Tanaya Winder: Hello, my name is Tanaya Winder.

I was raised on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in Ignacio, Colorado. I'm also a Perrin Lake Paiute and enrolled Duckwater Shoshone. Growing up, people just had a hard time saying my name, whether it was my classmates, my teachers, a lot of people in our community, so I had this other nickname growing up. It was Cookie and Cookie was easy for people to remember. I still get called Cookie now by my family and any time I go home, but I remember there was an elder in our community who really advocated for me being proud of my name and and being happy to use it and would encourage people to call me by my name because he said Tanaya is a beautiful name. It means something. It's strong. It's important.

So I always think about that now even when I'm traveling and doing performances or reading my work, sometimes people accidentally call me Tanya and sometimes I still have this fear of correcting them, but then I always remember that elder and what he told me, and so I am always grateful for opportunities to be able to tell people how to say it right. So it's Tanaya.