>> Clayson Benally:
And this particular song,
when it found us, it was
actually labeled as
"Happiness Song."
It was recorded in 1945,
I believe, in Fort Wingate,
which is a boarding school.
And when we listen to the song,
even though it's labeled as
an "Navajo Happiness Song,"
I know for many of you
you're starting to get
a larger understanding of
what those boarding schools
were and the trauma,
the inter-generational trauma
that has since kind
of become revealed.
I know with Deb Haaland, the
current Secretary of Interior,
they're investigating and
looking at how many graves and
how many children
did not return home.
And that number currently
is just kind of projected at
tens of thousands, tens
of thousands of children
that did not come home
from those boarding schools.
So when we saw
that happiness song,
we decided to
kind of take this--
take you on a journey to feel
a little bit more of the emotion
because this is a powerful song
that reflects not only from the
long walk when we were forcibly
removed from our homelands
and then later brought
back to our reserve
what was designed
as the reservation.
Those boundaries are people
saying this song
in a way that was so powerful.
No matter how much loss and
grief and hardship that we've
endured, this
song has continued.
That's why we refer to it as
the Navajo National anthem,
because it's a
powerful, beautiful song.
>> Jeneda Benally: So when
we first heard the recording
and the recording
is from 77 years ago
and we thought about
the children and
their experiences and we wanted
to incorporate that as well into
our interpretation of the song,
to not only sing the song and
not only create music for this
song, but also to create a sense
of their experience of the
boarding school era from the
beginning of having the strong
cultural roots and then being
removed into institutions, and
then bringing that further into
the journey that this song has
taken from the longest walk
to the boarding school
era to now where
we appreciate being able to--
It's actually, it's a
privilege, I should say.
And a hard earned right to be
able to wear our turquoise,
to be able to cut
our hair if we want.
"Shi Ni Sha."
[Singing]
[Singing ends]
[Applause]
[Speaks in Navajo]
[Speaks in Navajo]
[Applause]