“I live about 30 minutes North of here. There really isn’t any work up there. My husband is a mechanic from Mexico. He has his own auto repair business and helps me look after the children. I drive down here to work. I like it, the hours are flexible so it makes the family side easier.”

“I have 5 children. My firstborn is 15, the youngest is 2. It’s good because my mom helps, particularly with my eldest. He likes her and she likes him. It’s a good relationship and they bonded at birth”.

She will miss him when he moves away.

“That won’t happen. He is 15 years old with the mind of a 2 year old. When he was in my womb, the umbilical chord had wrapped around his neck three times and choked him.”

"Do you get help from the authorities, the local government, social services?”

She looked at me as if I was an alien.



“No. There is not much government help on the reservation, but we all help each other.”

"Your father?”

“I have no idea who my father is. My mother, she’s Navajo, told me once that he was Irish - but he has long gone.



“We survive in the nation. We always have.”

My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too.

Barack Obama

… strangers to the nations that had already been here for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

Thinking Allowed

This is a People First post that was originally on the People First domain. It has been moved here as part of my domain consolidation program. It’s a steady and slow WIP as I check each entry, so do please bear with me.