How Other Cultures Were Specific Influences on Navajo Arts
Navajos
by D. Fifty. Birchfield
Overview
The Navajo Nation covers a territory larger than the combined states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. It is the largest reservation-based Indian nation inside the Us, both in country area and population. More than 200,000 Navajos alive on the 24,000 square miles of the Navajo Nation. The Navajos' name for themselves is Diné, meaning "the people." The Castilian and Mexicans called them "Apaches de Navajo": "Navajo" is a modified Tewa give-and-take meaning "planted fields" and "Apache" is the Castilian version of the Zuñi word for "enemies." In 1969 the Navajo Tribal Quango officially designated the nation the "Navajo Nation."
HISTORY
In the early nineteenth century, Navajos lived in what is now New Mexico in an area that was under Castilian colonial rule. Navajos lived too far from the colonists, who were full-bodied in the upper Rio Grande Valley, to exist subjected to the disruption of their lives that the Pueblos suffered at the hands of the Castilian. At times the Navajos were centrolineal with the Castilian against other Indians, principally the Utes; other times the Spanish joined forces with the Utes and fought the Navajos. For the Navajos, the most of import past-product of Spanish colonization in New Mexico was the introduction of horses and sheep; the smooth, long-staple, non-oily wool of the Spanish churro sheep would evidence ideal for weaving. When the United States claimed that information technology had acquired an involvement in Navajo land by virtue of having won a war with United mexican states in 1848, the Navajos were not specially impressed. But when the U.S. Army arrived in force at the conclusion of the American Civil War, matters took a grim turn for the Navajo. In the army'southward scorched-earth campaign, led by Colonel Kit Carson, the Navajo homeland was devastated. Half of the Navajos, demoralized and starving, surrendered to the ground forces and were marched 370 miles to the Bosque Redondo concentration military camp on the Pecos River, where many of them died—two,000 of them in one yr lone from smallpox. After four years of imprisonment they were allowed to render to their homeland in 1868, now reduced to one-10th its original size by treaty that same year. They began rebuilding their lives and their herds, virtually unnoticed in an surface area that well-nigh Americans considered worthless desert wasteland.
MODERN ERA
Modern Navajos remain in their bequeathed homelands in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. In both the 1980 and 1990 census, Arizona and New Mexico ranked third and fourth, respectively, for the largest number of Native American residents within each country. The gimmicky government of the Navajos is the Navajo Nation in Window Rock, Arizona. The Navajo Nation comprises approximately sixteen million acres, mostly in northeastern Arizona, simply including portions of northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah. It is a land of vast spaces and simply a few all-weather roads. Eighty-eight percent of the reservation is without phone service and many areas practise not have electricity.
The local unit of Navajo regime is called the Chapter. There are more than 1 hundred Chapter Houses throughout the nation, which serve as local administrative centers for geographical regions. Before the 1990 tribal elections, the tribal quango organization of regime was reorganized into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. In 1990 Navajos elected a tribal president for the offset time, rather than a tribal chairman. The tribal budget exceeds $100 meg annually, with much of the revenue coming from mineral leases.
The Navajo reservation, every bit created by treaty in 1868, encompassed merely virtually 10 percent of the bequeathed Navajo homeland. The land base of operations soon tripled in size, largely by the addition of big blocks of land by executive orders of presidents of the United States during the tardily nineteenth century, when Americans still considered well-nigh of the desert Southwest to be undesirable land. Dozens of small increments were also added by various methods until the middle of the twentieth century.
Navajos of the mid-1990s were nevertheless adjusting the boundaries of their nation, specially by trading land in an attempt to create contiguous blocks in an area called the Checkerboard, which lies forth the eastern boundary of the Navajo Nation. More than 30,000 Navajos live in this 7,000 square-mile expanse of northwestern New Mexico. They are interspersed with Anglo and New Mexican stock raisers and involved in a nightmare of legal tangles regarding title to the land, where there are 14 different kinds of land ownership. The problems originated in the nineteenth century, when railroad companies were granted rights of style consisting of alternate sections of country. They were complicated by partial allotments of 160-acre parcels of land to some individual Navajos, the reacquisition of some parcels by the federal authorities as public domain land, and other factors. Crownpoint is the habitation of the Eastern Navajo Agency, the Navajo administrative headquarters for the Checkerboard. As recently as 1991 the Navajos were still attempting to consolidate the Checkerboard, exchanging 20,000 acres in order to accomplish 80,000 acres of consolidation.
There are three isolated portions of the nation in New Mexico—satellite reservations known as the Ramah Navajo, the Cañoncito Navajo, and the Alamo Navajo. Canoncito was first settled around 1818. Ramah and Alamo had their origins in the late 1860s when some Navajos settled in these areas on their fashion back toward the Navajo homeland from imprisonment at the U.S. Army concentration camp at Bosque Redondo; approximately half the Navajos had been incarcerated there. Ramah is rural and is a bastion of traditional Navajo life. More than 1,500 Navajos live at Ramah, which is between the pueblos of Zuñi and Acoma, virtually the El Malpais National Monument. More than 1,700 Navajos alive at Canoncito, which is to the e of Mt. Taylor nigh the pueblos of Laguna and Isleta, and more than 2,000 live at Alamo, which is southward of the pueblos of Acoma and Laguna.
THE Offset NAVAJOS IN AMERICA
Navajos and Apaches, every bit members of the Athapaskan language family, are by and large believed to have been amongst the last peoples to accept crossed the land span from Siberia to Alaska thousands of years ago during the last Ice Age. The Athapaskan language family unit is one of the most widely dispersed language families in North America, and well-nigh of
Members of the Navajo tribe sit together in this 1939 photograph.
its members still reside in the far north in Alaska and Canada.
SETTLEMENT
It is non known, and volition probably never be known, exactly when the Navajos and Apaches (Southwestern Athapaskans) began migrating from the far north to the Southwest or what route they took. Linguists who written report changes in language and then guess how long related languages have been separated have offered the year chiliad A.D. as an judge date for the first of the migration. It is clear, still, that the Southwestern Athapaskan did not arrive in the Southwest until at least the end of the fourteenth century. Until that fourth dimension what is now known as the Navajo homeland was inhabited by one of the nearly remarkable civilizations of ancient people in North America, the Ancestral Puebloans. Ancestral Puebloan ruins are among the nigh spectacular ruins in Due north America—especially their elaborate cliff dwellings, such every bit the ones at Mesa Verde National Park, and such communities as Chaco Canyon, where multistory rock masonry apartment buildings and large secret kivas can still exist seen today.
Scholars originally idea that the arrival of the Southern Athapaskan in the Southwest was a factor in the collapse of the Ancestral Puebloan civilization. It is now known that the Bequeathed Puebloans expanded to a point where they had stretched the delicate balance of existence in their fragile, barren surround to where it could not withstand the severe, prolonged droughts that occurred at the finish of the fourteenth century. In all likelihood, the Ancestral Puebloans had moved shut to the more than dependable sources of water forth the watershed of the upper Rio Grande River and had reestablished themselves as the Pueblo peoples by the fourth dimension the Navajos entered the Southwest. The Navajos and so claimed this empty country as their ain. They first settled in what they call Dinetah, which ways "homeland of the Diné," in the far northwestern corner of what is now New Mexico. After they acquired sheep and horses from the Spanish—which revolutionized their lives—and acquired cultural and textile attributes from the Pueblos—which further enhanced their ability to adjust to the environment of the Southwest—the Navajos then spread out into all of Diné Bikeyah, "the Navajo country."
Acculturation and Absorption
Because they have remained relatively isolated from the centers of European population, because they take been able to hold onto a large part of their bequeathed homeland, and because of the not bad distances and poor roads inside the region, Navajos have been more successful than most Native Americans in retaining their civilization, language, and community. Until early in the twentieth century Navajos were also able to carry out their traditional way of life and support themselves with their livestock, remaining relatively unnoticed by the dominant civilization. Boarding schools, the proliferation of automobiles and roads, and federal land management policies—specially regarding traditional Navajo grazing practices—have all made the reservation a different place than what it was in the tardily nineteenth century. As late as 1950 paved roads ended at the fringes of the reservation at Shiprock, Cameron, and Window Rock. Even wagons were not widely used until the early 1930s. By 1974, notwithstanding, almost two-thirds of all Navajo households owned an motorcar. Navajos are finding ways to use some changes to back up traditional culture, such as the adult instruction program at Navajo Customs Higher, which assists in instruction the skills that new Navajo medicine men must acquire in order to serve their communities. Bilingual teaching programs and broadcast and publishing programs in the Navajo language are as well using the tools of modify to preserve and strengthen traditional cultural values and linguistic communication.
TRADITIONS, CUSTOMS, AND Behavior
Navajo traditional life has remained strong. In 1941 an anthropologist interviewed an entire community of several hundred Navajos and could not find fifty-fifty one adult over the age of 35 who had non received traditional medical care from a "singer," a Navajo medicine homo called a Hataali. Today, when a new health care facility is congenital on the reservation it includes a room for the traditional practice of medicine by members of the Navajo Medicine Man'south Association. Well-nigh all of the 3,600 Navajos who served in Globe State of war II underwent the cleansing of the Enemyway ceremony upon their return from the state of war. There are 24 chantway ceremonies performed by singers. Some last up to nine days and require the assist of dozens of helpers, peculiarly dancers. Twelve hundred different sandpainting designs are bachelor to the medicine men for the chantways.
Big numbers of Navajos also tend to identify themselves equally Christians, with near of them mixing elements of both traditional belief and Christianity. In a 1976 survey, between 25 and l percent called themselves Christians, the percentage varying widely by region and gender. Twenty-five thou Navajos belong to the Native American Church, and thousands more than attend its peyote ceremonies only do not belong to the church. In the late 1960s the tribal council approved the religious employ of peyote, ending 27 years of persecution. The Native American Church building had originally gained a stronghold on the Ute Mount Reservation, which adjoins the Navajo Nation on the northeast. In 1936 the church began to spread to the southward into the Navajo Nation, and it grew strong amidst the Navajos in the 1940s.
HOLIDAYS
The premier annual events open to visitors are the Navajo Fairs. One of the largest is the Northern Navajo Fair, normally held on the commencement weekend in October, at Shiprock, New United mexican states. The dance contest confab draws dancers from throughout the continent. Another large Navajo Fair is held annually at Window Rock, unremarkably during the beginning calendar week in July. Other Navajo fairs are also held at other times during the yr. All-Indian Rodeos are also pop, as are contest powwows.
NAVAJO DANCES AND SONGS
Except for powwow competition dances and singing, almost Navajo traditional dances and songs are a function of healing ceremonies, at which visitors are allowed merely with the permission of the family. Photography and video or tape recording of the ceremonies are not permitted without the express authorization of the healers. Charlotte Heth of the Department of Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles, noted in a chapter of Native America: Portrait of the Peoples, that "Apache and Navajo song style are like: tense, nasal voices; rhythmic pulsation; clear articulation of words in alternating sections with vocables. Both Apache Crown Dancers and Navajo Yeibichei (Night Dirge) dancers article of clothing masks and sing partially in falsetto or in voices imitating the supernaturals."
Wellness Problems
The suicide rate amidst Navajos is xxx percent higher than the national boilerplate. Some other severe trouble is alcoholism. Both of these problems are exacerbated by poverty: more than half of all Navajos live below the poverty line.
Four total-service Indian hospitals are located in northwestern New United mexican states. The one at Gallup is the largest in the region. The others are at Crownpoint, Shiprock, and Zuñi. In northern Arizona, total-service Indian hospitals are located at Fort Defiance, Winslow, Tuba City, and Keams Canyon. Indian Health Centers (facilities staffed past health professionals, open at to the lowest degree 40 hours per week, and catering to the general public) are located at Ft. Wingate and Tohatchi in northwestern New Mexico and at Greasewood, Toyei, Dilkon, Shonto, Kayenta, Many Farms, Teec Nos Pos, and Chinle in Arizona. Indian Health Stations (facilities staffed by health professionals and catering to the general public, but open only limited hours, ofttimes merely 1 solar day per calendar week) are located at Toadlena, Naschitti, Navajo, Pinedale, Pueblo Pintado, Ojo Encino, Torreon, Rincon, and Bacca in northwestern New United mexican states and at Gray Mount, Pinon, Dinnebito Dam, Ruby-red Lake, Page, Coppermine, Kaibito, Dinnehotso, Rock Betoken, Rough Rock, and Lukachukai in Arizona. Indian School Health Centers (facilities meeting the same criteria equally Indian Health Centers, but catering primarily to school populations) are located at Crownpoint, Sanostee, and Shiprock in northwestern New Mexico and at Leupp, Tuba City, Holbrook, and Chinle in Arizona. Additionally, not-Indian hospitals are located in Flagstaff, Winslow, and Holbrook in Arizona, in Gallup, Rehoboth, Grants, and Farmington in New United mexican states, in Durango and Cortez in Colorado, and in Goulding, Utah. In keeping with the recent tendency throughout the United States, Navajos are now administering many of their own health care facilities, taking over their functioning from the Public Wellness Service. The Navajo Tribal Health Authority likewise plans to develop an American Indian medical school at Shiprock, New United mexican states.
Traditional Navajo healers are called Hataali, or "singers". Traditional Navajo medical practice treats the whole person, non simply the illness, and is not conducted in isolation but in a ceremony that includes the patient'due south relatives. The ceremony can terminal from 3 to nine days depending upon the disease being treated and the anniversary to be performed. Disease to the Navajos means that there is disharmony in the universe. Proper guild is restored with sand paintings in a cleansing and healing ceremony. In that location are approximately 1,200 designs that can be used; most can be created within the size of the average hogan floor, about six feet by vi feet, though some are as large as 12 anxiety in diameter and some equally pocket-sized as one pes in diameter. The Hataali may have several helpers in the creation of the intricate patterns. Dancers also assist them. In some ceremonies, such every bit the nine-twenty-four hours Yei-Bei-Chei, xv or 16 teams of eleven members each dance throughout the night while the vocalizer and his helpers chant prayers. When the painting is ready the patient sits in the middle of it. The vocalist so transforms the orderliness of the painting, symbolic of its cleanliness, goodness, and harmony, into the patient and puts the affliction from the patient into the painting. The sand painting is then discarded. Many years of apprenticeship are required to acquire the designs of the sand paintings and the songs that accompany them, skills that have been passed down through many generations. Most Hataali are able to perform only a few of the many ceremonies practiced by the Navajos, because each ceremony takes so long to acquire. Sand painting is at present too washed for commercial purposes at public displays, simply the paintings are not the same ones used in the healing rituals.
Linguistic communication
The Athapaskan language family unit has iv branches: Northern Athapaskan; Southwestern Athapaskan; Pacific Coast Athapaskan; and Eyak, a southeast Alaska isolate. The Athapaskan language family is one of iii families within the Na-Dene language phylum. (The other two, the Tlingit family and the Haida family unit, are language isolates in the far north, Tlingit in southeast Alaska, and Haida in British Columbia.) Na-Dene is i of the almost widely distributed language phyla in North America. The Southwestern Athapaskan language, sometimes chosen Apachean, has seven dialects: Navajo, Western Apache, Chiricahua, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Lipan, and Kiowa-Apache. In 1987 approximately 125,000 Navajos on the reservation nevertheless spoke Navajo fluently.
Family and Community Dynamics
No tribe in North America has been more vigorously studied by anthropologists than the Navajos. When a human marries, he moves into the household of the wife'southward extended family. The Navajos joke that a Navajo family consists of a grandmother, her married daughters and their husbands, her daughters' children, and an anthropologist. A Navajo is "born to" the mother's clan and "born for" the father'due south association. The importance of clans, the membership of which is dispersed throughout the nation for each clan, has gradually macerated in favor of the increasingly important function of the Affiliate House, the significance of which is based on the geographical proximity of its members. Traditional prohibitions against marrying within ane's own association are beginning to break down. The daughter's puberty anniversary, her kinaalda, is a major result in Navajo family life. Navajos maintain strong ties with relatives, fifty-fifty when they leave the reservation. It is non uncommon for Navajos working in urban centers to send money abode to relatives. On the reservation, an extended family may have only 1 wage-earning worker. Other family members busy themselves with traditional endeavors, from stock tending to weaving.
From the late 1860s until the 1960s, the local trading postal service was the preeminent financial and commercial institution for most Navajos, serving as a local bank (where silverish and turquoise could be pawned), a mail service role, and a store. 1 of the near famous, Hubbell's Trading Postal service, is now a national monument. Traders served the community as interpreters, business organization managers, funeral directors, grave diggers, and gossip columnists. The motorcar and large discount stores in the urban centers at the fringes of the nation have greatly macerated the office of the trading posts.
TRADITIONAL CRAFTS
Navajo jewelry, especially work done in silvery and turquoise, is internationally famous. Navajo silversmithing dates from 1853, when a Mexican silversmith arrived at Fort Defiance in what is now Arizona. The Navajo 'Atsidi Sani learned the craft from him and taught it to others. By 1867 several Navajos were working with silvery, and by 1880 they had begun to combine turquoise with their designs. At the plough of the century the Fred Harvey Company asked Navajo silversmiths to brand lighter pieces for the tourist merchandise and guaranteed them a sales outlet. Today silversmithing is a widespread craft practiced by many Navajos.
Weaving is also an important economic activity throughout the nation. Navajo weaving has undergone many changes in designs. Navajos are continually creating new ones, and various locations inside the nation accept go famous for particular types of rugs and patterns. Weaving underwent a revival in the 1920s, when Chinle weavers introduced the multicolored Broad Ruins, Crystal, and Pine Springs patterns. The rug weavers auction at Crownpoint is known worldwide. The Navajo Nation owns the Navajo Nation Arts and crafts Enterprise at Window Rock, where customers tin can be assured of purchasing authentic Indian crafts made by Indian people.
Instruction
An 1868 treaty provided for schools for Navajo children. The number of schools increased profoundly after compulsory schoolhouse attendance was mandated in 1887. In 1907 a Navajo headman in Utah was imprisoned without trial for a year and a half for speaking out against forced removal of local children to the Shiprock Boarding Schoolhouse. Others were strongly in favor of schools, especially afterward 19 influential Navajo headmen were exposed to the outside world at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Until 1896 Navajo schools were operated by missionaries, who were often more interested in attempting to eradicate the Navajo religion, culture, and language than in educating their charges. The institution of boarding schools far from Navajo homes, subjected Navajo children to the trauma of existence removed from their families and their cultures for extended periods of time. Instruction was conducted merely in English language. With the secularization of the federally maintained Navajo public schoolhouse system in 1896 ceremonious servants replaced the missionaries, but lack of agreement and appreciation of Navajo culture—and instruction simply in English—continued to exist the norm. Some religious-affiliated schools continue to the nowadays solar day, but they display a greater appreciation for Navajo culture and traditions than their nineteenth-century predecessors. By 1958, 93 pct of Navajo children were in school.
In the 1960s Navajos began to exercise much stronger management of their children's teaching with the institution of customs-controlled contract schools. The Crude Stone Demonstration Schoolhouse was the beginning of these schools. Information technology introduced bilingual educational activity for young children, the adult training of Navajo medicine men, and other innovative programs based on the perceived needs of the local community. Information technology should be pointed out that the bilingual education introduced was, and is, to teach Navajo language, non to transition into English language. This is non an boosted tool of absorption, but rather a reinforcement of traditional language and culture.
In 1969 the Navajo established Navajo Community College, the first college operated by Indians. At first located at Many Farms High School, it moved to Tsaile, Arizona, with the opening of its new campus in 1974; at that place is a co-operative campus in Shiprock, New Mexico. In 1972 the College of Ganado, a junior college in Ganado, Arizona, was incorporated equally a successor to the Ganado Mission School. Following the lead of the Navajos, there are now a total of 29 Indian institutions of college education
The Coalition of Navajo Liberation is a strong voice for Navajo affairs. Over 350 Navajo protestors marched on Window Rock, Arkansas to nowadays grievances to tribal officials in 1976.
in the United States, all members of an American Indian college education consortium. Navajo Community College Printing is a leading native-endemic academic press. A number of country supported baccalaureate institutions are located near the Navajo Nation. These include branch campuses of the University of New Mexico at Gallup and Farmington, Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff, and Ft. Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. In 1987 more than iv,000 Navajos were attending higher.
Employment and Economic Traditions
Nearly every Navajo extended family has members who engage in silversmithing and weaving as a matter of occasional economic enterprise. Farming and stock raising are still important in the economic life of the nation. But the largest employers of Navajo people are the federal and tribal governments. The Navajos have their own parks and recreation section, fish and wildlife department, police department, educational programs, and health service, likewise as many other jobs in tribal government and administration. Many federal agencies have offices either on or near the reservation. Other Navajos are employed at the tribally operated electronics plant at Fort Defiance, Arizona, and at the Navajo Forest Products Industry, an $xi one thousand thousand sawmill also run by the tribe. Information technology is located at Navajo, New Mexico, the only industrial town on the reservation, which was created and planned to serve the needs of its industry.
Until the early twentieth century Navajos were able to continue deriving their livelihood from their traditional practices of stockraising. Since the 1920s fewer and fewer Navajos have been able to maintain themselves in this manner. Chronic loftier rates of unemployment and dependency on governmental assistance have gradually replaced the traditional fashion of life. In 1941 Navajos had earned only $150,000 from industry, but Earth War II was a blast time for the economy, giving the Navajos a gustatory modality for money and what it could buy. More than one-half the Navajos 19 and older had wartime jobs; in 1943 they earned $5 million. After the state of war in the late 1940s the annual family income averaged $400.
By 1973 a study released past the Navajo Office of Program Development establish that but twenty,000 people were employed on the reservation, of which 71 percent were Navajos. Nine communities were found to account for 84 per centum of the jobs held by Navajo people: Shiprock, 3,616; Chinle, two,284; Window Rock, 2,100; Ft. Disobedience, one,925; Tuba City, 1,762; Crownpoint, 1,149; Navajo, 697; Kayenta, 571; and Ganado, 311. Public service jobs—health, instruction, and government—were found to account for nearly iii-fourths of all employment on the reservation. In 1975 the Navajo unemployment charge per unit was 67 percentage. Median Navajo annual household income declined during the 1970s, standing at $ii,520 in 1979. In 1991 the unemployment charge per unit was 36 percent and remained at about that level in 1999.
Since the late 1960s, developing projects have been diversifying employment inside the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP) is projected to irrigate 110,000 acres of cropland from h2o impounded in the upper San Juan River basin, using open canals, pipelines, lift stations, and overhead sprinkler systems. The Navajo Agronomical Products Manufacture (NAPI), a tribal enterprise, manages the plan. It includes agribusiness plant sites, grazing lands and a feedlot for cattle product, and an experimental research station. Instituted by human activity of Congress in 1962, the first ten,000 acres were brought into irrigation in 1976, producing crops of barley and cabbage. By 1981 the total irrigated acreage had increased to xl,000 acres, and ingather diversification had added alfalfa, pinto beans, corn, and milo. In 1982 a cattle feedlot operation began to make use of grain and forage crop product. NAPI showed its starting time profit in 1986. By 1991 more than half of the projected acreage had been brought nether irrigation. A coal-gasification institute well-nigh Burnham and Navajo-Exxon uranium leases, along with the irrigation project, are making northwestern New Mexico and the eastern portion of the Navajo reservation the focus of new economic activity. Uranium mining, however, has produced health risks, including alarmingly loftier rates of cancer. In 1979 a broken tailings dam belonging to United Nuclear Corporation at Church Stone, New Mexico, discharged 100 million gallons of radioactive water into the Puerco River—the largest release of radioactivity in United states history.
Because of their legal status, Navajo business-people must deal with state and federal agencies as well every bit Navajo officials and must pay both state and Navajo taxes. In addition, complicated paperwork requirements for obtaining business concern licenses and land leases for businesses hamper start-up. IINA (which means "life" in Navajo), an initiative started by Navajo Duane "Chili" Yazzi, is currently underway, and is aimed at reducing red tape by delegating command to local tribal chapters. Some other objective is to utilize function of the nation'south assets, some $1.2 billion, as venture capital for Navajo entrepreneurs.
The Navajo people's biggest economic ventures take been coal leases. By 1970 the Navajo Nation had the largest coal mine in the globe. The 1964 and 1966 Black Mesa coal leases to Peabody Coal Company have become a source of controversy within the nation, equally more and more than Navajos decry the scouring of their state, the deportation of families for the sake of mining activeness, and the threat to sacred places posed by mining operations.
Little has been done to develop tourism, despite its potential as a source of income. But iv motels exist on the reservation, in dissimilarity with neighboring Gallup, New United mexican states, which has more 35. The Navajo Nation maintains 4 campgrounds: Monument Valley, Four Corners, Tsaile South Shore south of Lukachukai, and Little Colorado River. Other economic ventures under way include shopping centers and motels. Hunting and angling provide economical activity and jobs in the portion of the reservation lying in northwestern New United mexican states, where 16 lakes offering fishing for trout, channel catfish, bass, northern pike, and bluegill. Hunting permits may be obtained for deer, turkey, bear, and small-scale game.
Politics and Government
The basic unit of measurement of local government in the Navajo Nation is the Chapter, each with its own Affiliate House. The Chapter organisation was created in 1922 as a means of addressing agricultural bug at a local level. Before the 1920s, the nation had no centrally organized tribal government. Like many other Indian nations, the tribe was forced to create a central say-so past the United States. For the Navajos, the seminal event was the discovery of oil on the reservation in 1921, after which the United States desired some centralized governmental authority for the Navajos for the purpose of executing oil leases, largely for the benefit of non-Navajos. At first the Bureau of Indian Affairs appointed 3 Navajos to execute mineral leases. In 1923 this arrangement gave way to a plan for each of several Navajo agencies to provide representatives for the Navajo government. Later on Earth War Two the Navajo Tribal Quango became recognized as the Navajo government.
Armed forces
Navajos have served with distinction in the military of the United States in every war in the twentieth century, including Globe War I, even though they—and other reservation Indians—did not get citizens of the United States until citizenship was extended to them by an deed of Congress in 1924. Their most heralded service, still, came during Earth War 2 in the U.S. Marine Corps, when they employed the Navajo language for military communication in the field equally the Marines stormed Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. They have become known to posterity as the Navajo Code Talkers.
Philip Johnson, born to missionaries and raised on the Navajo reservation, is credited with a leading function in the formation of the Navajo Code Talkers. Every bit a child he learned fluent Navajo, as well as Navajo culture and traditions. At the age of nine he served equally interpreter for a Navajo delegation that traveled to Washington, D.C., to nowadays Navajo grievances to President Theodore Roosevelt. After serving in World War I, Johnson was a civil engineer in California. When war broke out with Japan in 1941, Johnson learned that the military hoped to develop a lawmaking using American Indians as signal-men. He met with Marine Corps and Army Point Corps officers and arranged a demonstration of Navajo equally a code language. The demonstration took place on Feb 28, 1942, at Army camp Elliott with the cooperation of four Navajos from Los Angeles and one who was in the Navy in San Diego.
Within a year the Marine Corps authorized the plan, which at get-go was classified equally meridian cloak-and-dagger. Johnson, though over historic period, was allowed to enlist in the Corps and was assigned to help supervise the establishment of the program at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California. In May 1942 the Marine Corps, with the approval of the Navajo Tribal Quango, began recruiting Navajo men at Window Stone, Arizona, for the plan. The commencement group to receive training consisted of 29 Navajos who underwent basic boot military camp grooming at the San Diego Marine Corps Recruit Depot. They were so sent for iv weeks to the Field Point Battalion Training Center at Camp Pendleton, where they received 176 hours of pedagogy in basic communications procedures and equipment. They were later deployed to Guadalcanal, where their use of the Navajo linguistic communication for radio communication in the field proved so effective that recruitment for the program was expanded. Eventually, approximately 400 Navajo Lawmaking Talkers saw duty in the Pacific in the Marine Corps. By the finish of the war they had been assigned to all half dozen Marine divisions in the Pacific and had taken part in every assault—from Guadalcanal in 1943 to Okinawa in 1945. Today the surviving Navajo Code Talkers maintain an active veterans' organization. In 1969, at the Fourth Marine Division Association reunion in Chicago, they were presented with a medallion specially minted in commemoration of their services.
RELATIONS WITH THE Usa
Much friction has resulted betwixt the Navajos and the Usa over the management of Navajo livestock grazing. The original Navajo Reservation in 1868 encompassed only a small portion of the ancestral Navajo rangelands. The size of the reservation tripled between 1868 and the mid-1930s by 14 additions of blocks of land from 1878 to 1934. This would give the appearance of a quickly expanding corporeality of rangeland bachelor to the Navajos. In fact, just the opposite was truthful.
When the Navajos returned to their homeland from the Bosque Redondo in 1869, the government issued them 1,000 goats and 14,000 sheep to begin replacing the herds that the U.S. Army and New Mexico militia had either slaughtered or confiscated. In 1870 the Navajos were issued an boosted 10,000 sheep. With practically no Anglo encroachment on their bequeathed rangeland, reservation boundaries had piddling pregnant. The Navajos spread out over their old manor and their herds began increasing. The Bureau of Indian Affairs forbade the selling of breeding stock, eager to see the Navajos regain cocky-sufficiency. The Navajo population increased steadily, from an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 in 1868 to nearly 40,000 past 1930, and their herds increased accordingly, though there were large fluctuations in the numbers twelvemonth by twelvemonth due to occasional drought and affliction. At the same time the cribbing of the ancestral rangelands outside the reservation boundaries by Anglo cattle operations and other interests had accelerated, forcing
"O n the wind-beaten plains once lived my ancestors. / In the days of peaceful moods, / they wandered and hunted.... / Now, from the current of air-beaten plains, only their dust rises."
From the poem "Ancestors" by Grey Cohoe, on the rising consciousness of the American Indian.
the Navajos onto an ever smaller amount of range. By the 1920s a serious soil erosion problem on the reservation was being blamed on overgrazing. The Navajos tried to convalesce the problem by seeking more land and renewed access to the bequeathed rangelands from which they had gradually been forced off. The The states believed that a solution to the problem was to force Navajo livestock reductions by killing the animals it deemed to be unnecessary. Thus began a twenty-year conflict between the Navajos and the The states, in which the U.S. government, in attempting to implement its policies, found itself disrupting traditional Navajo economical, social, and political life to a far greater extent than at any time in the by.
The tool of the government in this thing was the cosmos of land management districts, commencement established in 1936 and adapted to their preset boundaries in 1955. In attempting to modify Navajo livestock practices, the U.S. government subverted and contradistinct Navajo culture in the process. Today the federal land management districts on the reservation are still important factors in Navajo livestock practices. The grazing committees of the Navajo Chapter Houses must work closely with the districts to set the herd size for each range. The extreme turmoil that the stock reduction crisis acquired in traditional Navajo life—and the tactics used by the U.Southward. government to subvert traditional Navajo civilisation and government during the superlative of the crisis in the 1930s and 1940s—are the subject area of an extensive, detailed study by Richard White, The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Surroundings, and Social Modify Amidst the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos.
Indians in Arizona and New Mexico were not allowed to vote in state and national elections until 1948. In 1957 Utah finally allowed Indians living on reservations to vote—the final remaining state to practise so. It required a 1976 U.Southward. Supreme Court ruling to forcefulness Apache County, Arizona, where the population was 70 percent Navajo, to allow Navajos to serve on its board of supervisors. As of 1984 no Native American had ever been elected to public function in Utah. In that twelvemonth the U.S. Section of Justice ordered San Juan County, Utah, where the population was 50 per centum Navajo, to redistrict. The next yr a Navajo was elected county commissioner.
The most divisive issue among the Navajos in contempo years, and the cause of the greatest strain in relations with the United states of america, has been the so-called "Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute," in which thousands of Navajos have been forced to relocate from lands that were jointly held past the two tribes since 1882. Many prominent Navajos and some prominent Hopis believe that the relocation of the Navajos and the division of the 1882 Joint Utilize Area has been undertaken by the U.Due south. government for the benefit of the American extraction industry, so that valuable mineral deposits inside the area tin be strip-mined.
Individual and Group Contributions
ACADEMIA
Amidst the showtime Navajos to earn a Ph.D., Ned Hatathli (1923-1972) was the first president of the Navajo Community College—the beginning higher owned and operated by the Navajo people. Annie Dodge Wauneka (1910– ) is a public health educator responsible for largely eliminating tuberculosis amidst the Navajo Indians. Wauneka was afterwards elected to the Navajo Tribal Council and was the kickoff Native American to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Peterson Zah (1937– ) is an educator and leader who has devoted his life to serving the Navajo people and retaining Navajo culture, especially among immature people. In 1990 Zah was elected the first president of the Navajo people; he was afterwards awarded the Humanitarian Award from the Urban center of Albuquerque and an honorary doctorate from Santa Atomic number 26 College.
Art
Harrison Begay (1917– ) is ane of the about famous of all Navajo painters. Noted for their sinuous delicacy of line, meticulous particular, restrained palette, and elegance of composition, his watercolors and silkscreen prints have won xiii major awards. Carl Nelson Gorman (1907– ) is a prominent Navajo artist whose oil paintings and silk screening have won acclaim for their divergence from traditional Indian art forms. His contributions to Navajo and Native American art and culture inspired the dedication of the Carl Gorman Museum at Tecumseh Center at the University of California at Davis. Rudolpf Carl Gorman (1931– ) is one of the virtually prominent gimmicky Native American artists of the twentieth century. His art combines the traditional with the nontraditional in style and form.
LITERATURE
Navajo writer Vee Browne has achieved national recognition with her retellings of Navajo creation stories. Her books have included Monster Slayer and Monster Birds, a children's biography of Osage international ballet star Maria Tallchief, and a volume in a new series of Native American fauna stories from Scholastic books. Her honors include the prestigious Western Heritage Award from the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in 1990. A guidance counselor by preparation, Browne is active in helping emerging Native American writers hone their skills and notice outlets for their work, serving as a mentor in the Wordcraft Circle of Native American Mentor and Apprentice Writers. She has also served on the 1994-1996 National Informational Caucus for Wordcraft Circle.
Elizabeth Woody (1959– ), built-in on the Navajo Nation but raised mostly in the Pacific Northwest, has been influenced by the Pacific Northwest tribes as well as her Navajo heritage. She returned to the Southwest to study poesy and art at the Found of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her showtime volume of poetry, Mitt Into Stone, published in 1988, won the American Book Award. Her other books include Luminaries of the Humble and 7 Hands, Seven Hearts. Woody'due south verse has been anthologized in Returning the Souvenir and Durable Breath; her brusk fiction, "Domicile Cooking," has been anthologized in Talking Leaves; her nonfiction, "Warm Springs," has been anthologized in Native America. Woody now teaches at the Constitute of American Indian Arts. Her illustrations can be establish in Sherman Alexie'southward Old Shirts & New Skins, and her fine art has been the bailiwick of a 5-calendar week exhibit at the Tula Foundation Gallery in Atlanta, Georgia.
Actress/author Geraldine Keams has appeared in several films, including The Outlaw Josey Wales , and has been published in Sun Tracks and The Remembered Globe. Jean Natoni has published her piece of work in The Remembered Earth, as have Aaron Yava, a Navajo/Hopi, and Genevieve Yazzie. Yava'southward drawing have appeared in Border Towns of the Navajo Nation, Human to Transport Rain Clouds, and A Skilful Journeying. Yazzie's work is also featured in New America, and she worked on the Navajo-English dictionary project.
Rex Jim, a highly regarded medicine man, is the showtime writer to have published a volume of poetry in Navajo, with no translation, with a major university printing ( Ahi'Ni'Nikisheegiizh, Princeton Academy Press). Jim's fiction and nonfiction have besides been published by Rock Bespeak Customs School in the Navajo Nation and include such works equally "Naakaiiahgoo Tazhdiya" and "Living from Livestock."
Laura Tohe'due south volume of poetry, Making Friends with Water, was published past Nosila Printing, and her verse and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as Nebraska Humanities, Bluish Mesa Review, and Platte Valley Review. Tohe received her Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Nebraska and teaches at the University of Arizona. Tohe's latest project is a children'southward play for the Omaha Emmy Gifford Children'southward theater. Similar Vee Browne, Tohe is a mentor in the Wordcraft Circumvolve program and is besides a fellow member of its 1994-1996 National Advisory Caucus.
Lucy Tapahonso (1953– ) is the author of four books of poesy, including Saanii Dahataa. She is an banana professor at the University of Kansas at Lawrence. Della Frank lives and works on the Navajo Nation. Her poetry has appeared in such publications every bit Blueish Mesa Review and Studies in American Indian Literature and has been anthologized in Neon Powwow and Returning the Gift. She is co-writer of Duststorms: Poems From Two Navajo Women. Rachael Arviso (Navajo and Zuñi) lives and works on the Navajo Reservation; her short fiction has been anthologized in Neon Powwow. Esther G. Belini's poetry too appeared in Neon Powwow; she received her B.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
Other Navajos whose work has been anthologized in Neon Powwow include Dan Fifty. Crank, Nancy Maryboy, Irvin Morris, Patroclus Eugene Savino, Brent Toadlena, Gertrude Walters, and Floyd D. Yazzie. Aaron Carr (Navajo and Laguna Pueblo) has published poetry and short stories in The Remembered Earth album, in Lord's day Tracks, and in Planet Quarterly. Bernadette Chato's work has appeared in New America and The Remembered Earth. Grey Cohoe'south work has appeared in several anthologies, including Whispering Wind, The Remembered Earth, and The American Indian Speaks. Larry Emerson's column "Cerise Dawn" appeared in a number of Indian newspapers, and his work has been anthologized in New America and The Remembered Earth. Nia Francisco, who has taught at the Navajo Community College, has been published in Southwest: A Gimmicky Album, Higher English, The Remembered World, Cafe Solo, New America, and Southwest Women's Poetry Exchange.
Science
Nuclear physicist and educator Fred Begay (1932– ) has served equally a fellow member of the technical staff at the Los Alamos National Laboratory since 1971. His research is directed primarily toward the use of laser, electron, and ion beams to demonstrate the application of thermonuclear fusion; this technique will provide future economic and environmentally safe and clean power sources.
Media
Comport Track.
Address: 1202 West Thomas Road, Phoenix, Arizona 85013.
Diné Baa-Hani'.
Address: Box 527, Ft. Defiance, Arizona 86504.
Dinehligai News.
Accost: P.O. Box 1835, Tuba Metropolis, Arizona 86045.
DNA in Action.
Address: DNA Legal Services, Window Rock, Arizona 86515.
Iv Directions.
Address: 1812 Las Lomas Due north.Due east., Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131.
Indian Arizona.
Address: 4560 North 19th Avenue, Suite 200, Phoenix, Arizona 85015-4113.
Kachina Messenger.
Accost: P.O. Box 1210, Gallup, New Mexico 87301.
Navajo.
Covers history, art, culture, events, and people relevant to the Navajo Indians.
Contact: Michael Benson, Editor.
Address: Box 1245, Window Stone, Arizona 86515.
Telephone: (602) 729-2233.
Navajo Assistance.
Accost: P.O. Box 96, Gallup, New Mexico 87301.
Navajo-Hopi Observer.
Weekly paper in English language. Founded in 1981.
Contact: Jay Lape, Publisher; Tanya Lee, Editor.
Accost: 2608 North Stevens Boulevard, Flagstaff, Arizona 86004.
Telephone: (520) 526-3115.
E-mail: observer@infomagic.com.
Online: http://www.navajohopiobserver.com .
Navajo Nation Enquiry.
Address: P.O. Box 490, Window Stone, Arizona 86515.
Navajo Times.
Weekly paper that contains articles of interest to the American Indian customs and the Navajo people.
Contact: Tom Arviso Jr., Editor.
Address: P.O. Box 310, Window Rock, Arizona 86515-0310.
Telephone: (602) 871-6641.
Fax: (602) 871-6409.
Tsa'aszi'.
Accost: P.O. Box 12, Pine Hill, New Mexico 87321.
Uts'ittisctaan'i.
Address: Northern Arizona University, Campus Box 5630, Flagstaff, Arizona 86011.
RADIO
The following radio stations are endemic by the Navajo Dissemination Company: KDJI-AM (1270); KZUA-FM (92.ane); KTNN-AM (660); KNMI-FM (88.nine); KPCL-FM (95.7); KABR-AM (1500); and KTDB-FM (89.7).
Telly
KOBF-Tv (Channel 12).
Broadcasts "Voice of the Navajo" on Sunday mornings.
Accost: 825 W. Broadway, Box 1620, Farmington, New United mexican states 87401.
Telephone: (505) 326-1141.
Fax: (505) 327-5196.
Email: shkobf@cyberport.com.
Organizations and Associations
Arizona Commission for Indian Affairs.
Contact: Eleanor Descheeny-Joe, Executive Director
Accost: 1400 West Washington, Suite 300, Phoenix, Arizona 85007.
Phone: (602) 542-3123.
Fax: (602) 542-3223.
Diné CARE Citizens Against Ruining our Environment.
Environmental activism group.
Address: 10A Town Plaza, Suite 138, Durango, Colorado 81301.
Phone: (970) 259-0199.
Navajo Code Talkers Clan.
Contact: Dr. Samuel Billison, President.
Address: 1182, Window Rock, Arizona 86515-1182.
Telephone: (520) 871-5468.
Navajo Nation.
Address: P.O. Box 308, Window Rock, Arizona 86515.
Phone: (602) 871-6352.
Fax: (602) 871-4025.
Online: http://www.navajo.org .
Navajo Tourism Role.
Accost: P.O. Box 663, Window Rock, Arizona 86515.
Telephone: (602) 871-6436.
Fax: (602) 871-7381.
Navajo Way, Inc.
United Mode for the Navajo Nation.
Accost: P.O. Box 309, Window Stone, Arizona 86515.
Telephone: (520) 871-6661.
Fax: (520) 871-6663.
New Mexico Commission on Indian Diplomacy.
Address: 330 East Palace Artery, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501.
New Mexico Indian Advisory Committee.
Address: Box 1667, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87107.
Tseyi Heritage Culture Centre.
Contact: Jim Claw Sr., President.
Address: P.O. Box 1952, Chinle, Navajo Nation, Arizona 86503.
Telephone: (520) 674-5664.
Fax: (520) 674-5944.
Online: http://world wide web.navajoland.com/nn/Tseyi/ .
Museums and Enquiry Centers
Albuquerque Museum and Maxwell Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico; American Research Museum, Ethnology Museum, Fine Arts Museum, Hall of the Modernistic Indian, Institute of American Indian Arts, and Navajo Ceremonial Arts Museum in Santa Atomic number 26, New Mexico; Fine art Heart in Roswell, New United mexican states; Blackness Water Draw Museum in Portales, New Mexico; Coronado Monument in Bernalillo, New Mexico; Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site in Ganado, Arizona; Heard Museum of Anthropology in Phoenix, Arizona; Milicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico; Navajo National Monument in Tonalea, Arizona; Navajo Tribal Museum in Window Rock, Arizona; Northern Arizona Museum in Flagstaff; and the Country Museum of Arizona in Tempe.
Sources for Boosted Written report
Bailey, Garrick, and Roberta Glenn Bailey. A History of the Navajos: The Reservation Years. Santa Fe, New Mexico: Schoolhouse of American Research Press,1986.
Benedek, Emily. The Current of air Won't Know Me: A History of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
Correll, J. Lee. Through White Men's Eyes: A Contribution to Navajo History (A Chronological Record of the Navajo People from Earliest Times to the Treaty of June 1, 1968) , six volumes. Window Rock, Arizona: Navajo Heritage Heart, 1979.
Forbes, Jack D. Apache, Navaho, and Spaniard. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969; with new introduction, 1994.
Goodman, James 1000. The Navajo Atlas: Environments, Resources, People, and History of the Dine Bikeyah, drawings and cartographic assist by Mary E. Goodman. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1982.
Iverson, Peter. The Navajos: A Critical Bibliography. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976.
Navajo History , Vol. i, edited by Ethelou Yazzie. Many Farms, Arizona: Navajo Community College Printing for the Navajo Curriculum Heart, Rough Stone Demonstration School, 1971.
Navajo: Walking in Beauty. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1994.
Simonelli, Jeanne K. Crossing Between Worlds: The Navajos of Canyon De Chelly. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Printing, 1997.
Thompson, Gerald. The Army and the Navajo. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1976.
Trimble, Stephen. The People: Indians of the American Southwest. Santa Fe, New United mexican states: Sar Printing, 1993.
Warriors: Navajo Code Talkers, photographs by Kenji Kawano, foreword by Carl Gorman, introduction by Benis G. Frank. Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Publishing, 1990.
White, Richard. The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environs, and Social Change Among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos. Lincoln: Academy of Nebraska Press, 1983.
Source: https://www.everyculture.com/multi/Le-Pa/Navajos.html
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