Eirene Hamilton

Writer, Navajo Language Teacher

Bluff, UT

10/3/2022-10/5/2022

To meet Eirene Hamilton, we traveled a few miles through arid scrubland and down a bright-red dirt road to her homestead. With a view of the white, wavy rocks of Comb Ridge, Monument Valley’s spires, and the Bears Ears Monument, her homestead property included three cabins and a windmill. Looking out from the slickrock patch where we started her writing workshop, very few other man-made structures stuck out in the landscape. Eirene is a Navajo language teacher and an established poet; she shared several of her poems and short stories. Her magenta tinted lips formed a smile from under her wide brimmed straw hat as she read tales about her past, her family, and the environment.

Over the course of three days with her, Eirene told us stories about her homestead, where she spent the first years of her life as a sheep herder with her family. Eirene was very open with us, even sharing difficult stories about healing from her experience at a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school as a child. Before we completed writing exercises, she gave us guided tours of her property, which included many of the small shrubs and flowering bushes that dotted the landscape. From old buildings to new cabins built in recent years, almost every structure and plant could be connected to a story. Once a bustling household with children and extended family, she now calls the mostly empty homestead property “just kind of haunted.” However, through educational workshops and some landscaping work, she plans to turn the property into an education center and conservation easement. Before departing on our last day with her, she encouraged us all to keep writing and keep an open mind.

By Sonia Burns