{"id":55572,"date":"2019-05-08T10:27:12","date_gmt":"2019-05-08T17:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=55572"},"modified":"2019-05-08T14:45:01","modified_gmt":"2019-05-08T21:45:01","slug":"graduate-emile-eich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/graduate-emile-eich\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduate Emile Eich: As Miss Indigenous NAU, she found her identity and her passion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
May 8, 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For much of her life, Emile\nEich<\/strong> didn\u2019t feel Navajo enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the NAU senior, who graduates Saturday with a degree in\npsychology, that all changed one fall day in 2016. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t, though, the day Eich, then a sophomore who\u2019d come to NAU because of its proximity to the Navajo Nation and the opportunities to learn about her heritage, signed up for Navajo 101, started working at the Office of Indigenous Student Services (OISS) or mentoring other Native American students. It wasn\u2019t the day she learned her introduction\u2014a recitation of her parents (her mother is Navajo, her father is Vietnamese), their parents, their parents and their parents that conveyed to listeners how closely they were connected. It wasn\u2019t even the day in November when she stood on stage, wearing traditional Navajo dress and accessories, that she was named Miss Indigenous NAU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No, the day Emile Eich felt not just Navajo enough but just\nplain enough was in preparation for that pageant when, frustrated that she\ndidn\u2019t speak Navajo or know how to tie her moccasins or hair or know the\nculture, traditions and lore of her ancestors, she sought out a medicine man at\nher mother\u2019s traditional home of Wide Ruins. She told him she didn\u2019t know if\nshe was Native enough to represent the entire Indigenous community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was talking to him about our stories related to our\nmoccasins and other stuff that I had not learned\u2014I talked to him about the\nproblems facing my identity,\u201d she said. \u201cHe told me that, instead of thinking\nabout myself as not being able to be a part of any world, or being an outsider,\nto instead think of myself as being a bridge to both of those cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The light bulb went off in Eich\u2019s head. Her identity,\ninstead of being a struggle between two halves, was something much more\nbeautiful and meaningful to her. It gave her the strength to stand on that\nstage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI feel like that\u2019s a very Westernized concept, that you\u2019re\nonly \u2018half\u2019 Navajo,\u201d she said. \u201cAs a whole person, I\u2019m of those two cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finding herself<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Eich came to NAU in part to meet the other half of\nherself\u2014the Navajo side that she never really knew growing up. Her mother, who\nis Navajo, was adopted as a child and didn\u2019t know her family or their culture,\ntraditions and way of life growing up. Although Eich and her family reconnected\nwith that part of their family when she was a teenager, she was still a\nstranger to her Navajo identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\u201cWeirdly enough, everything that I\u2019ve learned about Native\nAmericans, about myself, when I was younger was from history books, and we all\nknow how inaccurate they are,\u201d she said. \u201cThat was my prior perspective on\nmyself. I had to learn it through a western lens. It wasn\u2019t until I came here\nthat I started learning about the treaties and really going onto the\nreservation and talking to people that I gained a full understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She called this process decolonization\u2014deconstructing what\nshe thought she knew and learning from the source. She learned about Mother Earth\nand the importance of giving instead of taking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really changed the way I think, the way I do things,\nthe way I see the world,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m just decolonizing and going back to\nthe traditional ways of thinking and practices. That\u2019s a lifelong journey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She talked to faculty members, to other students, to staff\nmembers at the Native American Cultural Center about everything\u2014family, health\ndisparities, identity, moccasins, their history, their present, their future.\nThe more Eich talked, the more she felt pulled in a different direction. She\ncame to NAU with an interest in business law. Four years of meeting with Native\npeople and doing research on public health among indigenous communities led her\nto a desire to help her people. She\u2019s now leaning toward a career in research\nor tribal law. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
At every opportunity, in fact, Eich sought out ways to help her people, including through her participation in NAU\u2019s Minority Health and Health Disparities International Research Training program. She spent 10 weeks in Auckland, New Zealand, working with an Indigenous researcher doing research on the Maori, the native people of the Pacific nation. She saw a different approach to research there. Many researchers craft a question they want to study and tell the community they\u2019re studying. Eich\u2019s mentor, who was part of the community, asked her neighbors what questions they had and how her research could help them. Common themes that emerged from the research Eich did included accepting kaitiakitanga<\/em> (guardianship) toward water; intertwining their identity with rivers and oceans; and believing that community involvement and collaboration are needed for successful conservation and restoration of water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs an Indigenous researcher, Emile was able to connect with\nthe Maori population by reflecting on her Indigenous culture to build an\nunderstanding of the challenges that the Maori are facing in regard to\ntranslating Indigenous culture to be understood by Westerners,\u201d said Simon Chief<\/strong>, Eich\u2019s mentor and formerly\na program coordinator in OISS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At NAU, Eich also found a way to combine her discovery of\nher Native American heritage with her love of the outdoors. She worked at\nOutdoor Adventures and took students on camping and rafting trips; being in\nnature, she said, was one of the highlights of her college career. The more she\nlearned, the more she educated the students with whom she went on trips, asking\nif they knew whose land they were on, who used to live there, who lives there\nnow and their thoughts on ideas like whether land and resources should even be\nowned by individuals. She did this on a recent whitewater rafting trip through\nthe Grand Canyon with her coworkers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI feel like their eyes really opened after some of these\ntrips,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what happened to me my freshman year. I went on a\ncouple of trips and my professors really honed in on these questions. It was\neye-opening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Miss Indigenous NAU\nand beyond<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
With her experiences of feeling left out in mind, Eich approached her year as a representative for the Indigenous community with a platform dedicated to creating cultural awareness and embracing multiculturalism. She also encouraged youth to pursue their dreams and never turned down any invitation to visit reservations or attend events, even when they were outside her comfort zone, Chief said\u2014up to and including being invited to judge a sheep butchering competition. She embraced the role of Miss Indigenous NAU with the same enthusiasm and commitment as she did her peer mentorship and other responsibilities at NAU.<\/p>\n\n\n\nEich became Miss Indigenous NAU during her sophomore year.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\u201cEmile is a naturally talented woman with exceptional leadership qualities committed to lifelong learning,\u201d Chief said. \u201cShe has developed a passion for working with her people and giving back to the Indigenous community.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eich admits she\u2019s privileged; she\u2019s had a great time at NAU\nand is leaving feeling so empowered to chase her dreams. She has to think for a\nminute about her biggest challenge\u2014\u201cfinding my identity was the hardest thing,\nbut you already know how that turns out\u201d\u2014but then she remembers her most\ndifficult time. Eich had faced her identity crisis and found out who she was\nand was proud of that woman who saw herself as a bridge that connected\ncultures, but she found that hard-fought confidence challenged during the\nNavajo Nation elections. One of the candidates for vice president was half\nNavajo and half Vietnamese, and she suddenly found her identity in the\nspotlight. Seeing comments on Facebook, seeing video of the candidate being\ntold by a group of veterans that they would never accept him because of his\nheritage\u2014the heritage that she shared\u2014was brutal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor an individual who wants to do great things and wants to\nbe in a leadership position for the Navajo Nation, it was hard,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\nwant to do great things and to know there are community members who don\u2019t\nagree\u2014that was a rough time and something that will always be with me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nEich and her family after she was named Miss Indigenous NAU 2017.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
As hard as it was, though, Eich also has the opportunity to\nsee both perspectives. Many of the Navajo Nation veterans fought in the Vietnam\nWar. They saw the Vietnamese as the enemy. On the other side, Eich\u2019s\ngrandmother lost loved ones in the war and her community was devastated. Both\npopulations were impacted, and miscommunication, misunderstanding and\neventually fear and hatred grew. Her background is complicated not just because\nshe has dual heritage. The specific heritage Eich claims has decades of\nhistory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s next<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
After commencement, Eich is moving to Salt Lake City, Utah,\nfor the summer. She was accepted into the Native American Summer Research\nInternship through the University of Utah School of Medicine and will be\nstudying adipose tissues in connection with diabetes among indigenous\npopulations. It\u2019ll be a change from the research she\u2019s done at NAU, which is\nabout diabetes but from a behavioral health perspective. Up to now, she\u2019s\nobserved and done surveys and interviewed people. This summer, she\u2019ll have her\neyes on a microscope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For now, she\u2019s enjoying her final days at NAU. At the\nIndigenous Convocation Thursday and commencement on Saturday, both of Eich\u2019s\ngrandmothers will be there. Her father\u2019s mother will attend in traditional\nVietnamese garb, her mother\u2019s mother will be there in Navajo dress. She doesn\u2019t\nknow much English, but the only words she really needs to understand that day\nare \u201cEmile Eich.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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