Interview with Dewayne Dale Jr.

Dewayne as a child.

I grew up in a rural area. It was high desert, the Southwestern area of the United States. We moved around when I was younger, but one of my bigger memories was growing up on a farm. The farm was maybe two to four acres. Still, we grew everything from alfalfa to corn, squash, watermelon, and everything was planted by hand. That was some of the ways we, my parents and my grandparents, raised money each year. 

I feel like it’s really hard to explain outside of just growing up on a reservation. There are limits to a lot of things in terms of resources, like water or housing was always a big thing. So there’s always a blend of many limitations, but then there’s freedom. There’s hardly anybody around. You can go where you want to go. If you drive five minutes outside of your town, you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere. You’re smack dab in the middle of a desert with mesa plateaus and all these kinds of cool surroundings. When I’m talking to a local or a friend about growing up on a reservation, we don’t have to explain it. There’s a mutual understanding of the lifestyle and environment. It feels slower at times, which is nice, but also so slow to where you’re, you’re just not up to speed, like when I was living in Portland.  Things are happening so fast in Portland, Oregon and that’s just the total opposite from back home. 

The Navajo Nation is huge. If you were to drive east and west of the Navajo Nation, that’s a solid four hours, and then north and south might be like three hours. So it’s a big chunk of land. And on that land, there’s a lot of small communities, some bigger communities; all usually have only one grocery store. So most of the time, you’re heading out to get stuff and bringing it in.  In some parts, there are a lot of free-roaming cows and horses and stuff that are out grazing. It sounds liberating to a lot of people. Still, sometimes I feel like there are limitations. Just thinking about how I grew up and can do what I’m doing now. I always go back and think, man, if more of this stuff was taught to, or if more of the kids growing up in the Navajo Nation can see what’s happening, it’s almost like, their world would just grow bigger.

Journee: Tell me about when you left the reservation.

Dewayne: When I first left for a long period of time was for college, but before then, being involved in sports allowed me to travel. I grew up playing baseball, basketball, and football. When I first left the reservation, it was for college. I got the opportunity to play baseball in North Dakota. When that opportunity arose, I didn’t want to turn it down because back then, there weren’t many people who left to play college sports, let alone have that sport pay for your college.  

I graduated high school in 2003 and went to undergrad, played baseball, and I loved science. I loved medicine. I wanted to go into sports medicine and be involved with athletes because that’s the world I grew up in, and I thought it would be awesome to remain in that field. I attend a small college in a smaller college town, but for me, that was perfect. Being away from home is tough for any college kid. Still, I think it is more tough for some minorities because you literally get dropped in a place where nobody looks like you. That was the case for me when I went to college. I realized that I was the only person like me in every single class. So, I adapted and accepted that was just kind of how it was and kept moving forward, which was an interesting way of thinking. My next college was North Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota. That was where I did my graduate work. After that, I went to school again for industrial design at the Art Institute of Portland in Oregon. 

Journee: Did your family or your community have any type of conversation with you before you left for college, preparing you for being around so many people who weren’t like you?

Dewayne: No.  The way I was brought up was, you just treat people like you want to be treated. But we never really had those kinds of conversations. For me, it was more joking about being the only dude from Navajo Nation in that college town, which was true. 

Journee: What was the most difficult part of transitioning, I’d say academically, from sports medicine to industrial design classes?

Dewayne: The biggest thing is that you’re really not taught to think in a very linear path when you go into anything like art or design. I’m not trying to reduce swelling in a twisted ankle, right? With design, I can’t follow steps. There’s not a recipe and then a result. It’s more that you really gotta put yourself in someone else’s shoes every single time. If I’m gonna design something for a tennis player, I want to know what they do. I wanna know what their life is. I wanna know what their workouts are like, so for me, the biggest difference is empathy, what and who is this person? You kind of gotta play a detective.  How can you become this person and feel what this person’s like to create this product for them? That’s the part I’ve always liked about switching over because then that opens up my world. And then every concept becomes an answer to this small problem. Whereas going back to what I was talking about, there’s a protocol to a twisted ankle, you ice, you exercise, then ice again.

Journee: Speaking of that, can you talk about the Fifth x Rockdeep M.1 Trail sneaker?

Dewayne: That collaboration between myself and Rockdeep started back in June/July of 2020. Rocky Parrish who’s the CEO of Rockdeep, reached out and pitched an idea. We talked and I told him that I had wanted to do a collaboration like this for a long time and I already had the design. I’ve always wanted to design based on history and on early footwear. I’ve seen other companies do it and the shoes looked cool, but why do they look cool? I always knew why–it looked cool because it came from these early cultures. I don’t have the desire to go out and buy a moccasin sneaker because I don’t think there are any native designers pushing that envelope for those companies. I wanted to flip the script. I wanted to be behind the scenes controlling and curating all of that. So, Rocky left the design direction totally up to me and I was very appreciative of him putting that faith in me. I wanted to launch something that wasn’t just taking from a culture.  I’m not gonna copy what a moccasin looks like but I want to take elements and celebrate them.  The M.1 sneaker has a unique lacing system. When you look at moccasins early on, they were just looking for ways to keep them on your feet. So it would be wrapped in a certain way. If you approach a product like that, I think it’s cool because then you can visually draw someone in and they’re like, “wow, this is really crazy. You don’t normally lace up a sneaker like this.” Also, it stays on your feet. That’s my job is to not just make it look crazy and cool, but I want it to stay on your feet. So there’s all these things that designers think about. 

My end consumer was my family. When I say family, it’s like all my relatives, all my other native brothers and sisters across the US into Canada and Mexico, all the indigenous people. They have a culture rich in footwear. People never really say, “oh, you know, you guys have this cool footwear. We wanna bring you guys in to make it.” No, they’ll take the picture and put it on an inspiration board and they’ll go that way without even acknowledging where it’s from. 

Growing up in a place full of culture, I didn’t need to travel. I didn’t need to get inspired by Japan’s culture, Paris, or anything like that. I just need to go back and remember what was fueling my drive to design footwear. And for me, it was early footwear. It was moccasins. Not to take away from the people making them by hand, I felt like that was a product that could be elevated with modern techniques. I want something that has a stronger story. 

I wanted to solve this question of why do I desire it? Why do people desire it? Once I answered that question for myself, then it became this need. Like, people need this, people need this the way they think they need another Air Force 1, or another colorway of Jordan 5. Once I answered why they wanted it, I felt like I could touch their hearts with this product. I can make them feel joy because they know the story and who is behind it. They know everything from sketching to talking with the factory. They know that there was no in-between person, it was just Rocky and I.

Journee: You were talking about this before, having empathy for the consumer and then the consumer also having empathy for the designer. It’s almost like you have a relationship with the people that wear and purchase your shoes. 

Dewayne: Right. I think about 800 people bought the M.1. So it’s like having 800-plus relationships, and they all understand what I’m trying to do. So now, I want to create that experience when you first open it, when you put it on, when you touch it, there are all of these cool elements that I feel like I can affect if I’m really allowed to just express myself in that way. 

About the Interviewer 

Journee Harris is a Storyteller, Urbanist, and Community Development professional based in Cambridge, MA. She is a first-year Master in City Planning student at MIT and a proud alumna of Howard University, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Journee has worked in the non-profit sector, focusing on public space, housing, youth development, historic preservation, and equity in the built environment for over seven years.