Another bonus episode! This one features Kelli Jones, a Diné park ranger at Grand Canyon National Park. Her work consists of working with and inviting tribal members for programs, performances, and more to educate visitors and elevate the voices of those who call the Grand Canyon home. As this interview was conducted in March, which is Women’s History Month, she shares some heartfelt stories about the women in her life and how their support has helped her along the way.

[Kelli Jones]

I learned more about my cultural identity while working here from the affiliated tribes and my affiliated tribe and there's also great people who do work here that also empowers me to learn more about myself. So it's just learning from the people who are taking care of these places that is part of our ancestors and I thought that this is a place to be for sure.

[Meranden]

Hello, welcome to Grand Canyon Speaks. This is Meranden.

[Lakin]

And this is Lakin.

[Meranden]

Although we have been highlighting some amazing athletes, we wanted to provide a second bonus episode for this season. March is Women's History Month so we decided to highlight two indigenous women park rangers who work at Grand Canyon National Park.

[Lakin]

This episode features Kelli Jones, a Diné Park ranger from Rock Point, Arizona. She talks about the different roles she fulfilled to get to where she is today and how she is bringing in more indigenous representation for the community and thousands of visitors of Grand Canyon.

[Meranden]

Kelli is actually one of the rangers we work with at Desert View and has provided us with guidance throughout our internships, especially working with tribal members.

[Lakin]

As we stick to the theme of Women's History Month, Kelli also shares some inspirational women in her life and the important roles they play in her culture.

[Meranden]

This was an emotional interview for me so just a fair warning to our listeners.

[Lakin]

Thank you for tuning in to season 3 and here is Kelli Jones.

[Kelli Jones]

(Introduces self in Navajo)

Hello, my relatives and my people. My name is Kelli Jones. I am the Tangle Clan, born for the Towering House people and this is who I am as a Navajo woman.

So yeah and I'm really excited to, you know, for this interview have Meranden know a little bit more about me. I think that there was a lot of things that once you started your internship we just kind of rolled into Native American Heritage Month so I'm really excited for this interview.

[Meranden]

Yeah, me too and if you guys didn't notice like in our clans, my second clan is Kiyaa'aanii and hers is Kiyaa'aanii so we're related like immediately once we met each other we knew like we're related which is really cool. So as we're talking about your experience living here in the in Arizona and working in the Park Service, what sparked your interest to work here and how long have you been an employee for?

[Kelli Jones]

Yeah, I actually have a slide that kind of just talks a little bit about kind of my my job and how I got here to Grand Canyon. I'm actually from Rock Point, Arizona which is a very small community in the middle of the Navajo Nation. All we have is just literally a gas station and I think our community is even smaller than Grand Canyon here which is interesting because the Grand Canyon is about two to three thousand people living here but it's smaller than that.

So I actually graduated from Fort Lewis College which is an amazing college where I met a lot of great indigenous people that are actually doing a lot in their communities as well. So Fort Lewis College is within the Four Corners region. It's actually in Durango, Colorado but it's a place where that college offers free tuition to Native Americans.

I took that advantage to you know pursue my college in that area and I didn't know what to do to be honest when I went right after high school. I was like what do I want to do? I want to become a dentist.

So I started going to biology and I did really bad in school with biology and I went to my advisor. I'm like this is not for me and she was like what what do you enjoy? And I was like I enjoy the outdoors.

I played volleyball and basketball so I was really active in my high school years. I am 5'10 so it's pretty tall Navajo to see in my community but I really enjoyed just being outdoors and that kind of pursued me into exercise science. I wanted to go into a field where I can help my community out fighting epidemic diseases such as diabetes, nutrition, you know getting back to our ancestral sovereign foods.

So that was kind of my goal when I went to college was actually focusing on getting the youth outdoors and something in that degree also helped me out to get an internship at Southwest Conservation Corps. I never knew anything about conservation corps in high school or even in college until one of my friends from college actually works for the Southwest Conservation Corps through an administration I guess you can say background and this Corps was actually having a hard time trying to find indigenous young adults to do internships at national parks. So he knew me and he was like I think you would love this job.

This job is at Mesa Verde National Park and I was like sure why not? So that kind of started me into opening the doors to conservation world and then just barely starting knowing anything. So that was just something that I learned and I thought that was a very cool experience but the challenge with Mesa Verde is it's a very heavily sacred place for the Diné people, the Navajo people.

It's a place where it's hard to have that cultural sensitivity to work at. So for me the challenge there was I couldn't be at these places where I should be working at. So at that time I was like kind of lost in knowing what I could do for interpretation education and that internship.

So basically my supervisor at that time was like you should just try to invite the local community out. You know in the community that we have a hard time bringing out to our park is the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation which is really just adjacent to that park. Kind of like the Navajo Nation and the Havasupai Nation and the Hualapai Nations are just surrounded by the National Park Service boundaries and I was like yeah I could try to do that and I thought that was a very challenging job.

It felt like a tribal liaisons job. I think yeah that was really hard yeah but yeah I guess that empowered me to want to do something that does focus on working in a place where I do feel like I can talk about you know our history here to the public. So I want to do more active interpretation to the public because that's something I've never done at Mesa Verde and that kind of pursued me into the internship here at Grand Canyon.

Word of mouth again people were like this is another opportunity if you want to pursue more in education. So that's something that drove me into wanting to work here to get that experience and that's the picture on to the right of in the red dress where I was during my internship at Desert View and I don't know I'm a very big community person. I have a big community value and I wanted to serve my tribe so I worked with my tribe for two years on the Navajo Nation at Office of Diné Youth which is kind of like a nonprofit program that is similar to Boys and Girls Club.

It's a after-school program for kids to come back to to learn cultural education to pursue outdoor education as well. So I was a program manager for that in Shiprock which is a northern part of the Navajo Nation and I really enjoyed that but you know some jobs have their challenges. It was during COVID so that was a bigger challenge with working with the tribe and especially for younger kids it was really hard and I ended up coming back here to Grand Canyon and applying for a seasonal job here so and that kind of was an easy place for me to be.

I love this place so went from a seasonal ranger to a permanent ranger and that's where I am today. Kind of a long path to get here.

[Meranden]

That's good though like you allowed that time to figure out what you really wanted. I think that's good when you know you try something out and you don't think it's a perfect fix so you try something new and it's perfect and it's exactly what you want to do and taking you to new heights and new experiences. So I'm glad you found something that you really want to do now so and as we as you mentioned like you went from all these internships and now a seasonal and then a permanent with the number of years you've been within the Park Service itself how do you feel you have served your indigenous community?

[Kelli Jones]

I feel like it all started at Mesa Verde working as an intern there and trying to bring in more indigenous representation from a local community level and basically that was all they told me they just want more representation from their local tribes and I'm like cool you know how am I gonna do that I have no idea. So I figured that you know going to the tribal nation which I'm not affiliated with you know I'm Diné and this is the Ute Mountain Ute reservation and that was a challenge itself just to introduce myself to that community letting them know what the goals are for the Park Service and then you know introducing myself as an indigenous woman and coming in letting them know that there is no representation there it does feel you know very lost out there without seeing my own community out there and that was my first time even learning about the Park Service so coming into the Park Service it felt like this place isn't for me because it felt very disconnected and I don't know what that disconnection was at that time so by reconnecting the local community you know to our ancestral land I figured that I would feel a sense a place that this is a right path for me so right when I started my my season here I also felt the same way how I felt at Mesa Verde and then felt that here at Grand Canyon I didn't see the community out here and found out that Grand Canyon community itself has about almost 40% of their community who are tribal representatives so I'm like okay well where are they you know we talk about tribal people and I'm over here like where's my community at and something that I realized like working with the community here at Grand Canyon and just really getting their stories understanding the community out here because when you come out to new places you just don't want to enter it and not understand the meaning behind it and the history I have learned from books and then learning from training through interpreting from other tribes but I think that also what was missing was okay I'm living here now and I want to understand what is this community about here at Grand Canyon and I didn't know that there was a school here a K through 12 school which is one of the only schools that within the Park Service that is within the Park Service boundaries which is really neat and that school is very diverse where we have a lot of kids from different backgrounds and predominantly tribal members as well so and I asked them if they you know feel represented here at Grand Canyon and we even did a school trip up to the rim and it was me and Kelkeana where we did ask like you know do you feel yourself represented here and they said no so and doing these photos was for Native American Heritage Month and asking our local community members to come out to the rim and take their pictures so that our social media and people who come out to visit Grand Canyon can see that there are Native representation here and either you don't see them in the front lines or you know but they are here taking care of this place and they live here and coming to realize that one of the families is actually a sixth generation and now her grandchild is going to be the seventh generation living here so you have these generations of family members still living here and working here at Grand Canyon which is really neat.

[Meranden]

Yeah it's really cool and like we mentioned we plan Native American Heritage Month and they usually have a community event that happens during that time and we've been able to meet a lot of community members who are indigenous who live here so it's really nice to meet them and then also hear about their experiences working here and I feel more at home when I see that they're also here with me as well.

So as we're speaking about the community with your work here I noticed that you're very community based and very passionate about supporting the indigenous youth. What are some projects that you've been able to fulfill not just only as a permanent but just overall your time in the Park Service?

[Kelli Jones]

Yeah I think that you know something that I really want to focus on and my priorities was the community itself here. Focusing on the kids here at the school, seeing what I could do with them to make themselves feel valued not just them but also their families and from the start of that actually been bringing out tribal I guess you can say performers and presenters from affiliated tribes here and around this region bringing them out to the school and just have the kids be inspired by their identity because of that cultural identity is a challenge you know even for me growing up it was you know my mom was actually going through different families and I didn't really know where my culture was at and all I was told when I was young was go to school get educated you know it's that's that survival technique I felt like and it was just like okay I went to school got my degree now what but I think that just making sure that people from this from this community and the kids themselves are proud of their identity their cultural identity that was my main focus is being proud of who they see you know they want to see themselves represented they never seen a native park ranger sometimes or they never seen themselves being valued in this space so I think that was the one of my goals here was trying to figure out what the kids need here at Grand Canyon but also bringing out people from our 11 affiliate tribes from our reservations and some of our kids from our reservations and our people are really great at educating and expressing their identity in different ways it's very diverse so I want that to be represented here to have that being expressed to the public because our cultures are not monolith so when we see one native person we think of oh we speak all the languages or we all live in teepees you know and I feel like it's exhausting to talk about that sometimes as being always in the front lines getting asked those questions where we can bring in people that educate about that too so I really enjoy that hearing from them and then expressing that to the public.

[Meranden]

Yeah and I think also our work that we do at Desert View is very indigenous based so we do a lot of bringing out those tribal members so like Kelli has really introduced me to that side of it of like performances that happen out here and she's in charge of that most of the time along with doing the outreach like we've been able to do a lot as interns to go to these tribal reservations for example we were just on the Hopi Day School and just go do some outreach about what we do and explain also the Grand Canyon Speaks what that platform does and then we were able to meet Billy Mills there which is really cool if you're not familiar with him he's an indigenous runner who won the one gold at the Olympics in the 10k race so that was really cool we've been able to learn a lot from Kelli just based on those trips and those performances and things like that.

[Kelli Jones]

And I forgot to also add that as a ranger was something that was really out of my comfort zone I went out to Washington to do a Christmas tree lighting so that was really neat it was during the time that Chuck Sams was was the head of our Department of Interior which is really neat and Deb Holland was also Secretary of Interior at that time so it's just nice to do that at the time there was that representation on leadership in our nation so I felt very like empowered to be part of that and just to continue on to keep doing what we're doing because of all that support from that level and then coming on down because they're also not my only my inspiration but they were also wanting to improve indigenous representation in the National Park Service so that was the Christmas tree lighting I don't think Meranden knows about this so it was just like that time Shania Twain was there and LL Cool J was the host of that show so I didn't really take a lot of pictures because I was so nervous trying to make sure I don't trip or fall going on stage or it was also really cold and windy but yeah there was it was a pretty good time it was around winter season so you have the own challenge itself with the environment and weather.

[Meranden]

Wow, yeah I didn't know this, that's really cool. And I know like that you're from here the Navajo Nation which is really close to where we are right now I just want to ask why did you choose Grand Canyon and what does it mean to you?

[Kelli Jones]

Yeah for me I think that Grand Canyon when I first came as a intern I already had a lot of support at Desert View from people who are working from the Conservancy that are not even working for the Park Service who were if you go to the watchtower you'll see our Conservancy staff who actually also works across from us the visitor park store so the Conservancy staff at Desert View they focus on hiring within the local community of Cameron and I thought that right when I started there was already some representation there from Desert View and her name was Caroline Wilson she's from a Cameron community and she just welcomed me you know I was she's this older lady she's like my mom's age and she just treated me like her daughter so I felt very like at home already there and then when I came here I just learned from the community itself here and the people who live here I just felt very like wow this is a you know this place is calling me and it's also makes me feel comfortable so I think it's just the community itself that made me feel like this place is special but also I learned more about my cultural identity while working here from the affiliated tribes and my affiliated tribe and there's also great people who do work here that also empowers me to learn more about myself so it's just learning from the people who are taking care of these places that is part of our ancestors and I thought that this is a place to be for sure it's only two hours from home too so I go home all the time on weekends and home I never left the Four Corners area in my whole life like my career and you know travel for work and stuff across everywhere but I never wanted to leave this Colorado Plateau area.

[Meranden]

Yeah I think we're very similar on that as well yeah because like that's also how like being here is really feels like home and once again like seeing all the tribal members who live here it does really bring that sense of community and wanting to feel more connected to your culture and so I really enjoy being here and being able to work with you on all the things that we've been able to do and as we mentioned this is the last day of March but this is also Women's History Month so as we have that and as an indigenous woman, what does Women's History Month mean to you?

[Kelli Jones]

Oh my gosh it's like it means a lot you know I think you know Women's History Month is it's it hits me differently for some reason part of it it's just not like performative because we have themes every month you know Women's History Month should be celebrated every month but it is a very sacred I guess you can say cultural significance for the Diné woman and part of that is celebration I think you know celebrating the resiliency of us indigenous women and what we go through you know recently the hardest thing that was really hard for me to kind of like celebrate this month was it's even hard for me to say and explain it in a way where people can understand it's just the injustices that indigenous women face we have missing murdered indigenous women and children so recently there was a case within Arizona that really hit hard and this has been happening for a very long time so it's just kind of hard to kind of think about Women's History Month this month and then knowing that this happened here in Arizona and where it's a 14 year old girl you know and that really hit me hard because the children are a future generation and you know we want to empower them to take on that role of their culture because in our culture we are leaders our deities gave us gave the woman a reason to give life so and that is to rematriate the land you know make sure that she's also heard and we take care of her it's just not you know human nature it's not human nature to you and that's something that we walk on every day so it's a very sacred thing and how we think about Women's History Month and then as well as for indigenous women but you also think about the challenges that we do face too that should be heard and expressed to the public.

[Meranden]

Yeah I agree. And I know you said that there's a lot of empowerment and meaning for Diné women and Diné is actually matriarchal so what are some important roles that the woman play in your culture?

[Kelli Jones]

Oh there's a lot. So one of the strong values in our culture focuses on family you know kinship make sure we have that family lineage to keep moving on for generations and then community I think that I think that's something I carry deep within my heart and I think that's something that is a very strong value in our culture and then not only that but we also have a kinaalda which is a ceremony when a girl becomes a woman we have a sacred ceremony and that's just you know that celebration of what the deities gave to changing women so it's part of that creation story that it's just something that is very important and part of that is that community and that value of family so and when we have those ceremonies our whole family comes together so you have those ceremonies and it brings that kinship back which is very important.

[Meranden]

Yeah and speaking of like that community and just coming here when I first got here I immediately felt welcomed when I first met you and along with like we mentioned GCC there's another woman besides Caroline who was her sister her name is Marian she's Diné as well and whenever I see her she's like my grandma to me she always says “hi Shi’yazh how are you doing?” and she hugs me and asked me how I'm doing and she's my neighbor so it's really nice that she's there and these women are very important to us and culturally they have a lot of significance so as we speak of these women who is and who are some strong women in your life and that have a very special meaning to you?

[Kelli Jones]

I have some pictures oh oh yeah so this is um so some of the people that inspire me from my family is obviously my nieces who are up there and my two nieces they kind of empower me to be the person that I am today and try to be their role model so I always look at them you know okay I'm auntie to them so that means I have to behave but also I just want to you know have them be just like empowered to kind of find their value in life so the people who kind of brought me to where I'm at are a few of so this is a picture of my grandmother this is a actual a yearbook from Chilocco Indian boarding school which was in Oklahoma so she was actually put into boarding school all the way from the Navajo Nation to Oklahoma and I look at this photo because it's that history that we don't know about and I never grew up learning about the boarding school and how the assimilation and genocide that our grandparents and great-grandparents and so forth have to face and just to get to where we're at today and just for me to be who I am so I look at what this photo represents and how strong and resilient you know my grandma had to go through just for me to be here you know and I think that emotional she is the one who never finished school there it's like a vocational school my grandparents met here at Chilocco which is funny because like my grandpa graduated and then they went back to the rez they built a home there and then they started doing some farming in the area but my grandmother always really just forced me to finish school and I was also raised by her until I was about I guess you can say eight years old my mom was pretty young she was like 25 when she had me so being born and raised by my grandparents until I was like almost 8 to 10 years old that's basically my mom you know and then my grandparents too is my dad so my dad left me so I didn't really have a dad but my grandpa and my uncles kind of fulfilled that role and basically and they were my father's too so I really appreciate you know them and all this history I think that you know has been erased and I think that's something that I love you know when I'm an interpreter here to kind of talk about this history it might be hard history but it's also showing the resiliency of what our people have gone through and how they survived and how we got to where we're at today so and then the other person so that's my grandparents when they came back to the res and then the other person is my mom and she's the one that is on the horse so my mom she is a single parent and she basically worked minimum very minimum wage when I was born and my grandmother told my mom that you know until you are have stability financially in your home your own home and I'm able to give back your daughter's you know so my mom really worked hard to kind of get that home and that roof over our heads and and you know I went to school in Kayenta because that's where she got her job and that's where I'm actually you know I a lot of the community members in Canton know me but I'm not really from Kayenta I'm actually from Rock Point so that's when I moved to Kayenta and Kayenta is a place where you probably drove through when you're going through Monument Valley or going through the Four Corners but yeah my mom is my inspiration because we had a dinosaur TV until like five years ago so she really valued everything that she had the most important thing that she put her financial stability to was obviously making sure there's food on our table the animals that she has and then the roof over our heads so anything within that otherwise like TV and other things were nothing to her and I was embarrassed you know when I was in high school because when where I was a I was athlete so we eat out all the time when we travel to places and I always had like my own sandwich in my sandwich bags and kind of like take my food to go but looking at it today like you know I really appreciate that from her because she just wanted me to kind of be here you know like understand that yeah like I just want you to finish school and then pursue something that you enjoy so I really appreciate that and then that's a picture of my grandma and me I'm in the little dress with this I was sitting on the saddle and then my little sister is the baby that my grandma's holding so yeah.

[Meranden]

Yeah hold on....

Yeah women are really important to us but yeah they're the reasons why we're here my mom's really important to me too and just the people I work with like I mentioned Marian and Kelli and Kelki like they mean a lot to us so we're really happy that they're here to guide us and continue to be our cheerleaders on the sideline let's get out of this little emotional side and I wanted to go into a fun little question which we like to ask during this podcast so if you could have any traditional food right now what would it be?

[Kelli Jones]

Oh my gosh I was just telling I can't I got back from home this past weekend in Oak Springs on my dad's side and I was kind of disappointed because I wanted to have some you know grilled only like meat yeah and we call it my end which is like sheep but I was actually craving Ach'íí' so Ach'íí' is a kind of, it's funny cuz like little kids will call it telephone wire I'll probably grow some of y'all out right now just kind of heads up and warning but it's um the sheep intestines wrapped with sheep fat and then you grill it so in our culture we eat everything from the sheep we don't waste anything we even eat the head and yeah so it's like it's a delicacy that we eat on our reservations at flea markets there's like different areas within our reservation and regions where they have flea markets in different towns and they sell it all the time to their community but yeah I've been craving that and you just wrap it with like tortilla or fry bread.

[Meranden]

Yeah that sounds really good, so yeah as we're wrapping up here and you know this is a really impactful and emotional conversation and just talking about women and being an indigenous woman there's so much to it and you'd work here at the Grand Canyon is there anything that you would like to leave here with the audience?

[Kelli Jones]

Yeah I think that I worked here and interpretation for almost five years I brought out a lot of challenges and as well as a lot of people don't understand a lot of our cultural worldviews from in our perspectives and it's very hard to be authentic sometimes you know and just be ourselves and explaining things but I think that I'd like to leave you with we have over 400 National Parks within the nation and each National Park has an important cultural and spiritual connection to tribes and I think it's just not knowing the land that you walk on and who it belongs to and how that connection is still there for the tribes but also knowing the history the history is really deep here at Grand Canyon you know we have we have a lot of dispossession that happened with our communities and that still is embedded with historical trauma and I think that is a challenge to kind of bring back those reconnections within communities today and you know a lot of people always ask why is there no tribal representation why this that history goes way back before Park Service boundaries were created it goes back into the photo I showed you with the boarding school you know a lot of that colonialism that did happen in our families and it still has affected families today and I think even the history here at Grand Canyon is bringing that light back into having our interpreters and our staff talk about it more and that is something I really appreciate you know working here and the goals that Grand Canyon does have is to bring back that reconciliation but not just using it in a performative way you know like land acknowledgement is something that is it performative or is it not performative and how can we repair just not checking off the list but also understanding and that's where allies come in you know people who are coming to visit these places they can you know challenge our public lands to bring in more stories and history that does focus on different backgrounds of people and where we can also see our younger generation see themselves so I think that's just something I'd like to leave you with you know and I think that I just really appreciate this and I wasn't too sure if I have any more photos I'm like really bad at the PowerPoint stuff but oh yeah it's a Grand Canyon so yeah I like this picture because it has that light shining on Grand Canyon so I kind of see Grand Canyon as you know bringing that spotlight out and also us as representing this place too so yeah.

[Meranden]

Well, thank you so much Kelli for being here if you give a round of applause.

[Ranger Jonah]

Grand Canyon speaks is a program hosted by Grand Canyon National Park and the Grand Canyon Conservancy a special thanks to Aaron White for the theme music this recording reflects the personal lived experiences of tribal members and do not encompass the views of their tribal nation or that of the National Park to learn more about Grand Canyon first voices visit www.nps.gov /GRCA here at Grand Canyon National Park we are on the ancestral homelands of the 11 associated tribes of the Grand Canyon these being the Havasupai tribe, the Hualapai tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Hopi tribe, the Pueblo of Zuni, the Yavapai Apache Nation, the Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, the Las Vegas Paiute tribe, the Moapa Band of Paiutes, the Paiute Indian tribe of Utah and the San Juan Southern Paiute tribe.