Dinéjí Na`nitin: Navajo Traditional Teachings and History

5: Traditional Teachingsand Thought

133 DOI: 10.7330/9781607322177.c05 5 Traditional Teachings and Thought Navajo Metaphors of the Elders Navajo metaphors provide a condensed, intensified view of thought within the culture. Perception, framed through language, is embedded in a word, a phrase, or a sentence in which lies entire systems of classification and understanding. Extended metaphors expand that connective meaning even more. The comparison of two seemingly dissimilar or unconnected objects or thoughts becomes a unified expression that teaches important values for the continuation of society. Language is the means of transmission, giving rise to the necessity of its preservation. Without it, the unique worldview specific to a culture is lost, something the Navajo Nation now struggles to reverse. The next four chapters illustrate various aspects of Navajo language and thought, starting with traditional guidance 134 Robert S. McPherson through metaphor. This chapter suggests that even with the younger generation’s immersion in American society, many of the teachings from the past—associated with objects and activities common to traditional culture—still hold powerful, valuable lessons highly relevant to today’s youth. Next come lessons learned from the efforts of Father H. Baxter Liebler, an Episcopalian missionary who adopted many of those teachings, objects, and religious practices to instruct Navajo parishioners in his faith. Explained from their perspective as to what they saw taking place, these Navajo converts discuss their appreciation for his efforts and yet the difficulty inherent in combining the two religions. Chapter 7 is a history of the Pectol shields and their eventual repatriation to the tribe because of the oral tradition that explained their origin and use. Navajo history and culture proved vital in their return. The last of the four chapters revisits the discussion of how metaphoric language works, a comparison between old and new metaphors developing on the reservation today, and suggestions as to why this shift is occurring. Thus language tied to thought is the recurring theme throughout all four of these chapters. “Cartoons. Did my grandpa tell you any of those cartoons he has running around in his head?” I winced. The young teenage boy gazed into my eyes without a ripple of a smile. He was serious. I looked over in the corner where, sitting beside a small wood-burning stove, rested an older Navajo man—silver hair cropped close, his eyes gazing into the fire. I was glad that he probably did not understand what his grandson had just said, since what was a cartoon to one person was the essence of life for the other. As I made my way across miles of sandy desert road and slick rock, then eventually to the serenity of asphalt, I had time to reflect upon what had been said. The interview with Charlie Blueyes had been informative , but the brief dialogue with his grandson had also been enlightening, though of a far different nature. In that two-room, gray stuccoed house planted in a sea of red sand and gray-green sagebrush, three people had assumed roles that typify a problem inherent across the Navajo reservation today. Traditional Teachings and Thought 135 Charlie Blueyes, a man in his mid-eighties, spoke only broken English. Although he understood more than he let on, he was so fluent in Navajo that our interview was conducted entirely in his language. The interpreter who worked with him understood the importance of what he said. The grandson, in contrast, spoke English well, but his Navajo was a struggle at best. School and the dominant society had captured his native tongue and replaced it. As for me, I was desperately interested in reconstructing elements of the history of the Utah Navajo as seen through the eyes of someone who had lived part of it. Oral history gave a slant to the historical record that could be obtained and preserved in no other way. So there we sat: Charlie in the twilight of his life (he died two years later), a white man with the help of an interpreter being taught everything from religious beliefs to historical events, and a young boy who saw little value in any of it. My impression is that although many youth do not fall into the category of the latter, it seems that today far too many do. What should be held as sacred or at least important gets pushed aside for the less valuable “trinkets and baubles” of contemporary American culture. In a...