The Word for Balance: A Conversation with Linda Y.

Linda Y., 55 | Window Rock, AZ

Tribal council member and community advocate. Interview conducted at the Navajo Nation Council Chamber, March 2026.

Typical Male: You've spent years working with young people on the Navajo Nation. What's the biggest challenge facing young men here right now?

Linda Y.: Disconnection. Not from technology—they have phones like everyone else. Disconnection from the teachings. The old way had a word for what a man was supposed to be, and that word was about balance. Hózhó—beauty, harmony, balance. A man in balance provides, yes. Protects, yes. But he also listens. He sits with elders. He learns the songs. He understands that strength without gentleness is just force, and force breaks things.

Our young men are getting the TV version of warrior. The Hollywood version. Fight, win, dominate. That's not our way. That was never our way.

TM: How did the traditional Navajo understanding of masculinity differ from what mainstream culture teaches?

LY: In our tradition, a man's value wasn't measured by what he conquered. It was measured by what he sustained. Could he maintain the herd? Could he keep the family fed through winter? Could he resolve a dispute without it becoming a war? Those were the skills. Patience. Observation. The ability to read the land, the weather, the mood of the community.

And here's the part that surprises people: emotional awareness was a warrior skill. If you couldn't read the people around you—their fear, their hunger, their grief—you were a danger to the group. You made bad decisions. The man who couldn't feel was the man you didn't trust in a crisis.

“Emotional awareness was a warrior skill. The man who couldn't feel was the man you didn't trust in a crisis.” Click to tweet →

Somewhere that got flipped. Now the man who doesn't feel is the one everyone calls strong.

TM: What happened to change that?

LY: Boarding schools. That's the short answer and the long one. The United States government took our children and sent them to schools designed to erase everything—language, ceremony, family structure. The boys were taught a colonial version of manhood: obey, compete, suppress. They came back to the reservation with haircuts and English and a kind of emptiness where the old teachings used to be.

And then they raised sons. And those sons raised sons. And each generation had a little less of the original blueprint and a little more of the replacement.

My generation is the one trying to recover what was taken. We still have elders who remember. But the window is closing. Every year we lose someone who carries a teaching that was never written down.

TM: You sit on the tribal council. How does this issue come up in governance?

LY: Every meeting. We're dealing with substance abuse, domestic violence, suicide rates among young men that are devastating. And when you trace these problems back, you keep arriving at the same root: boys who don't know who they are.

A boy who knows his place in the community—not his rank, his place, his role, his responsibility—that boy has an anchor. He can weather things. A boy who's been cut off from that knowledge is floating. And floating young men are vulnerable to everything: alcohol, gangs, despair.

We've started a mentorship program pairing young men with elders. Not therapy—most of our boys won't go to a counselor. But they'll sit with an uncle or a grandfather and listen to a story. And in the story is the teaching. That's how it was always done. We're just doing it on purpose now, because it doesn't happen automatically anymore.

TM: What would you say to readers outside the Navajo Nation who are grappling with similar questions about masculinity?

LY: I'd say: look at your own traditions. Not the recent ones—go further back. Before the industrial revolution, before the empire-building, before the wars. Every culture on earth, at some point, had a version of balance. A model of manhood that included tenderness, listening, care for the vulnerable. It's in there somewhere.

The modern version of masculinity—compete, dominate, suppress—that's maybe two hundred years old. Maybe three hundred. The older version is thousands of years deep. It's still in the ground. You just have to be willing to dig.

“The modern version of masculinity—compete, dominate, suppress—that's maybe two hundred years old. The older version is thousands of years deep.” Click to tweet →

TM: Last question. What gives you hope?

LY: Last month, a seventeen-year-old boy came to a council meeting and asked to speak. He stood up in front of fifty adults and said he wanted to learn the Blessing Way ceremony so he could help his younger cousins understand who they are.

He was shaking the entire time. His voice cracked. He looked like he wanted to run.

He didn't run.

That's what gives me hope. A boy who is afraid and does the thing anyway—not the violent thing, not the loud thing, but the necessary thing. That is the warrior tradition. That's hózhó.

We're not starting from nothing. We're remembering.