Welcome to another episode of Impact Unfiltered, where we dive deep into honest conversations with leaders creating real change in healthcare and beyond. In this session, recorded at the Self-Governance Conference as a companion to the episode with Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren, host Stewart sits down with Sherylene Yazzie, Executive Director of the Navajo Department of Health for the great Navajo Nation.
Sherylene Yazzie shares the core message of her work in a single phrase: “Navajo healing Navajo.” She explains why sovereignty and healing are the same project, walks through the early outcomes of the YHC detox facility in Phoenix (over 200 Navajo people healed to date), and lays out a vision for preventive health rooted in farming, agriculture, medicinal plants, running, and fasting — the ways the Navajo people lived before colonization.
With practical strategy for reaching the next generation on the platforms they actually use, and a beautiful closing reflection on the traditional Navajo morning practice of asking the sun to burn away negativity, this episode is a master class in tradition-rooted leadership.
Tune in for a conversation about sovereignty, traditional preventive health, and empowering yourself before you try to empower anyone else.
1. Introduction to Impact Unfiltered and Episode Overview
- The podcast’s mission: real conversations with leaders driving change in healthcare, business, and community
- Setting the scene at the Self-Governance Conference
- Introduction of guest: Sherylene Yazzie of the Navajo Department of Health
2. Background and Role of Guest (Sherylene Yazzie)
- Executive Director, Navajo Department of Health, Navajo Nation
- 20+ years as a public servant
- Joined at the conference alongside Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren
3. Navajo Healing Navajo: Taking Ownership
- The Navajo are communal people — healing begins with each individual taking ownership
- Decades of programming led people to believe solutions only come from hospitals
- Sherylene Yazzie: return to traditional, medicinal, and communal ways
- Generational trauma and oppression have moved people away from who they were
- Quote: “Our people have been programmed to think all the issues we are dealing with — our solutions are at the hospital — and forgotten our medicinal ways, our traditional ways, our communal ways.”
4. Self-Governance and Healing Are the Same Project
- Self-governance empowers sovereignty; Navajo healing Navajo empowers identity
- The Navajo Nation spans 27,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and a piece of Colorado
- Roughly half a million enrolled members
- The scale demands monumental, not incremental, change
5. Concrete Proof: The Phoenix Detox Facility
- YHC detox facility in Phoenix exists because of self-governance
- Over 200 Navajo people have been healed at the facility to date
- The goal is not just recovery — it’s creating productive citizens whose example ripples to younger generations
- Quote: “Just that alone speaks volumes in what we as Navajo people are capable of doing.”
6. The Vision: Preventive Health and Reprogramming
- Sherylene Yazzie’s priority is preventive health
- Medicinal and therapeutic communities so people can heal in community
- Reprogramming how people think, behave, and approach health
- The path forward is, in many ways, a return to pre-contact self-reliance
7. Why She Does This Work
- 20+ years of public service
- Driven by passion for her people, elders, children, and all relatives
- Quote: “I make a difference in someone’s life, even if it’s just one person — that means so much to me.”
8. Expanding Behavioral Health Across the Nation
- The Navajo Nation has five agencies, each with existing facilities — but none currently accredited for detox
- Plan to elevate standards across all five and mirror the YHC model closer to home
- Currently strong on outpatient care; missing true detox infrastructure on the nation
- Quote: “I would like to see jails to be put up — because that’s not where people belong.”
9. Preventive Health Through Tradition
- Healing through farming, agriculture, and medicinal plants
- Running and exercising — always central to Navajo identity
- Fasting — historically people ate only at certain times of day
- The Navajo Nation is a food desert; water and infrastructure are the driving catalysts for community change
10. Reaching the Next Generation Where They Are
- Younger generations are constantly on phones, iPads, and social media
- Opportunity: meet them there — free podcasts with elders, traditional healing teachings, radio-style repetition
- The generational language gap is real — translating Navajo into English loses meaning
- Repetition works (“that’s why they pay for it”) — borrow advertising strategy for cultural transmission
- Quote: “How do we reach the younger generation who don’t understand or comprehend our Navajo language?”
11. Empower Yourself Before You Empower Others
- When asked what she wants every attendee to walk away believing
- You can do anything you want to do
- Empower yourself first — you cannot empower others from an empty place
- You are the example of who you are
12. The Sun as Medicine
- A traditional Navajo morning practice: bless yourself with the sun
- Ask the sun to bless and nurture you — and to melt and burn away the negativity in your body
- A real mental health practice, not just metaphor
- Quote: “Ask the sun. It has that much power. It will magically burn all of that negativity from you.”
13. Closing Remarks and Gratitude
- Host recognition of Sherylene Yazzie’s leadership for the Navajo Department of Health
- Appreciation for the way she ties traditional practice to mental health
- Encouragement to continue scaling the YHC model across the Nation
