Reflections in Place: Connected Lives of Navajo Women (review)

In common with other recent studies of Navajo women, Donna Deyhle's book details the fundamental importance of cultural identity, which ties Navajo women to family, home, and traditions.¹ She emphasizes the strength of Navajo women as they face adulthood with inadequate educational backgrounds to pursue higher education and fulfilling jobs. An educational anthropologist at the University of Utah, Deyhle befriended students and their families and attended many classes and educational meetings in public high schools in southeastern Utah.

Donna Deyhle's longitudinal research spans a twenty-five-year period, from 1984 to 2009. Her initial focus on Navajo students' educational experiences expanded to include the social and cultural context of their lives. Deyhle found that the pervasive impact of racism colored all aspects of their experiences in school and in the community. At the same time, Navajo individuals benefited from strong ties to their extended families and rich cultural traditions. Deyhle's study culminated in detailed life histories of three Navajo women, Jan Begay, Vangie Tsosie, and Mary Sam, which give the reader a profound understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by Navajos reaching maturity in a bicultural world.

Jan Begay's school day began at 5:00 a.m., when she got up to catch the school bus that circled through rural areas before dropping off elementary school children in Bluff and continuing on to Blanding, where Jan was a tenth grader at San Juan High School. Almost 50 percent of the school's students were Navajo or Ute, while the community was predominantly white. After Jan graduated from high school, she spent one semester at Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque before dropping out. Jan and her husband lived in Salt Lake City before they returned home to be with her mother after her father died. "Resisting the discrimination experienced in bordertown communities, Jan turned inward to the support and strength of Navajo neighbors and life on the reservation" (72).

Vangie Tsosie attended Whitehorse High School, where her class schedule included Latter Day Saints (LDS) Seminary. Besides belonging to the LDS Church, she participated in Navajo ceremonies with other family members. After graduating from high school, Vangie moved to Salt Lake City at the urging of her boyfriend and attended the community college for one year but dropped out when her financial support ended. Vangie worked in numerous jobs before deciding to return to the reservation with her daughter while her husband remained in his drafting job in Salt Lake City. "Leaving the city and returning to live near the reservation was a move grounded in enriching relationships to create a more fulfilling life. Middle-class life in the city had a sort of emptiness embedded within the lifestyle" (162).

In contrast to Jan and Vangie, Mary Sam did not graduate from San Juan High School. While in school, she was involved in break dancing. Navajo youth gained acceptance and success in a subculture that contrasted to their repeated failures in the classroom. Mary had her first child when she was a junior, and when she became pregnant with her second child in her senior year, she left school for good. Mary later earned her GED. After leaving her husband, Mary moved her trailer to Bluff next to her mother's double-wide trailer. Mary noted, "Like if you live on the reservation, you're more proud of who you are because of the things you got taught by your grandmother, grandfather, or aunts or uncles, mother, and father. But in the city, it's like there wasn't much teaching" (203).

Enriched by many accounts of Navajo family interactions, ceremonies, and community activities, these Navajo women's life histories constitute the strength of Deyhle's study. The numerous accounts of discriminatory classroom experiences paint a dismal portrait of Navajo students' education and leave the reader with no prospects for improvement. In place of Gerald Vizenor's theoretical concepts of a "discourse of manifest manners" and "survivance," it would...