Natives Don't Get Haircuts

Author: Hataałiinez Wheeler Publisher: Wry Press (2022) Natives Don’t Get Haircuts is the first chapbook by Hataałiinez Wheeler, a nineteen year old singer/writer/artist/student (and even bit actor in a big new tv show just out on AMC!). Hailing from the capital of the Navajo nation, Window Rock, Az, we first became familiar with Hataałii after stumbling across a series of very accomplished self-released albums and an EP he put out as a high schooler and college freshman over the course of the pandemic. Seemingly bursting at the seams creatively via music, films, videos, drawings, paintins, & little transitory sculptures; we eventually became to be highly impressed as well with the poems & fragments of his journals he’d occasionally post to his stories on Instagram. Natives Don’t Get Haircuts (a declaration or exhortation?) compiles a number of these works, along with a recent short story, entitled “The University Powwow”. There’s a startling youthful energy here, and that crac