Seabury 2018: Naat'aanii
"I began writing this comic in 2010 when I was a Freshman in high school. I started character designs a few years later as a Senior in 2014. The comic finally came to life when I applied for the Seabury Fellowship in September 2017.
This comic book isn’t solely for entertainment, it’s to educate on the reality of growing up on the Navajo Reservation as an interracial Navajo. For myself, and for many members of my family, it wasn’t easy living on the rez.
My first encounter with racism, that I remember, was with one of my school teachers. She asked me what I was, I didn’t really understand the question, but I remembered my dad told me I was Navajo.
So, that’s what I told her.
She looked at me quizzically and said, “Yes, but you’re not full. You’re not really Diné.”
I was four. I went home that day unsure of myself, and from that point on began the ever going battle of my identity. The next seventeen years, I would become accustomed to hearing, “What are you? Really? You don’t look Native, Are you sure you’re not Asian?”
And my all time favorite, “That’s your dad?”
I was questioned and mocked because I didn’t “look Native”. I was always asked to “pick a side” or “claim” one or the other. To many, I was an abomination, a mutt, an outcast. But, to my grandfather, I was something beautiful.
One thing I learned from my grandfather, Lloyd House, was to love people regardless of what they thought about me. The legacy of my grandfather, a man who was Navajo and Oneida, yet he didn’t “look Native”, was to love people, and to help people. He taught me to see beyond my skin color, that I was more than what people wanted from me.
He taught me that I am Navajo, Oneida, and Spanish; I didn’t need to take a side, because before all that, I am me."
Storyboard, a good portion of pages had to be cut out due to time constraints and lack of progression of the story.
Cover art sketches and base work.
