‘Regardless of where I am in the world, Diné Asdzáán Nishłí (I am a Diné woman)’

Sierra Edd is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. (Photo by Brittany Hosea-Small)

This I’m From Berkeley is written as a first-person narration from an interview with Sierra Ed, a graduate student in the Department of Ethnic Studies whose research focuses on Native American studies, music, and voice in politics.

My current academic career began when I first listened to Mixed tape of indigenous receptors in 2014.

I was an undergrad at Brown University in Rhode Island. One of my professors at the time—Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation)—provided me with ideas about original appropriations in art and original representations in visual culture. I wrote a paper on the mixtape for her classand continues to inspire the research I’m doing now at UC Berkeley.

I’m Dineh, a native of the Navajo Nation. I grew up in a small frontier town in Durango, Colorado. As a young man, I always thought that going to a big city away from a reservation was a way to achieve ‘success’. So when I went to the East Coast, I thought this would be my experience on the other side of life.

But when I got there, I realized I missed home. Music that reflected my cultural identity, such as the songs in the recipientIt became a way for me to hear myself reflected in the world. Aboriginal music provided me with much needed reassurance and comfort for being my religion.

In those years at Brown, I had a lot of…