Brett was born of parents who were both of mixed heritage. His mother, Betty Tso-Nakai, was half Navajo and half German, his father Al Nakai had one Mexican grandmother. Given the strength of Navajo tribal and cultural identity, the 'mixed blood' heritage was a bit of an issue for him growing up but other factors balanced it out.
The first of which is that his paternal grandfather, Charlie, was a Singer of the People, a priest and shaman who knows the sacred ceremonies, songs and dances of the people and performs many of the rituals of Navajo spiritual life. Singers are uncommon enough and revered enough that they tend to become defacto community leaders (not unlike ministers and pastors of Christian churches). Charlie suspected that Brett was destined to follow in his footsteps from the day of the boy's birth and took pains to be a part of his life even before Brett's 'gift' manifested at ten or so.
A few months after Brett turned ten, he started receiving visions. Scraps and flashes of sight and sound of things occurring elsewhere. Touching an old rifle might make him scream and hide in his room for hours, taking about battles he couldn't know anything about or lost in his own mind, holding a tuft of rabbit fur and seeing the buck's life, from beginning to end. Not just psychic, but /strongly/ so. More than he could possibly control, in fact. Doctors from the local hospital were sure the boy was suffering the beginnings of paranoid delusions and medicated him heavily. His grandfather disagreed and with his parent's permission, took Brett far out into the more sparsely populated area of the land, to his hogan near Many Ruins canyon, weened him off the drugs and started teaching him in earnest, rather than just feeding him bits of lore in the form of children's stories.
The next six years passed in what was essentially an apprenticeship. Brett saw his parents on holidays and at the occasional social event, but mostly he and his grandfather lived the life of their ancestors, hunting, trapping, gathering, a little farming and animal husbandry and a lot of meditation, ritual and instruction. Brett eventually discovered a deep and abiding faith in the rituals and ways of his people, their gods and spirits. He learned the Blessing Way and the other important rituals, using the stability and beauty and order of those rites to keep the chaos and turmoil of his 'gift' at bay. The two of them became convinced that because the visions started with an image of a flood and often came when storms were happening that he had been picked by Tonenili, the god of water to warn his people of disasters and follow his grandfather as a Singer.
Adulthood
Shortly after Brett's sixteenth birthday, he was hit by his most powerful and disturbing vision ever. A flood of darkness and hate and evil that would wipe out the People and all the rest of humanity. And in the water, the cthonic primordial enemy of mankind, Tieholtsodi, the water-monster. A symbol of destruction and force, death and evil. And there was the sense that the dark god sensed Brett as well, dimly but certainly knowing there was at least one person who knew it was stirring and planning the end of all mankind.
Not to put it too bluntly, Brett panicked. He couldn't handle the thought of being known to such an ancient and horrible evil and he couldn't even begin to imagine what he'd have to do to help stop something like that. Unable to stay, afraid of disappointing his Grandfather and needing to just run and put the small world of the Navajo reservation behind him, he hopped a bus the next day, eventually ending up in Las Vegas.
The great thing about Las Vegas, from the point of a teenage runaway, is that nobody /really/ cares if you're eighteen as long as you aren't drinking, trying to rent a car or winning anything at a casino. And nobody really asks for proof of ID when they are hiring a dishwasher or busboy. The next few years passed as Brett picked up odd job after odd job, sometimes picking up flack for wearing his gloves, sometimes cheated out his wages like the rest of the 'migrant' workers, sometimes making enough money to live well and sometimes so poor that he was glad a meal came with most of his jobs. He got older, wiser, tougher and a little smarter. But he didn't, couldn't, get rid of his psychic powers or give up the ways of his people.
Acting as a lay-healer for some of the undocumented workers, homeless types and others he worked with on a day to day basis seemed natural and right to Brett. And Tonenili apparently approved, still granting Brett some favors and sending the minor spirits, the Air Children, Flint Boys and others to help smooth Brett's way where possible. Water always wears down that which opposes it, even stone. Even people. And if Brett will not accept his fate now, well, he will. That resistance will crumble the same way stone is worn away to make the Grand Canyon.
