Demetrius Johnson on the Importance of Solidarity Reem Farhat Demetrius Johnnson is a Diné member of the Red Nation, a coalition of Native and non-Native activists and community organizers advocating Native liberation. Diné is a traditional word Navajo people use to refer to themselves. According to Navajo Traditional Teachings, an organization dedicated to teaching about Navajo culture, it is a compound word coming from the two words di meaning up, and né meaning down. It refers to coming up where there is no surface and down where one is on the surface of the earth. Demetrius’s involvement and activism with the Red Nation began in 2015, when he joined the coalition as a student at the University of New Mexico and worked to abolish the college’s racist seal. I spoke to Demetrius on a Thursday July morning. He answered my call from a food distribution center in New Mexico where he is working with K'É Infoshop, a mutual aid collective, to send food packages across the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation is the largest Indigenous reservation in the United States, spanning 27,000 square miles and located across Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. The Navajo Nation currently has the highest rate of COVID-19 infection in the world at 3.4% of the population. Various infrastructure issues caused by years of the United States government neglecting treaties made with Navajo Nation leaders have exacerbated the effects of the pandemic. The situation in the Navajo Nation, as well as our current political climate, loomed over our conversation as we discussed everything from the Black Lives Matter movement to the importance of solidarity. Can you tell me about the Red Nation and your work? The Red Nation was created in 2014 when the founders, including Dr. Melanie K. Yazzie and Dr. Nick Estes, saw how Native people in Albuquerque were being treated, not only by the police but by
regular people. After the murders of Cowboy and Rabbit, two Diné people who were sleeping on the street and beaten to death by teenagers with rocks, the Red Nation started in solidarity with our unsheltered native relatives on Indigenous land. I didn’t join the Red Nation until 2015. It is the journey of a lot of Native people, and a lot of Navajo people specifically, to be told to climb a ladder of education so we can help our communities back home. That’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to study electrical engineering so I could figure out how to get power to my people. There are over 16,000 Navajo homes without electricity. I thought to myself, how can I help that cause? I met Red Nation members at the University of New Mexico (UNM) and that was how I got started in activism. I realized that we all want to help our community, but also that everything is connected on a broader scale. Our struggles are not only in the vacuum of the Navajo Nation. As a Diné person, the Navajo Nation is all we know, and we think our is12
