Download or read book Lucky the Navajo Singer written by Dorothea Cross Leighton and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lucky the Navajo Singer was, he thought, forty years old when he dictated his life story in 1940 to doctors Alexander and Dorothea Leighton. Lucky was orphaned twice before he was six or eight years old, first when his mother died, and again on the deaths of his mother's parents. Lucky then spent several formative years with a Navajo elder who was raised in the traditional Navajo way, a man whose wisdom was a resource for the small group of Navajos living in relative isolation southeast of the main Navajo Reservation. As he relates his life story through his great friend and interpreter, Bill Sage, the mature Lucky emerges as a complex human being whose story presents invaluable insight into daily events - both mundane and sacred - at a Navajo community in the 1940s. Griffen has rescued this autobiography in a tribute not only to Lucky, but to the Leightons, who in 1940 were fledgling psychiatrists at the beginning of their cross cultural research. At long last the story of Lucky the Navajo Singer joins the all-too-few Native American life histories.
Download or read book Taboo written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Navajo Blessingway Singer written by Frank Mitchell and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This life history of a Navajo leader, recorded in the 1960s and first published in 1977, is a classic work in the study of Navajo history and religious traditions. "A skillful, meticulous, and altogether praiseworthy contribution to Navajo studies. . . . Although the focus of Mitchell's autobiography is upon his role as a Blessingway singer, there is much material here on Navajo history and culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mitchell attended the government school at Fort Defiance, worked on the railroad in Arizona, served as a handyman and interpreter at several trading posts and the Franciscan missions, and later served as a tribal councilman in the 1930s and as a judge in the 1940s and 1950s. His observations on these experiences are relevant to our understanding of contemporary Navajo life."--Lawrence C. Kelly, Western Historical Quarterly "This book stands easily among the best of the 'native' autobiographies. Narrated by a thoughtful and articulate Navajo leader over a span of eighteen years, this life history is brought into English with none of the selective romanticizing that has spoiled some books. . . . (It is) a superb job of bringing one culture ever closer to another."--Barre Tolken, Western Folklore
Download or read book Changed Forever Volume I written by Arnold Krupat and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2018-04-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in-depth study of a range of literature written by Native Americans who attended government-run boarding schools. Changed Forever is the first study to gather a range of texts produced by Native Americans who, voluntarily or through compulsion, attended government-run boarding schools in the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth centuries. Arnold Krupat examines Hopi, Navajo, and Apache boarding-school narratives that detail these students experiences. The books analyses are attentive to the topics (topoi) and places (loci)of the boarding schools. Some of these topics are: (re-)Naming students, imposing on them the regimentation of Clock Time, compulsory religious instruction and practice, and corporal punishment, among others. These topics occur in a variety of places, like the Dormitory, the Dining Room, the Chapel, and the Classroom. Krupats close readings of these narratives provide cultural and historical context as well as critical commentary. In her study of the Chilocco Indian School, K. Tsianina Lomawaima asked poignantly, What has become of the thousands of Indian voices who spoke the breath of boarding-school life? Changed Forever lets us hear some of them.
Download or read book Taboo written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Healing Ways written by Wade Davies and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the advent of so-called "western" or "scientific" medicine in the modern era, and how Navajos adapted, but did not compromise their traditional healings ways.
Download or read book Blood and Voice written by Maureen Trudelle Schwarz and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2016-12-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adulthood in the Navajo world is marked by the onset of menstruation in females and by the deepening of the voice in males. Accordingly, young adults must accept responsibility over the powers manifest in blood and voice: for women, the forces that control reproduction and growth; for men, the powers of protection and restoration of order that come through maintaining Navajo oral tradition. The maintenance of the latter tradition has long been held to be the function of the Navajo singer, a role usually viewed as male. But despite this longstanding assumption, women can and do fill this role. Drawing on interviews with seventeen Navajo women practitioners and five apprentices, Maureen Trudelle Schwarz explicates women's role as ceremonial practitioners and shows that it is more complex than has previously been thought. She examines gender differences dictated by the Navajo origin story, details how women came to be practitioners, and reveals their experiences and the strategies they use to negotiate being both woman and singer. Women who choose careers as singers face complex challenges, since some rules prohibit menstruating women from conducting ceremonies and others regarding sexual continence can strain marital relationships. Additionally, oral history places men in charge of all ceremonial matters. Schwarz focuses on how the reproductive life courses of Navajo women influence their apprenticeships and practices to demonstrate how they navigate these issues to preserve time-honored traditions. Through the words of actual practitioners, she shows how each woman brings her own unique life experience to the role. While differing among individuals, these experiences represent a commitment to shared cultural symbols and result in a consensus that sustains social cohesion. By showing the differences and similarities between the apprenticeship, initiation, and practice of men and women singers, Blood and Voice offers a better understanding of the role of Navajo women in a profession usually viewed as a male activity—and of the symbolic construction of the self in Navajo culture. It also addresses classic questions concerning the sexual division of labor, menstrual taboos, gender stereotypes, and the tension between tradition and change that will enlighten students of other cultures.
Download or read book Tall Woman written by Rose Mitchell and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 612 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Portrays Navajo weaver and midwife Tall Woman, who held onto traditional Navajo ways, raised twelve children, and cared for the farm throughout her marriage to political leader and Blessingway singer Frank Mitchell.
Download or read book Native American Life history Narratives written by Susan Berry Brill de Ramírez and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author provides methods for the study of American Indian ethnographic texts and disputes some previous assumptions about the sources of the stories in Son of Old Man Hat.
Download or read book Reclaiming Din History written by Jennifer Nez Denetdale and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking book, the first Navajo to earn a doctorate in history seeks to rewrite Navajo history. Reared on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico and Arizona, Jennifer Nez Denetdale is the great-great-great-granddaughter of a well-known Navajo chief, Manuelito (1816–1894), and his nearly unknown wife, Juanita (1845–1910). Stimulated in part by seeing photographs of these ancestors, she began to explore her family history as a way of examining broader issues in Navajo historiography. Here she presents a thought-provoking examination of the construction of the history of the Navajo people (Diné, in the Navajo language) that underlines the dichotomy between Navajo and non-Navajo perspectives on the Diné past. Reclaiming Diné History has two primary objectives. First, Denetdale interrogates histories that privilege Manuelito and marginalize Juanita in order to demonstrate some of the ways that writing about the Diné has been biased by non-Navajo views of assimilation and gender. Second, she reveals how Navajo narratives, including oral histories and stories kept by matrilineal clans, serve as vehicles to convey Navajo beliefs and values. By scrutinizing stories about Juanita, she both underscores the centrality of women’s roles in Navajo society and illustrates how oral tradition has been used to organize social units, connect Navajos to the land, and interpret the past. She argues that these same stories, read with an awareness of Navajo creation narratives, reveal previously unrecognized Navajo perspectives on the past. And she contends that a similarly culture-sensitive re-viewing of the Diné can lead to the production of a Navajo-centered history.
Download or read book Their Own Frontier written by Shirley A. Leckie and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2008-07-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biographers describe the struggles and contributions of female scholars researching Indians of the American West in the early 1900s.
Download or read book Chronicling Cultures written by Robert V. Kemper and published by Rowman Altamira. This book was released on 2002-04-23 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some field sites have hosted anthropologists for as long as half a century. Chronicling Cultures collects articles from principals of many of the longest and best-known anthropology projects from four continents—the Kung, Harvard Chiapas Project, Gwembe Valley, Tzintzuntzan, and Navajo among others. These projects have brought a new understanding of change and persistence in communities over time. They have forced researchers to develop methods of involving local communities in research, of using data over generations of scholars, and of resolving ethical issues of research versus advocacy. The projects range from individual scholars who return 'home' year after year to large-scale institutionalized projects involving many researchers and numerous studies. This volume will be an important addition to the literature on fieldwork, on the history of ethnology, and on ethnographers' role in their host cultures.
Download or read book Working on the Railroad Walking in Beauty written by Jay Youngdahl and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2011-10-23 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over one hundred years, Navajos have gone to work in significant numbers on Southwestern railroads. As they took on the arduous work of laying and anchoring tracks, they turned to traditional religion to anchor their lives. Jay Youngdahl, an attorney who has represented Navajo workers in claims with their railroad employers since 1992 and who more recently earned a master's in divinity from Harvard, has used oral history and archival research to write a cultural history of Navajos' work on the railroad and the roles their religious traditions play in their lives of hard labor away from home.
Download or read book Journey Of Navajo Oshley written by Navajo Oshley and published by . This book was released on 2000-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ak'é Nýdzin, or Navajo Oshley, was born sometime between 1879 and 1893. His oral memoir is set on the northern frontier of Navajo land, principally the San Juan River basin in southeastern Utah, and tells the story of his early life near Dennehetso and his travels, before there were roads or many towns, from Monument Valley north along Comb Ridge to Blue Mountain. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Anglos and Navajos expanded their use and settlement of lands north of the San Juan. Grazing lands and the Anglo wage economy drew many Navajos across the river. Oshley, a sheepherder, was among the first to settle there. He cared for the herds of his extended family, while also taking supplemental jobs with the growing livestock industry in the area. His narrative is woven with vivid and detailed portraits of Navajo culture: clan relationships, marriages and children, domestic life, the importance of livestock, complex relations with the natural world, ceremonies, trading, and hand trembling.
Download or read book From the Boarding Schools written by Arnold Krupat and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Arnold Krupat's From the Boarding Schools: Apache Indians Speak presents for the first time the writings and autobiographies of Sam Kenoi, Dan Nicholas, and Vincent Natalish"--
Download or read book Cry for Luck written by Richard Keeling and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-03-29 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "sobbing" vocal quality in many traditional songs of northwestern California Indian tribes inspired the title of Richard Keeling's comprehensive study. Little has been known about the music of aboriginal Californians, and Cry for Luck will be welcomed by those who see the interpretation of music as a key to understanding other aspects of Native American religion and culture. Among the Yurok, Hupa, and Karok peoples, medicine songs and spoken formulas were applied to a range of activities from hunting deer to curing an upset stomach or gaining power over an uninterested member of the opposite sex. Keeling inventories 216 specific forms of "medicine" and explains the cosmological beliefs on which they were founded. This music is a living tradition, and many of the public dances he describes are still performed today. Keeling's comparative, historical perspective shows how individual elements in the musical tradition can relate to the development of local cultures and the broader sphere of North American prehistory. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1992.
Download or read book The Navajos written by Ruth Murray Underhill and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 1956 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the history and culture of the southwestern Indian tribe
