“Yeah, but I graduate in a few months and I’m still figuring out which is the right one.

Or I have an offer from this big lobbying firm in D.C.” “I’ve been offered the Bennett Fellowship, which would be awesome and require me to serve in a designated area of community service for a year. “I’ve been accepted into Arizona State’s master’s program.” I push the heavy rope of my hair back over my shoulder. “I’m still deciding.” I stretch my bare legs out in front of me on the riverbank’s dry patch of grassy land. And it’s broken and hurting and a landscape wrought with so much injustice, I’m not sure where to start. My time in Arizona State’s College of Public Service and Community Solutions has been amazing, but now the real world awaits. It ripples through the doubts puddled in my chest. The question may as well be a pebble she tosses into the river we sit beside.

“So have you decided what you’ll do after graduation?” Mena asks. I’ll never forget this feeling, but will call on it when I’m weary in the fight. We stand by like pallbearers watching the land flattened and hollowed and filled with tubing. Their voices rise and fall, cresting and crumpling with sorrow. The Apache words, the sound-it’s mournful like a dirge. Some of the women start singing one of the old songs. I’ll learn to work the very systems set up against us. I don’t know how she died, but I do know how she lived. It feels like we never win, but my mother never gave up. My mother’s words float to me on an arid desert breeze. Injustice never rests and neither will I. Mine are secreted in the hills surrounding this cursed pipeline slithering through our valley like a serpent, every sound from the heavy machinery below a hiss and a strike. Sacred, they can only be used once and are then hidden. The elaborate headdresses are decorated beautifully, painted with symbols representing the visions seen by the medicine man. “I’m sorry.”Īt the end of the Sunrise Dance, young women receive the crowns worn by the Mountain Spirit dancers. “Oh, honey,” my father sighs, pulling my head down to his shoulder. “My crowns,” I whisper, sudden realization bringing fresh tears to my eyes. Mama stood by, her face wet with emotion, her eyes bright with pride.

If I close my eyes, I can still see the bonfire flames licking bright orange into the darkness, ringed by friends and family, singing, dancing, celebrating. I ran and sang and became a woman here.” She turns liquid, dark eyes to me.

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