picture of her holding her cast iron pan aloft."

"I look at this landscape with that sense of sorrow. My husband says I become angry when I come to Utah . . . I am not just loving for myself, but remembering the ancestors . . . As a poet, I am always speaking from my gut."

Irene Hamilton, Diné, retired educator, poet

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