Download or read book Working the Navajo Way written by Colleen O'Neill and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2005-10-20 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dine have been a pastoral people for as long as they can remember; but when livestock reductions in the New Deal era forced many into the labor market, some scholars felt that Navajo culture would inevitably decline. Although they lost a great deal with the waning of their sheep-centered economy, Colleen O'Neill argues that Navajo culture persisted. O'Neill's book challenges the conventional notion that the introduction of market capitalism necessarily leads to the destruction of native cultural values. She shows instead that contact with new markets provided the Navajos with ways to diversify their household-based survival strategies. Through adapting to new kinds of work, Navajos actually participated in the "reworking of modernity" in their region, weaving an alternate, culturally specific history of capitalist development. O'Neill chronicles a history of Navajo labor that illuminates how cultural practices and values influenced what it meant to work for wages or to produce commodities for the marketplace. Through accounts of Navajo coal miners, weavers, and those who left the reservation in search of wage work, she explores the tension between making a living the Navajo way and "working elsewhere." Focusing on the period between the 1930s and the early 1970s-a time when Navajos saw a dramatic transformation of their economy—O'Neill shows that Navajo cultural values were flexible enough to accommodate economic change. She also examines the development of a Navajo working class after 1950, when corporate development of Navajo mineral resources created new sources of wage work and allowed former migrant workers to remain on the reservation. Focusing on the household rather than the workplace, O'Neill shows how the Navajo home serves as a site of cultural negotiation and a source for affirming identity. Her depiction of weaving particularly demonstrates the role of women as cultural arbitrators, providing mothers with cultural power that kept them at the center of what constituted "Navajo-ness." Ultimately, Working the Navajo Way offers a new way to think about Navajo history, shows the essential resilience of Navajo lifeways, and argues for a more dynamic understanding of Native American culture overall.
Download or read book Weaving a World written by Roseann Sandoval Willink and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Profiles a West Bengali caste specializing in producing painted narrative scrolls and performing songs to accompany their unrolling.
Download or read book Navajo Weaving Way written by Noel Bennett and published by Interweave. This book was released on 1997-07 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This revision of the authors' Working with the wool, with much Navajo tradition and many photos added, is a guide to Navajo rug weaving, from carding & spinning through set up and weaving.
Download or read book The Navajo written by Alice Osinski and published by Children's Press(CT). This book was released on 1987 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brief history of the Navajo Indians describing customs, interactions with white settlers, and changes in traditional ways of life brought on by modern civilization.
Download or read book The Book of the Navajo written by Raymond Friday Locke and published by Holloway House Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Indian Made written by Erika Bsumek and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2008-10-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In works of silver and wool, the Navajos have established a unique brand of American craft. And when their artisans were integrated into the American economy during the late nineteenth century, they became part of a complex cultural and economic framework in which their handmade crafts conveyed meanings beyond simple adornment. As Anglo tourists discovered these crafts, the Navajo weavings and jewelry gained appeal from the romanticized notion that their producers were part of a primitive group whose traditions were destined to vanish. Erika Bsumek now explores the complex links between Indian identity and the emergence of tourism in the Southwest to reveal how production, distribution, and consumption became interdependent concepts shaped by the forces of consumerism, race relations, and federal policy. Bsumek unravels the layers of meaning that surround the branding of "Indian made." When Navajo artisans produced their goods, collaborating traders, tourist industry personnel, and even ethnologists created a vision of Navajo culture that had little to do with Navajos themselves. And as Anglos consumed Navajo crafts, they also consumed the romantic notion of Navajos as "primitives" perpetuated by the marketplace. These processes of production and consumption reinforced each other, creating a symbiotic relationship and influencing both mutual Anglo-Navajo perceptions and the ways in which Navajos participated in the modern marketplace. Examining varied sites of production-artisans' workshops, museums, trading posts, Bsumek shows how the market economy perpetuated "Navaho" stereotypes and cultural assumptions. She takes readers into the hogans where men worked silver and women wove rugs and into the outlets where middlemen dictated what buyers wanted and where Navajos influenced inventory. Exploring this process over seven decades, she describes how artisans' increasing use of modern tools created controversy about authenticity and how the meaning of the "Indian made" label was even challenged in court. Ultimately, Bsumek shows that the sale of Indian-made goods cannot be explained solely through supply and demand. It must also reckon with the multiple images and narratives that grew up around the goods themselves, integrating consumer culture, tourism, and history to open new perspectives on our understanding of American Indian material culture.
Download or read book Time Among the Navajo written by Kathy Eckles Hooker and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the lives of the people who call the Arizona portion of the Navajo Nation home. Follow the Spencer family as they search for yucca root to make yucca shampoo. Learn about be'ezo (grass brush) from Stella Worker and how she knows what type of grass to pick. Discover why water is such a precious commodity to the Navajos, and listen as the residents talk openly about the land they love and rely on for survival.
Download or read book Food Sovereignty the Navajo Way written by Charlotte J. Frisbie and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2018-04-15 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around the world, indigenous peoples are returning to traditional foods produced by traditional methods of subsistence. The goal of controlling their own food systems, known as food sovereignty, is to reestablish healthy lifeways to combat contemporary diseases such as diabetes and obesity. This is the first book to focus on the dietary practices of the Navajos, from the earliest known times into the present, and relate them to the Navajo Nation’s participation in the global food sovereignty movement. It documents the time-honored foods and recipes of a Navajo woman over almost a century, from the days when Navajos gathered or hunted almost everything they ate to a time when their diet was dominated by highly processed foods.
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 Living Through the Generations written by Joanne McCloskey and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Navajo women’s lives reflect the numerous historical changes that have transformed “the Navajo way.” At the same time, in their behavior, beliefs, and values, women preserve the legacy of Navajo culture passed down through the generations. By comparing and contrasting three generations of Navajo women—grandmothers, mid-life mothers, and young mothers—similarities and differences emerge in patterns of education, work, family life, and childbearing. Women’s roles as mothers and grandmothers are central to their respected position in Navajo society. Mothers bestow membership in matrilineal clans at birth and follow the example of the beloved deity Changing Woman. As guardians of cultural traditions, grandmothers actively plan and participate in ceremonies such as the Kinaaldá, the puberty ceremony, for their granddaughters. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with 77 women in Crownpoint, New Mexico, and surrounding chapters in the Eastern Navajo Agency, Joanne McCloskey examines the cultural traditions evident in Navajo women’s lives. Navajo women balance the demands of Western society with the desire to preserve Navajo culture for themselves and their families.
Download or read book Molded in the Image of Changing Woman written by Maureen Trudelle Schwarz and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What might result from hearing a particular song, wearing used clothing, or witnessing an accident? Ethnographic accounts of the Navajo refer repeatedly to the influences of events on health and well-being, yet until now no attempt has been made to clarify the Navajo system of rules governing association and effect. This book focuses on the complex interweaving of the cosmological, social, and bodily realms that Navajo people navigate in an effort alternately to control, contain, or harness the power manifested in various effects. Following the Navajo life-course from conception to puberty, Maureen Trudelle Schwarz explores the complex rules defining who or what can affect what or whom in specific circumstances as a means of determining what these effects tell us about the cultural construction of the human body and personhood for the Navajo. Schwarz shows how oral history informs Navajo conceptions of the body and personhood, showing how these conceptions are central to an ongoing Navajo identity. She treats the vivid narratives of emergence life-origins as compressed metaphorical accounts, rather than as myth, and is thus able to derive from what individual Navajos say about the past their understandings of personhood in a worldview that is actually a viable philosophical system. Working with Navajo religious practitioners, elders, and professional scholars. Schwarz has gained from her informants an unusually firm grasp of the Navajo highlighted by the foregrounding of Navajo voices through excerpts of interviews. These passages enliven the book and present Schwarz and her Navajo consultants as real, multifaceted human beings within the ethnographic context.
Download or read book Navajos Wear Nikes written by Jim Kristofic and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Navajos Wear Nikes reveals the complexity of modern life on the Navajo Reservation, a world where Anglo and Navajo coexist in a tenuous truce. With tales of gangs and skinwalkers, an Indian Boy Scout troop, a fanatical Sunday school teacher, and the author's own experience of sincere friendships that lead to hozho (beautiful harmony), Kristofic's memoir is an honest portrait of an Anglo boy growing up on and growing to love the Reservation. --publisher's description.
Download or read book Miracle Hill written by Blackhorse Mitchell and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2004-09 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It was in the year of 1945 on a cold morning, the third day, in the month of March. A little boy was born as the wind blew against the hogan with bitter colds and the stars were disappearing into the heaven." So begins the story of Broneco, a Navajo boy who tells of his search for a miracle. Through that telling we learn a new perspective on language and life. In Miracle Hill, Blackhorse Mitchell presents the unforgettable account of a boyÕs struggle to learnÑwhich would be for him a miracleÑin the face of handicaps most people would call insurmountable. Under the guidance of a teacher determined to help him pursue that miracle, he records his life from birth to the dawn of manhood: herding family sheep, living at a boarding school, encountering whites for the first time, journeying home, and finally enrolling in the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, where his talent was encouraged. Miracle Hill is written in a distinctively personal style, without strict adherence to orthodox grammar that would have robbed Mitchell of his true voice. Filled with unforgettable characters and brimming with insights into Navajo ways and family relationships, it is a book that crosses cultural barriers and speaks to the miracle-seeker in us all.
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 How to Weave a Navajo Rug and Other Lessons from Spider Woman written by Barbara Teller Ornelas and published by Thrums Books. This book was released on 2020-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Navajo blankets, rugs, and tapestries are the best-known, most-admired, and most-collected textiles in North America. There are scores of books about Navajo weaving, but no other book like this one. For the first time, master Navajo weavers themselves share the deep, inside story of how these textiles are created, and how their creation resonates in Navajo culture. Want to weave a high-quality, Navajo-style rug? This book has detailed how-to instructions, meticulously illustrated by a Navajo artist, from warping the loom to important finishing touches. Want to understand the deeper meaning? You'll learn why the fixed parts of the loom are male, and the working parts are female. You'll learn how weaving relates to the earth, the sky, and the sacred directions. You'll learn how the Navajo people were given their weaving tradition (and it wasn't borrowed from the Pueblos!), and how important a weaver's attitude and spirit are to creating successful rugs. You'll learn what it means to live in hózhó, the Beauty Way. Family stories from seven generations of weavers lend charm and special insights. Characteristic Native American humor is not in short supply. Their contribution to cultural understanding and the preservation of their craft is priceless.
Download or read book Making a Modern U S West written by Sarah Deutsch and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Making a Modern U.S. West surveys the history of the U.S. West from 1898 to 1940, centering what is often relegated to the margins in histories of the region—the flows of people, capital, and ideas across borders.
Download or read book Indigenous Women and Work written by Carol Williams and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in Indigenous Women and Work create a transnational and comparative dialogue on the history of the productive and reproductive lives and circumstances of Indigenous women from the late nineteenth century to the present in the United States, Australia, New Zealand/Aotearoa, and Canada. Surveying the spectrum of Indigenous women's lives and circumstances as workers, both waged and unwaged, the contributors offer varied perspectives on the ways women's work has contributed to the survival of communities in the face of ongoing tensions between assimilation and colonization. They also interpret how individual nations have conceived of Indigenous women as workers and, in turn, convert these assumptions and definitions into policy and practice. The essays address the intersection of Indigenous, women's, and labor history, but will also be useful to contemporary policy makers, tribal activists, and Native American women's advocacy associations. Contributors are Tracey Banivanua Mar, Marlene Brant Castellano, Cathleen D. Cahill, Brenda J. Child, Sherry Farrell Racette, Chris Friday, Aroha Harris, Faye HeavyShield, Heather A. Howard, Margaret D. Jacobs, Alice Littlefield, Cybèle Locke, Mary Jane Logan McCallum, Kathy M'Closkey, Colleen O'Neill, Beth H. Piatote, Susan Roy, Lynette Russell, Joan Sangster, Ruth Taylor, and Carol Williams.
