Chapter 4: The Voice That Would Not Sit Down

Aiyana spent the first two weeks of October building the infrastructure before she spent a single dollar of the visible campaign money.

She had learned this from watching three seasons of Shark Tank and six months of studying how advocacy campaigns lived and died. The ones that failed launched loud and had nothing underneath the noise. A press conference with no data behind it was just a child at a microphone. She was not going to be a child at a microphone.

She hired two people through Carol’s foundation — a media consultant named Sandra Redhorse who had spent fifteen years working Indigenous advocacy in Washington and who, when she read Aiyana’s proposal, called Carol back within the hour and said she would work for half her normal rate. And a data analyst named James Tohe, Diné, twenty-six years old, who had a master’s degree in public policy from Arizona State and had been trying to get someone to fund exactly what Aiyana was proposing for three years without success.

James drove out to the house on a Saturday morning to go over the spreadsheet.

He sat at the kitchen table across from Aiyana and her laptop and did not say anything for four full minutes while he read through what she had built. Rosalie brought coffee and set a cup beside him without comment. Thomas sat in his chair in the next room and said nothing.

Then James looked up and said, how old are you.

Twelve, Aiyana said.

He looked back at the screen. Then he said, this is better than anything the federal government has produced on this subject in the last decade.

Aiyana said she knew. That was the point.

The press conference was scheduled for a Monday morning in November, ten days before Thanksgiving, which Sandra had chosen deliberately. The news cycle before Thanksgiving was historically slow. A twelve year old Diné girl with a million dollar anonymous donation, a data presentation, and a direct accusation against both the federal government and the tribal councils would not have to fight for air.

It would have the room to itself.

They held it in Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation. Aiyana had insisted on that. Sandra had suggested Phoenix or Albuquerque for the larger press pool. Aiyana had said no. She said, this story begins on Diné land. It does not begin in their cities.

Sandra had looked at her for a moment and then written down Window Rock.

The morning was cold and clear, the red rock formations rising behind the building where they had set up the podium, the sky the particular blue that only exists over high desert in November. There were eleven cameras. Sandra had expected six. Word had moved faster than anticipated.