Culture, Identity, Bikes: Bringing Bikepacking to the Navajo Nation
Culture. Identity. Bikepacking. All these things contribute to who Jon Yazzie is.
Jon Yazzie is a member of the Navajo Nation. He grew up in Coal Mine Mesa, Ariz., with his mother and grandmother. Later, he went to California for a better education. But Yazzie came back.
“The love I was missing wasn’t actually from my family, but from the earth,” he said. He spent years finding a reconnection to his culture, finding his identity, finding himself.
And then he found the bike.
Yazzie started learning to bikepack in 2013. In 2020, he founded Dzil Ta’ah Adventures — the first bikepacking program for youth on Navajo land. “I found my cultural significance and my heart in the world through a bike,” he said. “And this is what makes me whole.”
This film shares not only Yazzie’s story but also the story of the program he founded — and where it’s headed.
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