Code Talkers

Dine=poetry and metaphor

• The Holy Ones placed all the peoples on the earth where they were meant to be; the Navajo were placed between the four sacred mountains

• The four sacred mountains of the Navajo people are Mt. Hesperus in Colorado, marking the northern reach of Navajo Land; Mt. Blanca in New Mexico, marking the east; Mt. Taylor in New Mexico as well, to the southeast; and San Franscisco Peak to the west. The actual, official boundaries of the Reservation are smaller

In beauty I walkWith beauty before me I walk.With beauty behind me I walk.With beauty around me I walk.With beauty above me I walk.With beauty below me I walk.The Navaho have that wonderful image of what they call the pollen path. Pollen is the life

source, the pollen path is the path to the center

Corn PollenMale (white) and Female (yellow) Corn

A gift from the gods when they entered the 4th world

Grown as tall as man

Last only one season (annual)

Literally, “You are what you eat.”

Changing Woman to Navajo Mother“You will speak for us with pollen words. You will talk for us with pollen words… I made you, my children, because I dressed you with corn pollen, because I dressed you with dews” (A form of prayer)

Corn Pollen must go through a Blessingway Ceremony to become blessed and sacredSymbol of fertility and life.

Corn is the Navaho staff of life, and pollen is its essence

To the Navajo, Corn Pollen is prayer.Corn pollen is used to mark the stages in a person‘s life. There are four main ceremonies of life—the celebration of birth, the baby‘s first laugh, the puberty ceremony of the Blessingway, and the wedding.

Corn pollen plays a primary role in transitioning a person through these ceremonies of life. Corn pollen plays no role in the ceremonials of death, as death is the end, and pollen is life

Corn Pollen

• The source of the sacred• “I can do this. I pinched some corn pollen from

my medicine bag, touched my tongue, my head, and gestured to the east, south, wet, and north.” (11)

• “’Holy water and corn pollen. Kind of the same idea.’ I said” (61)

• “Torn between two cultures we were unable to fully embrace either one” (62).

Navajo must always have corn pollen with them when they travel, as anything can happen when they leave home or Navajo land. For example, crossing the path of the messenger Coyote, crossing a body of water, leaving the area within the four sacred mountains, or finding a sacred herb requires corn pollen offerings. Navajo were told long ago not to cross large bodies of water. So when they do, they throw pollen to the river or to the body of water.

A culture of metaphors

• Hummingbird = beauty

Landforms and weavings

• Sacred• They tell stories• Oral culture, not a written culture• “With the snow growing deeper, I remembered

the “string game” . . . Honored Spider Woman, who taught the Dine to weave” (51)

• “Grandmother had been an especially fine weaver” (52).

Emergence Tales

• “I turned and stared up into the dark. The sky arched above me, decorated by First Man and First Woman with familiar groupings of stars” (24)

• Even the rain is gendered “a soft, female rain, had lasted for only a short while” (25)

• Coyote. “Everyone knew evil people came back as coyotes after they died” (29).

• Coyote. The trickster. . .flung the stars into the heaven (36).

Death

• No word for it in Navajo language• Adin = no longer available• Matriarchal society• “If death came, our absence kept us from following

the dead person into the next world” (31).• “Afterward, they told no one where the grave

was. . . No one spoke of my mother’s last days or her death” (31).

• Death brought into the 4th world by Coyote.

Monsters

• After the argument between First Man and First Woman, monsters came in to the world, killing

• Changing Woman married the Sun and had twins. The twins slew each monster. Corpses turned to stone. Stone formations created by dead bodies can still be seen (37)

Navajo Language

• Played an important part in the creation of the world– Light, earth, water, air

• “Speaking our language created the world the world, and the creation of the world made our language” (36)

The Long Walk (1920s)

• 350 miles from Fort Defiance to Fort Sumner, New Mexico

• “The walk took twenty days, and along the way, hundreds died. If someone got sick, they were killed by soldiers. If a pregnant woman stopped to have her baby, she was killed. Anyone who tried to help her was also killed. If someone collapsed from thirst or hunger, he was killed” (39). Nez’s grandmother was 14 and survived.

• One of the great tragedies of Navajo history (39)

Boarding School

• Laura Tohe No Parole Today• “The Names” “Suddenly we are immigrantsWaiting for the names that obliterate the past”

• The missionary had just assigned us “English” names.• English names were designed to rid them of the

“burden” of their culture and tradition” (45).• Children were physically punished for speaking

English• Hair cut “People should not leave parts of

themselves scattered around to be picked up by someone else. Even the smallest children knew that” (46)

Hogan

• “A hogan was a real home.” • Life in the new dwelling was now ready to

start—in harmony and balance, the Right Way.

The Great Livestock Massacre

• 1930s• Chester Nez was 14 • “Fryer fried the Navajos” (E. Reeseman Fryer,

who, during the New Deal, worked for BIA)• Effect of reduction: fences, weakening of

neighborly ties, loss of self-esteem• After the Long Walk, the livestock massacre is

considered the second great tragedy. . . Woven into oral tradition.

Public School in Gallup, NM

• Bombing of Pearl Harbor “We are Warriors” (87)

• “Whereas, there exists no purer concentration of Americanism than among the First Americans. . . Therefore, we resolve that the Navajo Indians stand ready. . . to aid and defend our motherland, our Navajo Nation, and our families” (unanimous resolution passed in 1940).

The original 29

• Chester Nez is one of the original 29 recruited to develop the “code.”

• Used to the physical challenges of military life (rolled in the snow early in life). 122 lbs?

• Real challenges were cultural. Taught to keep voices lowered, not look directly at people.

The Code

• Use an English word to represent each letter of the alphabet

• Those words translated into Navajo• Navajo word represents English letter• Also, came up with words to represent things• Many of the sounds of Navajo language are

impossible for the unpracticed ear to distinguish. It is very exact. Illustrates Dine’s relationship to nature (104)