9781422278871

CUSTOMS AND CULTURES OF THE WORLD

OUR TEENAGE LIFE IN THE

NAVAJO NATION

CUSTOMS AND CULTURES OF THE WORLD

My Teenage Life in AUSTRALIA My Teenage Life in BRAZIL My Teenage Life in CHINA My Teenage Life in EGYPT My Teenage Life in GREECE

My Teenage Life in INDIA My Teenage Life in JAPAN My Teenage Life in MEXICO My Teenage Life in NEPAL My Teenage Life in RUSSIA My Teenage Life in SOUTH AFRICA Our Teenage Life in the NAVAJO NATION

CUSTOMS AND CULTURES OF THE WORLD

OUR TEENAGE LIFE IN

THE NAVAJO NATION

By Diane Bailey with Aliah and Cali Hicks

Series Foreword by Kum-Kum Bhavnani

MASON CREST

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© 2018 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc.

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First printing 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3899-8 ISBN: 978-1-4222-3908-7 ebook ISBN: 978-1-4222-7887-1

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N A V A J O N A T I O N

C ontents

Series Foreword by Kum-Kum Bhavnani, UCSB..................... 6

Navajo Culture.................................... 32 Our Free Time.....................................40 Navajo Economy and Politics. ........... 42 Our Town........................................... 50 Our Nation......................................... 52 The Future of the Navajo Nation........ 54

Meet Aliah and Cali!........................... 8 The Navajo Nation: An Introduction... 10 Our School Life.................................18 Time to Eat!.........................................20 Navajo Customs. ................................ 22 Our Faith.............................................30

Text-Dependent Questions..................................................... 60 Research Projects.................................................................. 61 Find Out More......................................................................... 62 Series Glossary of Key Terms................................................ 63 Index/Author........................................................................... 64

Key Icons to Look For

Words to Understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text, while building vocabulary skills.

Sidebars: This boxed material within the main text allows readers to build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspectives by weaving together additional information to provide realistic and holistic perspectives. Educational Videos: Readers can view videos by scanning our QR codes, providing them with additional educational content to supplement the text. Examples include news coverage, moments in history, speeches, iconic moments, and much more! Text-Dependent Questions: These questions send the reader back to the text for more careful attention to the evidence presented here. Research Projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series Glossary of Key Terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

N A V A J O N A T I O N

S eries F oreword Culture: Parts =Whole C ulture makes us human. Many of us think of culture

Culture is also about how we live our lives. It is about our lived experiences of our societies and of all theworldswe inhabit. And in this series—CustomsandCulturesof the World—you will meet young people who will share their experiences of the cultures andworlds they inhabit. How does a teenager growing up in South Africa make sense of the history of apartheid, the 1994 democratic elections, and of what is happening now? That is as integral to ourworld’s culture as the ancient ruins in Greece, the pyramids of Egypt, the Great Wall of China, the Himalayas above Nepal, and the Amazon rain forests in Brazil. But these examples are not enough. Greece is also known for its financial uncertainties, Egypt is

assomethingthatbelongstoaperson, a group, or even a country. We talk about the food of a region as being part of its culture (tacos, pupusas, tamales, and burritos all are part of ourunderstandingof food fromMex- ico, andSouthandCentralAmerica). We might also talk about the clothes asbeing important toculture (saris in India, kimonos in Japan, hijabs or gallibayas in Egypt, or beaded shirts in theNavajoNation). Imaginetryingtosumup“American” cultureusingjustexampleslikethese! Yet culture does not just belong to a personorevenacountry. It isnot only about food and clothes or music and art, because those things by them- selves cannot tell the whole story.

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known for the uprisings in Tahrir Square, China is known for its rapid developmentof megacities,Australia is known for its amazing animals, andBrazil isknown for theOlympics and its football [soccer] team. And there are many more examples for eachnation, region, andperson, and some of these examples are featured in these books. The question is: How do you, growing up in a particular country, view your own culture? What do you think of as culture? What is your lived experience of it? Howdo you come to understand and engage with cultures that are not familiar to you? And, perhaps most importantly, why do you/wewant to do this?Andhowdoes reading about andexperiencingother cultureshelp you understand your own? It is perhaps a cliché to say culture forms the central core of our humanity and our dignity. If that’s true, how do young adults talk about your own cultures? How do you simultaneously understand how people apparently “different” fromyou live their lives, and engage

with their cultures? One way is to read the stories in this series. The “authors” are just like you, even though they live in different places and in different cultures. We com- municatedwith these youngwriters over the Internet, whichhas become the greatest gathering of cultures ever. The Internet is now central to the culture of almost everyone, with youngpeople leading thewayonhow to use it to expand the horizons of all of us. From those of us born in earlier generations, thank you for opening that cultural avenue! Let me finish by saying that culture allows us to open ourminds, think about worlds different from the ones we live in, and to imagine how people very different from us live their lives. This series of books is just the start of the process, but a crucial start. I hope you enjoy them. —Kum-Kum Bhavnani Professor of sociology and feminist and global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an award-winning international filmmaker.

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N A V A J O N A T I O N Meet Aliah and Cali!

I’m Cali, and I’m 15.

We have an older sister who is 22 and going to college at Arizona State University in Tempe. We also have two younger brothers, Nazco and Kelche.

I’m Aliah, and I’m 17.

The Reader

Our Family We have a wide range of ages in our family. We have a huge family. My mom and dad live here in Window Rock and my grandma is just a few minutes away. My grandma had 10 siblings, so there are more than 70 of us all together. It’s a pretty big family! We always get together at holidays. It definitely helps us stay connected to our heritage. Some of the things they teach us you can’t learn in school. The things that my grandmother and her siblings teach are passed down to us, every day there’s always a teaching. — Aliah

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I identify as a Navajo first and then as an American. From being out there and seeing other perspectives, I consider myself a US citizen, but after the protests in North Dakota over the pipeline [below], that got me thinking more about who I am, how are my people being treated, and how do I balance the two forces in my life. I call myself Navajo, and obviously Native American. But it’s hard to say, but I’m Navajo first and foremost above everything. — Aliah

[Cali] I would say the same as Aliah; I’m Navajo before anything.

North Dakota Protests In 2016, a large protest by Native Americans in North Dakota against a proposed oil pipeline got internation- al headlines. The project was going to send oil through the pipe from Canada to the southern US. However, the Native Americans said that part of the construc-

tion would interfere with traditional tribal grounds, including a sacred burial site. Hundreds of protesters gathered at the site, and they were soon joined by thou- sands. A showdown with police was tense, and the affair lasted for several weeks. Finally, the federal government agreed to look again at the planned pipeline and find another route. The entire event galvanized Native Americans around the country, with many outside groups coming to their aid, including a gathering of American veterans.

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N A V A J O N A T I O N

The Navajo Nation: An Introduction

I n the rugged country of the southwest United States, there are four mountains sacred to theNavajo people. They’re hundreds of miles apart, located in the states of Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, but together they anchor the traditional land of the Navajo. In between their peaks is a spectacular and varied land of hard rock and dry desert, high cliffs and deep canyons, powerful rivers and sprawling forests. In Navajo legend, the Holy People gave this area to the Diné—theNavajoword for “the people.” It was theirs to use and to care for, and throughout their history, the Navajo have built a culture closely tied to the land itself. Today, the Navajo are a federally recognized Indian tribe. Most of them live in the Navajo Nation, an Indian reservation coveringmore than

Words to Understand assimilate  to make one kind of people more similar to another jurisdiction  the area where a government has authority or control nomadic  always moving around, often to find new food or other resources

sovereignty  the power of a country to govern itself treaty  a written agreement between two or more parties

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27,000 squaremiles (70,000 square kilometers) in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Larger than most states in the country, it’s home to almost 300,000 native people who can trace their history back a thousand years. A New Home At the turnof thefirstmillennium, the people now known as the Navajo livedmuch farther north, in what is now Canada. Slowly, they migrated south. Scientists don’t know ex- actly when they arrived, but agree they were established by the 1500s, and possibly earlier. The Navajo were not the only inhabitants of this land. The Pueblo Indians already lived there, and, over time, the Navajo adopted some customs and lifestyles of the Pueblo. At first the Navajo were a semi- nomadic tribe. They depended on hunting and gathering, and moved around according to the season. Eventually they learned farming, pottery, and weaving from their Pueblo neighbors, and became more settled. Native peoples did not al-

The Navajo Flag Every picture tells a story, and the pictures on the Na- vajo flag tell many. Each one is part of the evolution of the Navajo Nation and its people. A dark brown patch on the flag shows the original boundaries of the reservation established by the 1868 treaty with the US government. Fanning out from that, outlined in a lighter brown color, are the current boundaries. The four sacred mountains—in their traditional colors of black, white, blue, and yellow—are shown at the north, south, east, and west. The flag also shows several symbols important to the Navajo way of life. There are traditional corn and livestock, in addition to an oil well, which became another cornerstone of the economy. Over the top stretches a rainbow, symbolizing the sovereignty of Navajo Nation.

ways live peacefully together. The Navajo sometimes raided the Pueblo tribes, taking goods andevenpeopleas their rewards. TheyalsotargetedSpaniardswho

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N A V A J O N A T I O N

From their earliest days, the Navajo have been great craftspeople, using the gifts of the land to create beautiful pottery, weaving, clothing, instruments, and more.

came north from Mexico. Because of the raids, some historians have de- scribed the Navajo as an aggressive, warring tribe. However, Navajo raids were not usually conducted over property disputes or simply to make trouble. Instead, the Navajo culture recognized that a successful raid was a symbol of bravery and accomplishment. By themiddle of the 1700s, raiding became farmore dangerous as guns spread throughout the Spanish and Pueblo societies. The Navajo shifted their focus to more peaceful pursuits such as herding, crafts, and agricul- ture. The idea of raiding was not dead, though, and sometimes the Navajo would conduct raids to demonstrate their power or establish control.

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The Long Walk Profound changes came to the Navajo way of life after the Mexican- AmericanWar ended in 1848. The United States had won the war, and now it claimed huge areas of land that had previously belonged toMexico. The Navajo had lived on some of this land, and nowwere squeezed into smaller and smaller territories. Tensions rose between them and the white men forcing them to move. When the Civil War began in 1861, it created upheaval not only in the eastern part of the country, where the war was being fought, but also on the western frontier. The Navajo took advantage of this uncertainty to stage raids against American settlers. The U.S. government was deter- mined to stop this, and General James Carleton was in charge of forcing the Navajo to move to an Indian reservation called Bosque Redondo, near

US Army soldiers oversee Navajos during the forced migration known as the Long Walk that pushed Navajo people out of the land they had claimed for centuries.

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N A V A J O N A T I O N

Fort Sumner in NewMexico. He got help from Kit Carson, a famous fron- tiersman. Carson used a “scorched earth” approach, violently ousting the Navajo from their land. He burned their homes, belongings, and crops. He killed some Navajo and took others as prisoners. The message was clear: Leave or die. Over the next three years, about 10,000 Navajo were forced to walk the 300 miles (482 km) to Bosque Redondo. “The Long Walk” was brutal, and many Navajo died during the journey. Those who did survive met with even more hardship. The reservation was only big enough for about half the number of people crowded onto it. Water and food were scarce. Eventually, the Navajo protested. They stopped planting crops and began to escape from the reservation.

People living on the East Coast of the US during the late 1800s aften saw drawings such as this one, showing Navajos in traditional dress.

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