Coming Home: Amy Denet Deal on Navajo Identity, Purpose & What’s Next | Encore

Calmness And Blood Memory

Amy Denet Deal 0:00

There's a calmness. There's a familiar feeling of blood memory by being there. And that I carry with me everywhere I go. It's just knowing why I was put on the planet, especially now that I have so much clarity to my life's purpose through coming back home and jumping into this.

Judy Oskam 0:22

Life

Why This Story Still Matters

Judy Oskam 0:23

doesn't come with a roadmap, and sometimes figuring out what's next means coming back to something that was there all along. I'm Judy Oskam, and as I've been revisiting conversations from stories of change, this one with Amy Denet Deal really stayed with me. In her mid-50s, Amy left the corporate fashion world. She sold what she had and returned to her Navajo roots in New Mexico. But this isn't just a story about changing careers or changing the location. It's about identity and purpose. Amy talks about adoption and reconnecting with her culture and using what she learned in one chapter of her life to serve others in the next. I hope you enjoy this encore conversation.

Adoption And The Decision To Return

Amy Denet Deal 1:10

My name is Amy Denet Deal. I'm the founder of For Kinship, the founder of Indigenous Futures Forever, our nonprofit arm, as well as Skate Auntee for a Dine Skate Garden Project.

Judy Oskam 1:21

Love it. Well, tell me about how you ended up back here. That's a broad question, but that's sort of your whole thing is coming home.

Amy Denet Deal 1:28

Full circle. Definitely full circle. I was adopted out in 1964 to a family in Indiana. So that was before the Indian Child Welfare Act. That was in 74. So I didn't really have any contact with my culture until I came back in 2019. I had learned what I could from books and, you know, just researching, but to actually live here was such an important part of my journey. My daughter had graduated high school and was getting ready for college. So as an empty nesture, you know, it's finally you have this time that you can think about your life. Yeah, to think about like what's next. And for me, what was next was to explore my indigeneity and really understand what that meant since it was so far removed from my growing up. Um, very limited um cultural training, you know, my whole life. So coming back home was to really jump into that. And um, I did that by basically selling everything I had in California, hopping into a big U-Haul van and driving to New Mexico. And uh, you know, quite naive naively just trying to think I would figure it out when I got here. Um, and then shortly after that, COVID-19 hit. So, you know, there's just like a lot of strange coincidences that brought me here at that time when I could actually be of service. So my first big push into my community was through knowing how to raise funding and knowing how to provide aid during a really, really harsh time.

Leaving Corporate Fashion For Values

Judy Oskam 3:08

Well, and that was part of your background. Tell me about your where you were and then your coming to and

Amy Denet Deal 3:13

Yeah, where I was is was a design executive in the fashion industry. Um, and at some point, I think when my daughter was maybe five years or six years old, I decided just to move into consultancy because I didn't believe in corporate um business anymore. I'd seen things that were deeply disturbing on how that production is run and the communities impacted by these large brands I was working for. So I finally decided I was just going to take a different pathway with that and be a better mom and be a more authentic person for my child to look up to. Uh, started sustainable consulting, small batch consulting. Um, and that was just kind of, you know, kind of running parallel to also kind of planning this move back to my homelands.

Judy Oskam 4:01

Well, and finding out more about your past and your history. Yeah. Yeah.

Amy Denet Deal 4:05

So yeah, all of that kind of came together in 2019 when I did move

Mutual Aid During COVID On Navajo Nation

Amy Denet Deal 4:10

out here. And 2020 and 2021 spent most of my time doing mutual aid work, uh raising a lot of funds, um, getting a lot of things from point A to point B, distribution, working with a lot of other relatives committed to our community. So I met a really great group of people to learn my culture from. Um, most of them very young, you know, much younger than me. Um, but you know, in that sense, they were kind of my aunties and uncles because when you come back home, you're starting at zero. And so I was about one year old when COVID hit. And, you know, now I'm about six years into this. So I, you know, I'm just in kindergarten in terms of the learning pathways and the reintegration. So um that's all happening at the same time that I'm doing a massive amount of community work uh through our brand platform that is just a healing journey for me. Being able to give back in that way after all these years, understanding why, you know, Creator took me out to put me back in. I learned all these amazing skills on the outside that I was able to bring back home.

Family Reconnection And Hard Truths

Judy Oskam 5:21

Were you welcomed in by your family?

Amy Denet Deal 5:24

You know, we're at 27,000 square miles and we're like, you know, a lot of people live on the reservation. So that's a pretty big question. It's not like a small pueblo that you might visit here around Santa Fe. We're a very large uh reservation and tribe. We're the second largest. Um, my birth family um was really blended all across New Mexico and Arizona. So bit by bit, I've I've met people and learned a lot of that um connection back through the generations, um, still doing research on that. But I think with all the really exciting good things, you have to accept all the uh aspects of the darkness, which is, you know, the trauma and the addiction and all the intergenerational um violence that's been done to our tribes. And that's the part of it for me that I wasn't really prepared for. But I've learned that I'm just, you know, you you have to be able to bring in both of those things and balance those in your life and be a vessel to hold space for that because a lot of the projection that might come from somebody that's been traumatized or uh somebody that has uh using maybe addiction or other forms of, you know, different aspects of what we do to cure that awful trauma that so many of our tribes have been through, is to just hold space, you know, to accept all of that with just holding space, knowing where it comes from and having deep empathy. And that's helped me a lot because, you know, I I definitely have my feelings hurt. I definitely got a little bit scared a couple of times. But the more and more I learn about this, this is basically the healing that's gonna need to happen. Is that you can't imagine in 2025, right? That there's still people living without electricity and water and without Wi Fi anywhere in the United States. But this is quite common on Navajo Nation. And the other parts of that, of what's happened before with the boarding schools and different parts of this, it's just like it's unbelievable to me that that's the world we're living in when I was living in in California, so far removed from my people. There's all these aspects of who we are that I need to be of service to. I need to do what I can do to help.

Empathy As A Practice

Judy Oskam 7:50

You know. And and how do you open your heart, your head, your spirit to that? Because to me, that's it's would be easy to close it off and go a different direction. How do you how do you how do you do that?

Amy Denet Deal 8:02

Just lean into it.

Judy Oskam 8:03

For listeners that that may be facing trauma too and have a history, I I am always just in awe of how the how of that.

Amy Denet Deal 8:14

It's the empathy. You know, I don't take anything personally anymore. I think when I first started that journey, I took it all very personally. There's a lot of people that um, you know, pushed back even against me being here um to be back home. And that didn't come from it had it actually had nothing to do with me. It had to do what I triggered in them. Exactly. I bring up a part of our our tribe that a lot of people uh have very traumatic experiences with. So I just kind of recognized that early on and had a lot of empathy for the kind of negativity or the darkness that came with some of this pushback because I understand where it comes from. And I can't say that it's a bad thing. I can just say I fully, fully accept what that is and um just really invite it in and hold

How Adoptees Reconnect With Culture

Amy Denet Deal 9:12

space for it.

Judy Oskam 9:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and part of my lens is um a Caucasian woman adopted by Asian babies. And so when they're sitting here in your shop, we're actually in Santa Fe, coming to you from Santa Fe, and they're listening on the side, but that lens for me is is I'm always wondering about how to connect my daughters to their culture. And I you know, I just I just always have been trying to do that, yeah, but then always wondering at some point they too are going to maybe really want to dive in. Yeah. And they should want to dive in because there's trauma there. Uh I just I I'm just coming to you with a different view, I think.

Amy Denet Deal 10:05

Yeah. If I would turn back time back to when, you know, my childhood, because I grew up in the 60s and 70s, there was zero training for my parents that adopted me. So there's no, there's no sadness with the fact that they didn't do a great job with helping me out there. Um, but like in this time and age, it's it's definitely being able to travel, I feel, to the homelands is a big part of it. Because I realized when I got here that like my relatives and my ancestors, their DNA is like literally in the land that I'm standing on.

Judy Oskam 10:42

Yeah.

Amy Denet Deal 10:43

Much of the time, and there's like a connection that is, I can't explain the dreams I have, the messages I have, the clarity I have when I'm here in my homelands versus all the rest of my life. So I know there's there's some type of connection with that, with being physically back home. So that would be my first step with any adopted child is be able for them to experience the place that they come from. Right. Right. And then uh we're way more progressed right now in terms of being able to learn that culture and study that culture, but more than anything, it's physically being able to be in that culture. Um, because I think a lot of people that might be like me that were adopted out, they come back home, or natives that grow up outside of the reservation, outside of the homelands, right? You know, I think the big part of coming back is that you have to be able to step into service because you can't. I I couldn't say I was Dine. Um, I'm not a Dine brand until I was able to actually take those actions that are required, which means stepping up, being part of it, you know, being part of the good and also being part of the problematic side. Right. So that's for me is always trying to balance that and always trying to make sure that I practice the reciprocity through my brand that allows me everything that we do great here. I want to be able to pass that on to others or pass that on to future generations, um, which really for me is the future of who we will be, is the younger generation. So that's where I put all my investment

Building Skate Parks To Support Youth

Speaker 12:25

in.

Judy Oskam 12:25

Right. And part of that investment has been the skate park. Yeah. Talk about that because what a what a great idea.

Amy Denet Deal 12:31

Yeah. In uh 2022, we built a skate park in two Grey Hills out in the middle of nowhere in a remote area of New Mexico. Um, there's a lot of things for kids to do in the border towns from Gallup to Shiprock, Cayenta, Tuba City Flagstaff. So those kids actually have things that they could probably do to keep themselves busy. When you get to the center part of our reservation, which is 27,000 square miles over three states, the out there in the middle of nowhere part is where there's so little for them to do. And uh, even though there's not higher populations like in the border towns, I felt like those are the kids that really needed the help the most. So being able to provide some sort of outdoor recreation sports facility that didn't require certain hours for them to be on a team or certain uniforms for them to be part of it or be selected. It's like they can get on a skateboard any day, anytime, and go work out what they need to work out with their friends or by themselves. So for me, it's just a great long-term investment to fight teen suicide, teen depression, addiction, diabetes is if we can get these kids on skateboards at an early age and be able to physically work through some of the things that are going on in their lives, it's just a great tool. I love that. So uh to date, we have donated over 8,000 skateboards, um, probably around, gosh, 5,000 helmets. So um, that's something that we are gonna keep doing every year because of the inequity with Navajo Nation having such a high poverty level. These kids should have equal access to the sport. So it's providing that for them.

Judy Oskam 14:16

I love that. I love that. Well, what's next for

The Long View On Future Plans

Judy Oskam 14:19

you? Look ahead five years. What are you gonna be?

Amy Denet Deal 14:23

I'm gonna, I'm definitely gonna be here because my foundation is based here. I'll be probably building skate park number three by then. We're working on skate park number two. Um, we're working on all sorts of long-term plans for all areas of outdoor recreation, um, building parks, building ideas for modern trading posts run by native folks, entrepreneurship, um, creative pathways to the future for so many kids that are in fashion or performing arts. Um it's just being able to utilize my LinkedIn, the connections I have to just create pathways and bridges. So um I plan on doing that. I turned 61 uh in August. So I'm planning to kind of slow down and shift into another gear by the time I turn 70. So I have about nine years here in Santa Fe to really build the architecture so someone else can run it.

Judy Oskam 15:19

Yeah.

Amy Denet Deal 15:19

And then um I plan on just going off and maybe having a sheep farm or fiber farm and being the fiber producer for my daughter's fashion collections.

Judy Oskam 15:29

And she's into fashion as well. She graduates next year. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 15:33

Yeah.

Judy Oskam 15:34

And then where will the sheep farm be? Will it be?

Amy Denet Deal 15:36

I think it might be in Scotland. Um, we're looking because um of the situation here in the United States, she's probably not going to be back for a while, and her possibilities in the fashion industry are much stronger in Europe than they are here. So yeah, I think we're looking for kind of relocating over uh the pond and setting up there. But I I think it's an interesting connection between Scotland and Navajo Nation because uh just the connection we have to um our sheep are as part of our culture and also like that they have clans, we have clans. I don't know. There's just like all the weaving that's done there. I think it's exciting to kind of connect those two places and um kind of bounce back and forth between the two. Right. So yeah, I love that.

Judy Oskam 16:29

I love that.

What Home Really Means

Judy Oskam 16:30

Well, last question. Yeah, the idea of home. You came home and what does home really represent? Because home is home for all of us. Is that a yearning that we have as humans? I mean, what what is home?

Amy Denet Deal 16:47

Home to me is always this feeling of peace, of clarity, of just authenticity. Like I know when I have it, I I a lot of times when I'm driving around uh Navajo Nation, because you know, I'm always driving around because it's such a big space, um, just looking at the beauty of the whole thing. It's like this calmness, it's a sereness. It's something that I guess is probably a calmness, probably more than anything. I remember the first time I met my birth mother, and it's the same thing of all this confusion in my life. I suddenly had a moment of calmness because I met the woman who gave birth to me. That was a big moment for me. Can you describe that? It was just suddenly seeing her, hearing her, knowing her that she existed, and the fact she knew I existed just immediately created this calmness in my life of all this chaos and confusion for so many years. You know, it was never what I would have wanted it to be because we didn't know each other, we didn't grow up together. So there was always sort of a disappointment in the fact that grieving grieving, but no, it was just for me, it was a disappointment. You want somebody to really want you. Um, that's your mom. But, you know, there was so many things attached to how I came into the the world and her journey at that time. So it was never going to be what I had wanted it to be, but definitely a sense of calmness of having that was a really wonderful thing in my life. And also the same thing I can say about coming back to Denita, which is, you know, Navajo Nation and the homelands, there's a calmness, there's a familiar feeling of blood memory by being there. And that I carry with me everywhere I go. It's just knowing why I was put on the planet, especially now that I have so much clarity to my life's purpose through coming back home and jumping into this. Um the noise is eliminated, the confusion, the chaos that was part of my life. And I have this really clear purpose of how I'm gonna spend the rest of my time on the planet. And I know exactly where I belong.

Judy Oskam 19:05

Yeah, I love it.

Amy Denet Deal 19:06

So I may not be here full time, I may be traveling to other places. But to know that this is where I exist has been a huge change in my life. Very positive change. So that's what I would say home is for me.

Closing Reflection And Farewell

Judy Oskam 19:25

What does home mean to you? Is it a place, a person, a memory? Well, maybe it's that feeling that Amy described when some of the noise quiets down and you understand where you belong and what matters. That's what stayed with me from this conversation. I'm Jiddy Oskam. Thanks for listening to Stories of Change, helping you navigate what's next. And remember, every story has something to teach us.