Wilhelmina Yazzie named New Mexico Woman of the Year

Wilhelmina Yazzie is one of USA TODAY’s Women of the Year, a recognition of women who have made a significant impact in their communities and across the country. The program launched in 2022 as a continuation of Women of the Century, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Meet this year’s honorees at womenoftheyear.usatoday.com.

GALLUP - Wilhelmina Yazzie is a mother who saw her child struggling in school and took action. She had no idea her efforts would impact the entire state of New Mexico just a few years later.

Yazzie is one party to the Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit against the State of New Mexico – the lawsuit that found the State’s Public Education Department was gravely lacking in support for students who come from low-income families, who are Native American, English Language Learners and students with disabilities.

This landmark case originated in McKinley County in 2014 where the public school population consisted largely of Native American students from the nearby Navajo Nation, Hopi and Zuni tribes. The case wound its way through the court system, joining with a similar case filed in Santa Fe County. All the while, Yazzie was pushing for equitable opportunities for her son, Xavier Nez.

Emphasizing education while growing up in the Navajo Nation

Yazzie grew up in a culture that places high value on children. She was born in Casamero Lake, New Mexico – known as Tséta’ Tóak’oolí in Diné – in northwestern New Mexico. She was the third of four children raised by a single mother, Annie B. Yazzie, who was a teacher.

Wilhelmina Yazzie said her mother was the only member of her generation in the family to graduate high school and college. She was also the only one of her siblings to be sent to an Indian boarding school.

“She did learn a lot when she was in boarding school there. And she did have stories of how … they weren't allowed to speak their language, that they learned to do certain things such as how to do work in the kitchen and sewing and those type of things,” Wilhelmina Yazzie said.

Yazzie recalled stories family members told about how her grandmother would hide her children so they would not be sent off to a boarding school. Annie Yazzie finished her secondary education at a boarding school in Utah before returning home.

Indian boarding schools were first established in the country in the early 1800s. Their mission was to culturally assimilate indigenous people. Children were taken from their families and communities and sent to one of the over 400 existing schools.

Children were not allowed to speak their native language, practice their religion or maintain their cultural practices. Educators would often use manual labor and physical or emotional abuse to further their goal of eradicating Native American culture. Not all children survived or found their way back home.

Annie Yazzie went on to study at the University of New Mexico Gallup, UNM main campus in Albuquerque and even New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. Wilhelmina Yazzie said she remembers spending a lot of time with her grandparents as a small child while her mother worked and pursued her education. Betty B. Yazzie was a community educator in her own right.

Yazzie said she had a traditional upbringing. Diné Bizaad, the Navajo language, was her first language and she spent much of her younger years following her grandmother, and learning about her Navajo culture and traditions. Betty Yazzie was a weaver and would go to area schools to teach students.

“(My grandma) was pretty well known within the community as well. She was well known of taking kids in to help raise and then they would go out on their own,” Wilhelmina Yazzie said. “My grandmother actually wasn’t a ‘teacher’ teacher, but she was a culture teacher.”

Betty Yazzie died when her granddaughter was 11.

However, coming from a family of educators continued to shape Wilhelmina Yazzie. She said her first teacher in Head Start and preschool was her mother.  That maternal influence led Yazzie to want to be a teacher as a little girl.

“I remember – along with my other cousins and brothers and sisters from my aunt’s side – playing. We set up a school setting just playing because I knew just from watching my mom being a teacher, the things that she would do when she would come home or she would take us to her work to do certain things. So we would pretend to have a school and I would be teacher,” she said.

Annie Yazzie worked in education for about 35 years before retiring from a Bureau of Indian Education school in the area. BIE schools provide students with culturally relevant education and are sponsored by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Wilhelmina Yazzie shaping her own path through education

Yazzie lived in Casamero Lake until graduating from high school. She decided to move to Gallup and then Albuquerque to continue her higher education, which she said was an adjustment because her home on the Navajo Nation was in a rural area with no paved roads, no running water and only recently outfitted with electricity.

She said her mother always emphasized the importance of education and doing well in school. And while she did not end up pursuing a teaching career, she was successful in her professional life.

After moving back to Gallup with her son, Xavier, Yazzie joined a law firm in Gallup as an office receptionist. In learning about the legal field, she decided to return to college and earned Associate of Applied Science degrees in legal assistance and tribal court advocacy. She currently works as the firm’s paralegal and tribal court advocate.

Yazzie also became a member of the Navajo Nation Bar Association in June 2018, for which you do not need a law degree. As part of the NNBA, she is allowed to practice in Navajo Nation courts and is involved in civil cases, family law, guardianship, business law, probate and estate planning.

The decision to take the bar exam was not made lightly. Yazzie said her mother had recently passed, but she could hear a motivating phrase Annie Yazzie would tell her children.

“She always stressed to us the importance of ‘it's up to you on what you want in your life, to do with your life. Nobody's going to do it for you. As a mother, I'm here to help you, guide you, prepare you, but otherwise everything falls back on you,’” Yazzie said. “We have a term in Navajo, it’s called T’áá hwó’ ají t’éego, and that’s what she always stressed to be and my siblings.

“I don’t know if it’s just me or others, but I always took my mother for granted. Never thought she would leave us … I always thought that she would always be there, I didn’t have to worry about nothing.”

Annie Yazzie was diagnosed with lung cancer and died within three months in 2016.

Raising Native American children in 21^st century New Mexico

Wilhelmina Yazzie has three children – Xavier Nez, 20, Reece Black Moon, 18, and Kimimila Black Moon, 7. She said children are considered sacred in the Navajo culture and are the responsibility of the community to prepare for adulthood.

She said when Nez started school he did well and she always received positive comments on his progress. However, when Nez was in third grade, Yazzie said she noticed that his standardized test scores were lower than the benchmarks.

“It was a lot with his reading, some with his math and all of that,” she said. “I kind of just monitored him during that time, went to parent/teacher conferences. But I think a lot of time was just when I went there, they would show us his testing and it was not where he was supposed to be. He was below, and I was confused because all that time … he’d be above the high expectation, always.”

Nez was not the only child struggling with his test scores, Yazzie said. Students at Nez’s elementary up to high school were having issues. Yazzie said teachers were struggling due to lack of resources and a shortage of teachers. Nez went weeks without a teacher at times which left classes behind in the curriculum.

Another concern for Yazzie was that her son did not have any culturally relevant lessons as he got older. Navajo culture and language was not a required class, but a seldom used elective. This meant the education Nez was receiving at home was not at all reinforced when he was away at school for eight or more hours a day.

“It's our responsibility to prepare them as they grow, even from when they're born, and before they're even born when they're in our womb,” Yazzie said. “There's so much more to it than seeing the students just of what they're learning. You have to see them, their background of who they are, where they come from, their family, their lineage and their communities. If you look at it in that sense, holistically, then you come to learn a lot more differently.”

Language was a struggle between students and teachers, Yazzie said, and tutoring did not offer children the chance for one-on-one instruction.

When Nez got to middle and high school, Yazzie said he was passed over for honors and Advanced Placement classes, despite his good grades.

“He had friends, peers that were non-Native that were in those classes, so he always asked me, ‘mom, why am I not in these classes that I know that I can handle?’” Yazzie said of her son.

Nez finally was able to take dual credit classes and graduated high school with an associate degree as well as his high school diploma.

Yazzie, dozens of other parents, the Gallup/McKinley County School District and several area school boards filed a civil suit against the State of New Mexico, the State Public Education Department and then-PED Secretary Hanna Skandera in 2014 concerning the gap in the educational system.

The case soon joined with another out of Santa Fe County and was presented in court. Judge Sarah Singleton found in favor of the students and parents. Singleton noted that the department was not complying with state and federal laws concerning these particular students and failed to prepare them for college and careers. The judge deemed lack of funding was not an excuse for insufficient education.

New Mexico lawmakers have allocated millions of dollars to public education in recent years, largely to comply with the court’s decision. Although improvements were still being discussed, Yazzie’s children transitioned to private education three years ago.

Kimimila Black Moon started her educational career in private school. She is currently in first grade and learning English, Spanish and Navajo. Yazzie said she and Reece are even learning about their Lakota heritage from their father’s side at school.

Yazzie said private school was the best decision for her two youngest children because their cultural and lingual needs are being met.

“A lot of our families are still struggling with (those issues). And especially with during the pandemic, it even made everything worse,” she said. “A lot of those struggles came out and just made it clear like our children are left behind, our children are not made a priority, our children are not being provided with things that are needed in order for them to be successful academically to be prepared as they get older and decide what they want to do after high school.”

Yazzie said she was not prepared for the publicity she has received because of the lawsuit, but her children’s wellbeing remains her focus.

“I always talk to my children now, that we’re Native American … and be proud of who you are, where you come from. Learn your language as much as you can. Learn the history … We don’t have good history – it wasn’t because we’re bad, it was just the way the government had placed it on us. So I teach them a lot about that,” Yazzie said. “When I was in public school growing up, I never learned all that history. It was always that Indians ‘were the bad guys,’ even in media like movies. And it was so crazy.

“I always share this with my kids: Growing up, I would see a movie and the Indians would be killing the settlers coming into the land, whatever. And I’d be like, ‘oh, they’re bad,’ not realizing I’m one.”

Yazzie said she was conflicted when she was younger because she was hearing one thing at school and one thing from her mother and grandparents.

“I remember being teased for having poor English and there was a time in my life where I was like, ‘why do I have to be Navajo?’” she said.

Today, Yazzie continues to advocate for better, more equitable education for New Mexico children. She is also continuing her own education toward a degree in Native American studies, leadership and nation building.

“I came into this lawsuit knowing what my responsibility was as a mother, from my teaching of what my mom and grandma had taught me growing up. In my traditional ways and values of how we look at our children, what we need to do for our children,” she said. “As the case started, we won and learning more things, I started to dig deep into Indian federal law and all the history of how education came to be and how it was meant for us. And now … present day, we’re changing that. We’re changing the story, as they call it.”

Leah Romero is the trending reporter at the Las Cruces Sun-News and can be reached at 575-418-3442, LRomero@lcsun-news.com or @rromero_leah on Twitter.