Barbara Myerhoff In Her Own Time Essay

In Her Own Time (1985) follows cultural anthropologist, Barbara Myerhoff, as she conducts ethnographic research in the Orthodox Hasidic community in the Fairfax neighborhood of Los Angeles. While Myerhoff was Jewish herself, she was still somewhat of an outsider in the Fairfax community due to her limitations of being a non-Orthodox Jew. This film evokes the audience to question the complexities of identity. Historically, anthropologists have been outsiders from the communities that they study... yet what happens when one has commonalities with the people that they study? In this essay, I will use the film structure of In Her Own Time as a model for ethnographic research regarding my own people. In my Navajo culture, we are a matriarchal society and women are highly respected. The transition from child to womanhood occurs when one receives her first menstrual cycle. This is a sacred time for a young girl and in traditional Navajo culture, she must have a Kinaaldá ceremony to truly be regarded as a woman by her

My skin was brown, my mom and grandma spoke to each other in Navajo, my house was decorated with traditional Navajo cultural items and I wore Navajo jewelry and clothing. But at the same time, I always knew I was not a “normal Navajo”. I didn’t grow up on the reservation, I only visited it about once a month while I lived in the suburbs of Phoenix. My family would sometimes refer to me affectionately as “bilagáana atʼééd” which translates to “white girl”. The fact that I wasn’t like my cousins who were full Navajo and lived on the reservation didn’t bother me. My mother and grandmother raised me to be proud of my heritage and strong in my Christian faith. It wasn’t until I was older and more exposed to traditional Navajo culture that I questioned my identity. I wondered why I didn’t have a Kinaaldá ceremony years after I had already received my first menstrual cycle. I thought to myself, “Am I a real Navajo