Fences or Nothing New

I have spent the past three days being officially employed by Flagstaff Medical Center. I spent to sitting all day in orientation and one grueling day serving, well, gruel.
I have alot of personal concerns regarding this recent job choice, mostly with regards to my personal strength and willingness. But one thing i noticed immediately.
I am one of the only Anglos holding this postion. Further more, as far as i can tell, I am the only Anglo my age, who is enrolled in college, at this job. Aside from the pay, which, compared with most jobs available, is generous, I have no actual stake in this job. One of the reasons I stuck with my equally grueling food service job for so long was because it infalted my ego.

Almost the entire staff I work with is Navajo, ranging from girls around my age to woman in their sixties.

A confession: When I am in a new situation and I see a Navajo I have a tendency to want to really really really talk to that person. I feel this instant kinship and draw.
I watched two of my new coworkers put fruit in a blender today to make sorbet or a smoothie, and they were chattering and talking with that Navajo repor and I really wanted to join them.

In my interview, my boss made the comment that I would probably never be boring because I had "grown up on the Rez."

I have never felt more invisible then today. Perhaps, this is because the hospital is a huge business with who knows how many employees. Perhaps it is because I am once again doing a completely diserable job, cleaning up undisireable objects, only this time I don't have the advantage of being related to fine dining. I found that very few people made eye contact with me today. In and out of the kitchen.

More frustrating then the distance I felt from many of the hospital employees was the distance I felt from the staff. Like with the pair blendling fruit, I wanted, very badly to shout "Hey, hey! I grew up on the Rez.!"

I often feel that when this little tidbit is disclosed then I instantly earn a little, well, street cred. In both cultures.

This raises a few questions:

Do I use being from the Rez? To I use it to gain equality with a Navajo coworker? To stick out from a Anglo crowd?

In Orientation we actually had to hear the hospital interpreter speak on the cultural sensitivity with regard to Navajo patients. I am not sure what I can or cannot disclose, due to confidentionality, but I will say that I the audience was very sensitive, very curious, and for the most part, entirely uninformed. Some questions I heard:

"Do I shake ALL their hands? Sould I not shake the men's hands if it's a matriarical society?"

"Why don't they like eye contact?"

"Can you say that 'yah-ta-hay' word again?"

I'm not sure where all this is going, but, I still felt a distance between employees, and, as if this was new, I was again agog at the lack of information about the tribe in Anglo culture.