Survivor Voices: Stories of Navajo Descendants of the Long Walk

Utilizing StoryCorps, a national nonprofit with a mission to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people, journalist Debi Tracy Olsen is leading this special event at the Aztec Museum & Pioneer Village. She is bringing together community stakeholders including Kimberly Zah, Indian Education Coordinator for Aztec Schools, and our colleagues at San Juan College. Olsen will also give a presentation on the Long Walk. There will be a fry bread demonstration, along with local students selling fry bread as their fundraiser.

StoryCorps recording stations will be set up for pre-registered participants to be interviewed and added to the Library of Congress. Interviews are designed as a conversation where Navajo elders may share important memories and have their words preserved for posterity. StoryCorps interviews are an uninterrupted, intentional dialogue focusing on anything from favorite memories to important life questions.

In the early 1990s, Debi Tracy Olsen was put in charge of a 26-week-long series detailing the Navajo Long Walk for the local newspaper. Winner of the New Mexico Press Association Award for Investigative Journalism in 1992, it was during research for the series Olsen learned from local historians about the importance of oral histories made in the 1940s for preserving the Navajo side of the story. Upon returning to the Four Corners region in 2022 and as a member of the museum’s board of directors, she saw the need to preserve stories of elder Navajos about their culture and way of life, and a growing openness and desire to do so.

Recording sessions are limited; pre-registration is required. For more information and to pre-register for a recording session, please call 505-334-9829.