Learning Through Service: Building Community With the Navajo Nation

“Being a Baha’i, and adopting and seeing Baha’u’llah’s teachings for this age, doesn’t mean we erase the other beautiful aspects and traditions and spiritual beliefs of our past,” says Kim Wu, a Baha’i living in Los Angeles, California.

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In this video from “The Race Unity Project,” Kim reflects on her experiences serving with the Navajo community and shares what she learned about honoring culture and tradition. “It was really important that they also are connected to their language, that they learn prayers in Navajo, that they learn about things in their culture and their community, and they’re of service to their community,” Kim says.

RELATED: How Navajo Traditions Lead to the Baha’i Faith

In 1998, the Universal House of Justice, the global governing body of the Baha’i Faith, wrote:

Baha’is should obviously be encouraged to preserve their inherited cultural identities, as long as the activities involved do not contravene the principles of the Faith. The perpetuation of such cultural characteristics is an expression of unity in diversity.

Baha’is believe that this unity in diversity should be expressed in every aspect of our lives, including the Baha’i-inspired community-building activities. That’s why Journalism for Change, Inc, a nonprofit media organization founded by filmmaker and human rights activist Maziar Bahari, produced “The Race Unity Project.”

It tells “the century-long story of the American Baha’i community and its efforts — as well as its tests and challenges — in promoting race unity.” The people featured in the project’s videos talk about everything from learning new ways to talk about racism to how the Baha’i writings show that Black is beautiful. 

Watch as Kim discusses how the Navajo community brought “the young people, the residents, their friends, [and] their neighbors together to think about the spiritual and material prosperity of their locality.”

Kim says, “They’re really thinking about ‘what do our neighbors need at this time?’”