CAMP MARGARITAVILLE, Kuwait -- Every morning
before sunrise, Cpl.
Christabel Toledo, food services
specialist with Headquarters
Battalion, 1st Marine Division,
wakes up and gets dressed for
her morning offering to Mother
Earth. Stepping outside the tent with a
pouch of corn pollen in one hand
and a feather in the other,
Toledo faces the sunrise to
begin her offering. She takes a pinch of the corn pollen, puts it in her mouth,
on
her head, and then sprinkles it to the earth and begins praying. While praying,
she raises the feather above her head and rotates it clockwise.
This is one of the many Navajo traditions Toledo is keeping
alive while in the
Marine Corps and thousands of miles away from home.
The Steamboat, Ariz., native is part of one of the largest
tribes in the nation.
She grew up on a reservation that stretched across Arizona and New Mexico.
Toledo spent her first 10 years of life on the reservation,
living in a hogan or
house made of mud with doors to the east. There was no running water or
electricity. Her childhood activities included riding horses and playing
horseshoe games.
Toledo's elementary school on the reservation was open
to the public and
taught Navajo language and history.
Her family moved out of the hogan when she was 10 and into
a more modern
house.
When she was 16, she was given the animal name "bear" by
the medicine man.
Toledo lived on the reservation up until she joined the Marine Corps in 1999.
She continued the trend as three generations of her family
had served in the
military.
"I joined the Marine Corps to keep up the family tradition," said
Toledo, who has
a younger sister also in the Marine Corps who recently graduated boot camp.
"My uncle is in the Army, and my great grandfather,
Frank Toledo, spoke
Navajo and was a wind talker for the Marine Corps in World War II," Toledo
added.
Before deploying to Kuwait, Toledo's family held a ceremony
for her.
"In the past when Navajo's were sent off to war, their
families would hold
protection ceremonies for them," said Toledo.
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