Deoné Newell

Interviewed by Pilar Bylinsky

I am originally from Window Rock, Arizona. So that's the Navajo Nation. My ethnic background is Diné, Black, and Creole. I actually have a background in tech. But after spending about 10 to 12 [doing that], I transitioned into filmmaking and decided to take a more creative endeavor, and not stick to my nine to five. And that was right before the pandemic. 

My mother actually had a nervous breakdown on the Navajo reservation, and [I have] siblings and family there, who I would go home and visit often, [so] that's always been home for me. [I left] when I was about nine to move to Northern California to live with my dad's side of the family. And I would spend summers [and] holidays with my mom back on the rez. And so during COVID, you know, I thought it was going to be one of the safest places for me to be, but it ended up being terrible. I think you probably heard that at one point, the Navajo reservation had more cases of COVID per capita than New York City. And so… work was shutting down since [my mom] worked for the tribe as an attorney. And she just wasn't bringing in any income. I still have siblings who were at home with her. And so when she had a nervous breakdown, I basically just up and moved and sold all my stuff in LA to stay home for about 11 months. During that time, I started working on a documentary about food insecurity on the Navajo Nation. I realized [while doing that] that there was a huge gap in the wellness space. I also had started working with a life coach right before I moved back home. And so [I] signed on for about a six month period. And I was like, I don't know how I'm going to be able to do these zoom calls, having to drive 20 minutes from home to take an hour-long call in my car. But I guess that's what I [had] to do. So that's how I started working through the pandemic. I did a few little marketing gigs here and there, but mostly started focusing on wellness. 

I was fortunate enough to have paid for my life coaching kind of ahead of time. So that was how I could afford it when I had a job. But you know, living back on the rez, I realized so many of my family members who were struggling with mental health and other physical chronic health issues just didn't have access to a ton of different things. So I started working on the food documentary about food insecurity. And then I was like, I think I want to get into life coaching in the wellness space. So I moved back to LA about a year ago. I've been in LA for a year now and have really focused primarily on wellness work. And in doing that I've shifted my focus from tech over to breath work and life coaching. Now I'm working mostly with BIPOC women. I created a number of different wellness workshops to allow people to access breathwork. 

Through the last couple of years, I had started reconnecting to Navajo stories and realizing that there were so many that I grew up with that had a lot of valuable [lessons] that I really had forgotten about, because as a kid, you don't understand so many of the nuances. While I was home, I spent a lot of time with more elders and started hearing so many more stories. And so in reconnecting to those stories, I've actually incorporated a lot of that into my wellness work.

I think I can really only speak to my personal journey as far as how grounding it's been to rediscover these stories and acknowledge how powerful it is to be a woman because I think, as a woman who grew up mostly in Western society as an adult, I didn't realize the impact that that had on my psyche and my competence as a woman and my sexuality, and the deep shame that I felt around womanhood and puberty. And my hope is that women can really connect to the ways in which we are supposed to be honored… liberated through the ways in which women are unique in their ability to bring life in the world, their ability to bring romance into the world. To bring gentleness and in a way that's sexual, but doesn't have to be sexualized. Does that make sense? So it's like, it [is] feminine, but doesn't have to be sexualized. And I think that that's something that could be incredibly powerful for so many women to embrace, like if we actually gave women an opportunity to connect to that part of themselves that isn't there for the male gaze, and is really just there for themselves as a woman, as a child. 

Another thing that's really popular right now in the spiritual community is rewilding. And I don't know if you've heard of the book, but it's called… Women Who Run with the Wolves. And it's the myths and stories of the wild woman archetype. And I think in that rewilding that women are tapping into, it's awesome to explore the ways in which the feminine has been confined and potentially suffocated and restricted by the patriarchy. So I see this tendency for women to just completely uproot their lives and say, “Forget everything that I've been taught, I need to unlearn so much of it.” And I think that's so true. And we need to save time and space for that. What would you start giving yourself permission to do? How can we incorporate discipline into that to give you momentum? We have this wild energy that wants to just completely overpower everything. And that is incredibly powerful when we can harness it because sometimes we are like this river but we still need the riverbanks. Otherwise, the energy is just so vast and reckless and destroys a lot of things. So that's part of one of the things in the mother and the sage phase:

“When can I be this wild feminine that needs to be reckless and completely uproot everything? And then how can I start incorporating a little more order so that I can have momentum and move forward?”

My first exposure to [non-Western healing modalities] was when I was very young, seeing the medicine man with my great-grandmother. I had always associated those types of modalities with being back home on the rez. So then when I moved back to LA in March and had this whole kind of spiritual awakening, I wanted to attend some non-Western ceremonies in LA and then realized they were all being facilitated by white people. I went to sound baths that were completely cost prohibitive. And I was thinking, this would be so awesome to be able to do not just on the rez, [but also] in a Native community in LA. But these people were charging rates that nobody I knew could afford. Every time I attended a wellness workshop, it was like a breathwork ceremony or a sound bath. I did actually do ayahuasca and it was with a BIPOC group of people. And… it was an incredibly profound, deeply healing experience, but I would not have had access to a BIPOC-only ceremony [if it was not] offered at a discounted rate, which is basically like, donate whatever you can afford. And I'm so thankful for the facilitator who offered that because every other thing I had looked at was thousands of dollars and facilitated by white people. So I think decolonizing wellness has been like a huge initiative just for myself, if I can be someone who either opens or holds the door open for another facilitator to come into… my space or share space and they can freely use my platform if they need more exposure. I just want to be able to offer more wellness services at a rate that's affordable to people. Yes, I'm someone who does need to make a living and I have my coaching program and it's something that I will be charging for. But I just really want people [from my community] to access this.

I think [wellness] has been so commodified and commercialized. People see an opportunity to make money. The other thing is that the market is so saturated by people who charge an absurd amount of money. People coming into it think that they have to charge [as much] so others won't feel that the work is [of lesser] quality. And I haven't found that [to be true] at all. I really rarely charge anything for my breathwork services, or it's donation based, whatever anyone can afford. And I think if I were to start charging [as much money as these other people], a lot less people from my specific community would be attending. I think I've been wondering that as well, like, why are people charging so much? I think there is a bit of entitlement in this space where people have this idea that they can make $200,000 a year, just being someone who is doing sound baths, or being a spiritual healer or a wellness practitioner. And I think because the space is so whitewashed, they're seeing that individuals from their income bracket can afford it. So then they think it's affordable for everyone. [It’s like an] echo chamber where they see individuals like themselves and think that their services are affordable to everyone. 

I realized that there was a huge need for [accessible wellness for BIPOC], because people [didn’t want to go to spaces] they didn't feel included in. When I started posting BIPOC breathwork, or things that I'm doing with Chapter House LA, which is an Indigenous-owned and -run nonprofit here in Los Angeles, a lot of people started signing up. 

[For younger folks going into the wellness field,] don’t be intimidated by the whiteness of the space. It just means that there's not only a market, but a need for us to step into this space. Also, I would say incorporate everything that you feel is incredibly grounding for you from your culture. So many people have been disconnected from it. And that's been one of the biggest responses I've had. People love the stories and teachings that I'm incorporating and my methods, because maybe they were alienated as a person of color themselves. Or as someone who is Diné. Storytelling is one of the most powerful ways for us to connect with people. There's a big portion or a segment in our brain that's actually dedicated only to processing and telling stories. And it allows us to process gratitude and connect with other individuals on a level that stays with us longer than so many other experiences. 

The grounding in your traditions… is so profound. I felt like I didn't have much of an identity. I was going between Black and white circles, and there were no Native circles in Northern California, or [groups I had access to.] I was like, well, I think I've just acclimated to Western culture or not acclimated. But I’d assimilated? I didn't feel grounded at all… because [America is] such a melting pot, and so many cultures have been encouraged to assimilate, assimilate, get rid of your roots, alienate yourself from all of those ways that make you unique. So many of us are like, okay, so then what am I? That’s what happened to me. My stepmom and my father had done that… My stepmother doesn't really have any of her own culture. She’s several generations white American, and my father had really removed himself from his [background]. And I felt like, wow, maybe that's what it's like to be American. And then I was like, wait, this doesn't feel at home at all. I don't feel like I have a real identity. I don't feel like myself. 

I remember being in so many ceremonies as a kid where it was kind of like, what is she doing here? And I remembered as a young kid telling my mom I was always being stared at and she would be like, oh, that's because you're so pretty. Like she would just reframe it in a way that was like positive and then I just kind of had this doubt . And then it was like, alright, well, maybe that's why that's why they're looking at me.

As an adult now I'm like, oh, that was why they were staring, because I'm in like a Walmart with 500 Navajos and I'm the only one with curly hair. And I definitely get more stares now that my hair is shorter, because I can't tie it up and put it in a ponytail or a traditional Navajo bun. And I do remember having that experience at… ceremony where it was all extended relatives of my cousins, so they didn't know me at all. And I know that they were kind of like, What is she doing here? Is she family? Is she supposed to be helping out with these sacred parts of the ceremony? I think I'd always had that experience.

People are surprisingly very supportive. I think I've also done a good job of explaining my background and my upbringing, [so] people are not questioning the validity of that or trying to gatekeep the process of me incorporating that. Also, I am trying to be very mindful, because I'm trying to toe the line between how much I reveal [from] traditional stories because as a Diné woman, I'm aware that we can only share [certain] stories during the wintertime, or certain parts of our stories or ceremonies aren't really supposed to be shared. But for people who are questioning that, I just invite them to look at the work that I've already done or ask me about my upbringing. 

For fun: What’s “in your bag?”

[What I can’t live without?] It's just like, dumb spiritual memes. But that's just one thing I can't live without. I don't know. I think it's really funny to make fun of people in the spiritual space or the wellness space because they can seem so unrelatable and like just completely out of this world.

One thing that is kind of funny is this podcast called Twin Flames. It’s kind of in the realm of making fun of the people in the space who can take advantage of individuals who are seeking guidance, but it's this couple who's on YouTube. And they actually are misguiding individuals to obsess about a person who they consider their twin flame, which is like your other half. And I think it's really funny in the wellness space to look at the memes that are focused on the twin flame, like craziness of it, because the podcast is really wild. And it just [explores] how people in the wellness space talk. [It’s] very unrelatable. It's super spacey. And sometimes I'm like, I want to make sure that I'm relatable and approachable, while still allowing people to know that there are ways that you can access some of the tools in the wellness space without being alienating. So I'm trying to be grounded my culture and identity rather than using all [that] “woke jargon.”

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. You can connect with Deoné here.