“I don’t write Navajo poetry, I just speak the poetry in Navajo”

This chapter considers the future publics for Navajos who compose their poetry in Navajo. Following Michael Warner in 2002, the author argues that all future publics are acts of active imaginations, that they are possible futures, and that our acts of imagining these possible futures are often informed by our presents. He argues that "naturalness" may not be the imagined future public of all the Navajo poets he had worked with who compose in Navajo. Finally, like the discourse-centered approach to language and culture articulated by Greg Urban and Joel Sherzer, Michael Warner argues that for a public to exist, discourse must circulate. The chapter concludes how such a vision of Navajo poetry might be realized and what that might mean for an imagined future public. Some Navajo poets reject the alignment with the standard and seek a written Navajo satisfying regardless of its alignment with the standard.