Meet a Navajo Stone Sculpting Expert

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Roy Walters Junior. I'm a Native American artist. I do sculptor and painting and I'm here on behalf of Expert Village. Hello, my name is Roy M. Waters Junior. I'm a Navajo artist. I am from Tipp City, Arizona. It's very important for Navajo folks to recognize who they are in terms of their clan relationships. I am Todich ii nii clan, Bitter Water, that's what that means. It's my mother's clan. Also my father's clan is The One-Walks-Around, Honaghaahnii and so, that's my dad's side and that's his clan. Then, my maternal and paternal grandparents, where I'm coming from. My paternal grandfather is To aheedliinii, Water-Flow-Together clan and then my maternal grandpa is Tsedeeshgizhnii, the Rock Gap People. And so, when you introduce yourself, you say ... That's how your supposed to great people out here, that way, the know what your relationship is to one another. Because out here, clanship is how we regulate one another in terms of how people, it helps to regulate the seed of the blood flow. So that everything is, there's certain things that you're not supposed to be careful of and be aware of. Your relationship with one another in terms of how you're related to the opposite sex. Like brother and sister. It helps regulate all those things with our clanship. Also, I get to great brothers and sisters I don't even know, from the other side of the Navajo Nation. And they have, and then maybe they might be my uncle, they might be my sister, my brother, my grandpa, somehow like that so it's good that, you know, that the young folks, they understand that. And it's important."