Three Sisters Bean Farm.
Shonri Begay exudes calm. She is soft-spoken and considers her words before speaking. Her thoughtful explanations are occasionally punctuated by dry humor—and when that happens, her laughter is infectious.
Begay, whose ancestry is both Diné and Tohono O’odham, is from the community of Shonto, in the heart of the Navajo Nation. She spent her childhood in Kayenta, which she recalls as “lots of red rocks, red sand, and beautiful horizons and sunsets.” Growing up, she visited both of her grandmothers. One had cornfields and raised sheep. The other had a citrus orchard and a flower garden. Begay regrets both women are now inaccessible. She says, “Now that I’m at an age when I’m ready to connect and ask questions, I can’t really do that.”
Gardening has always been something Begay dabbled in. She felt it was a way to connect not only with her grandmothers but also with her culture. “I grew up being the most light-skinned Navajo kid who was often the outcast for being part white, so my experience as a young person was feeling like I was not Navajo enough,” she says. The situation reversed when she was 10 years old, and her family moved to Flagstaff. There, she became “the darkest person in class and too rez.” The years spent off the reservation and unfamiliarity with her Native languages left her feeling, she says, “like I’m not connected with my culture and I don’t deserve to be.”
Though she claims she’s “not good with people,” Begay consistently gravitates toward helping them. She pursued undergraduate studies in pre-med until she realized, “I actually hate being inside, and I’m not very good with stressful situations.” She found a better balance when she was hired by the nonprofit Native Americans for Community Action (NACA) in the spring of 2020 to support a program that incorporated cultural practices in diabetes prevention; one of those practices was gardening. Through the program, she also learned more about agriculture. She received her Master Gardener certification from Coconino County and took a ninemonth course on herbalism through The Forager’s Path.
“I realized I needed to get back out into the garden. I needed to get out of the office and the small rooms and do something that makes me really happy.” —Shonri Begay
Shonri Begay with her mother, Cruz Begay-Spence. Photo by Travis Pinn.
NACA secured space for the program at local community gardens, one of which was the Colton Garden on the grounds of the Museum of Northern Arizona. Here, Begay found the connection she was longing for. “There’s a lot of community at Colton,” she says. “There’s a lot of older women that have been gardening in Flagstaff for many years, much longer than anyone I had known before, who have a lot of knowledge about microclimates and the unique pH of volcanic soil.” While there, she connected with Carol Fritzinger, who would soon become a dear friend and mentor.
When funding for the program ended, Begay was moved to a position focused on youth suicide prevention. “The curriculum,” she says, “got people to think about things that were going well in their life, things they were looking forward to, things they enjoy doing [with] that being the basis for suicide prevention.” As she led the program, she began asking herself the same questions. “I realized I needed to get back out into the garden. I needed to get out of the office and the small rooms and do something that makes me really happy.”
As Begay spent more time outside doing what she loved, she began to make peace with her childhood feelings of alienation and inadequacy. “I think just picking a skill, something I’m passionate about like gardening, and learning that there are so many cultural aspects to learn about and practice really helped me heal.” When asked for an example, she relates, “The different colors of corn represent the four directions in Navajo, which relate to a lot of the cosmology, mythology, and songs and stories in Navajo culture. A lot of that stuff seemed esoteric to me before.”
Three Sisters Bean Farm, a half-acre plot located in Doney Park, just east of Flagstaff city limits, is the next stage in the healing journey. “In my experience in the community gardens, [beans] were the most reliable crops I could grow. They’re one of the healthiest things. It doesn’t take a lot of extra energy to preserve them. They last for years as a food crop.” She adds, “Doney Park was historically bean farms, especially around WWII when there was a lot of subsidizing of staple crops.” When she was contemplating starting the farm, Begay enlisted Fritzinger’s support. “Fritz,” as Begay calls her, had been gifted and traded seeds over the years, many of which were heirloom varieties that come from different indigenous cultures. This year’s focus is primarily on tepary beans, as they are native to the Southwest and the most drought- and heat-tolerant.
“It’s about carrying on these traditions and someday, when I’m an elder, being able to pass on what I know about farming to the next generation. People have to practice these skills in order for them to be passed on.” In some ways, she is already fulfilling that role. For the past three years, Begay has led CULTIVATE, an after-school gardening program offered to high school students who reside at a boarding facility and attend public school in Flagstaff.
The farm means much more to Begay than a potential revenue stream. For her, “it’s been an avenue for getting to know other Native people who have things to share with me and learning that they want to share things with me… For the first time in my life, I feel like I’m connected.”
