Navajo Life Ways

Navajo Life Ways

For the Navajo, oral histories illuminate the way to uphold a fruitful, modern life. Unlike other native Athapaskan speaking groups, the Navajo are “exceptionally resilient” in the face of modernization through their high language retention (9). In preserving their language, the Navajo preserve the oral traditions that give them the “knowledge” to overcome the “manifestation of improper, disharmonious behavior” generated through Western influence (41). In retaining the knowledge given to them, the Navajo can use the social crisis of an epidemic and the political upheaval of relocation to reinforce understanding of Navajo values for both Navajo and non-Navajo alike. More comprehensively, through their traditional means of expressing grief and anger, the Navajo can fight injustices embroiled in the aftermath of uranium mining, and ultimately provide for the Navajo generations yet to come.

In 1993, when mainstream scientists were baffled with the “Mystery Illness” of the Southwest, it was Navajo elders who provided the innovative basis for a scientific solution through their oral histories. According to Navajo prophecy, illness strikes when the Navajo do not obey the wishes of the gods (40). As “the disease represented monsters created by disharmony”(24) and “excess of any kind is a form of disharmony” (35), Navajo elders enabled scientists to discover the offending Hantavirus transmitted by overpopulations of deer mice (39). Yet whereas scientists were content to reduce rodent populations and move on, Navajo elders forged a connection between the illness and modern cultural behaviors; they called their people to “return to their old ways” (37).

Oral history teaches the Navajo be aware of changes in the land and to protect Navajo synecdoche by avoiding ominous threats like rodents (35). But more significantly, oral history, as taught by the elders, requires the Navajo to respect their ceremonial dances, winter shoe games, and spiritual artifacts by refusing to sell their culture for capital (39). Navajo leaders used this 1993 illness to evaluate ignored cultural values and use ceremonies to strengthen “familiar ties and relationships” (40). By neglecting their traditions, the Navajo were bringing destruction upon themselves. Elders also sharply pointed out that “physical changes in the land reflect a break down in the proper relationship between Navajo and mother Earth” (39). The destruction of the Navajo exists in the uranium mining pits, road and water projects and dumping sites, unless prescribed healing ceremonies and future obedience can redeem their relationship with the land and the Holy People.