NAANATAHDI, AT ANOTHER PLACE:
JOURNAL OF A MONTH IN NAVAJOLAND (35000 words)


This manuscript comprises three sections: journal, poems, and stories. The journal is a day-by-day account of the month I spent during the fall of 2000 as an unpaid consultant at Navajo Community College, Tsaile, Arizona. The journal describes daily life at the college and my wanderings around the Reservation and beyond its borders. It also includes comparisons with the way things were thirty years before, 1969, when my wife and I spent a month on the Reservation. We were teachers at the newly opened Rough Rock Demonstration School, an experiment in community-run education. A few other visits, each for a few weeks, took place in the interim. We went back to Rough Rock and to other places we had visited in 1969, including sites such as the Canyon de Chelly and Chaco Canyon, and to towns such as Flagstaff and Tuba City. These visits are also mentioned in the Journal.

After the 2000 visit, I wrote eight poems, all on Navajo themes. “Farewell Kiss” is a love poem grounded in a detail from the Navajo language (which, I should tell you, I do not speak.) The other seven poems are a set called “Poems in the Navajo Manner.” (See sample poems.) These describe elements of the culture, topography, and even a visit to a ceremony. The set is modeled after a famous historical translation by Washington Matthews of a healing ceremony chant.

Finally, there are two stories. “The Changing Woman Health Conference”(see Trick Bag), and “The Silent Treatment,” which tells what happens to a biligana* who sojourns on the Reservation as a cure for motor mouthing. Like the Journal and poems, both stories are rich in topographical and cultural detail.

Together, the three sections provide a biligana's-eye* view of the Dine ** nation and their land between 1969 and 1999. Was there change? Of course. Sameness? Also, of course.

NAANATAHDI, AT ANOTHER PLACE:
JOURNAL OF A MONTH IN NAVAJOLAND. 24000 words.

This shorter version includes only a few of the poems, and neither of the stories. A 4500 word excerpt from the Journal is also available.



SAMPLES

9/12: Across Route 40 from Albuquerque to the Reservation. Each time we/I make this trip, there is more traffic, but the trip is still wild and long, and it still has remnants of a feeling of pioneer adventure. A few people have broken down and others are helping --e.g. changing a tire. Two signs for casinos, more store signs, more new housing (one-story, brown or tan boxes, glorified trailers), and, near Grants, NM, the new Western New Mexico Visitor Center.

For the Center, you exit, then cross over the highway into the malpais [badlands]. If you pass the left turn-off from this road to the Center, you almost immediately hit a dead end with nothing but open country beyond, which is what you see from the picture windows of the spanking new Center. The “lawn area” is like charcoal briquettes. A youngish Anglo [white] employee, very friendly and obliging, gave me a map and found the Navajo National Monument phone number for me in a guidebook. She called and introduced me, and I asked if I could take the tour down to Betatakin, the nearest ruin.

“I’m working at Tsaile and wanted to visit the Monument.”

“Ah, some of my mother’s people are from Tsaile. .” [Only 200 N.s returned from Bosque Redondo after the Long March, I was told, and the clan system is elaborate, so people have “relatives” everywhere.] “Well, we usually close down after Labor Day, but if we have the staff we do give tours. But we got cut to skeleton staff this year

“Can someone go down alone?”

“No, and don’t sneak in or we’ll arrest you! Even if you’re working here. Lots of people think they can go anywhere they want, but this is Navajo private property.”

“I won’t sneak in. Can I take the little self-guided walks?” [that bring you to within about 1/4 mile of the ruins]

“Sure.”

“Will I need binoculars?”

“Yes.” [i.e. you can’t really see anything]

“Well, maybe I’ll drive over. I’ll stop by the visitor center and say hello.” [And maybe you’ll relent and take me down to Betatakin, yourself.]

“Okay. Thanks.” [I never went.]

***

Eating a lot of dust and ducking traffic, I walked past the midway along the highway (where the accident had been) to another parking lot, on the far side of which I could see a lot of people gathered. It was the healing ceremony, and, although it was now only about eleven, things were already in full throttle. A sort of big hogan on one end of a clearing was the locus, and people went in and out, seemingly at will. Later, Betty, the cafeteria and snack-bar worker, would tell me anyone can go in, but CB would say, “except non-N.s,” which I sensed when I was there. I did not try. There was singing from inside --lovely.

At the end of the clearing next to the hogan was a big, fat armchair, and from the hogan came a tiny old limping woman swaddled in a Navajo blanket, as were many of the seated spectators, the ones who had gotten there first and who formed about six rows around the dancing ground. There were many old people being cared for by younger adults, and there were one or two small fires. Around this center were standing crowds, which I joined, and behind them, others, mostly young men, on hillocks looking over other people’s shoulders. On the perimeter of the circle were numerous food booths, and a P.A. system coaxed people to go eat. The P.A. also obligingly told what was happening in both languages and made a wonderful welcoming speech to outsiders, something like this: “We are glad to see you non-Navajos here. You look like you are enjoying the ceremony and it is good to see how you are interested in our ceremonies and are respecting our culture. No pictures, recordings, or sketching, please. We also like to visit your ceremonies, and we respect and enjoy them.” That warned me.

I managed to see the dancing from three vantage points: first, from the circle outside the inner one, over shoulders, then under the eaves of the hogan, a few feet from the dancers, then down from a hillock, where I got a wonderful angle on the color and light and shadow. This is what I saw:

From a clump of bushes at the far end of a corridor from the hogan, the “dressing room,” the Yebichei would emerge. After a “round,” they returned there. The old woman emerged from the hogan and sat in the chair as they shuffled toward her. Her part was to get up after they had arrived, then go down the file and sprinkle corn pollen (I think) on them, then sit down while they danced for her. They were big men, the majority with big guts, wearing leggings, moccasins, jewelry, paint, powder, blue face masks that looked a bit like elephant trunks or anteater snouts, and feathered headdresses. One man --the Chief, I think-- wore a fuller headdress and somewhat finer threads than the rest.

The dance and chant was a shuffling, stomping dance with a repeated pleasant song, sung deep and in falsetto, accompanied by seed rattles at different pitches, which the dancers also carried. I assumed the song was a prayer, like this one, a Chantways prayer, translated by Washington Matthews (1907) and quoted in Paul G. Zolbrod’s Dine’ Bahane’ (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984). I quote only the translation:

No drumming, at least for this part. People always say these ceremonies are hypnotic: they are. The audience was quiet and looked pleased. A few young fools talked loud, but people pretty much ignored them. The overwhelming feeling was dignity and pleasure, and out of the beauty of the show and the assembled good feeling, I did get a feeling of being healthier than before I came. I hope the old patient was, too, because the rain and wind whipped everyone pretty well. I saw three rounds, which took about an hour, but lacked the stamina to stay two or three more hours, for the end. It was 54 degrees, according to a clock thermometer thing I saw as

I was leaving. On a dark patch of the highway I heard someone behind me: “How’s it going?” I turned and saw a kid in a hooded sweatshirt. It was not what I feared. He was being polite as he passed me, on his way to the midway. The whole night, I got asked for one match, got no mean glance or word, and got willing answers to the one or two questions I directed toward people who looked as if they spoke English. (They did.)

***