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Essays about the navajo codetalkers
Essays about the navajo codetalkers
Essays about the navajo codetalkers
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Do you know how the Navajo code talkers all started? Navajo code talkers got introduced slightly after WW1. First the World War happened because the Japanese attacked the U.S. on December 7th, 1941 in Hawaii. That was a quiet relatively big event and was named the Pearl Harbor attack. Well the Navajo code talkers were a pretty big part in the WW2, so i’m going to tell you why. Slightly after the first World War Philip Johnston was very interested in the Navajo language. Well Mr. Johnston wanted to tell Major James E. about it because he thought it would be a good idea and they would be useful so he presented it to him. As a result got presented to him he thought it would be a good idea.
After it got talked over with the Major, they went to
The Apache Indians of North America prospered for years throughout Kansas, New Mexico, and Arizona. They were a religious society who believed in a “giver of life';. As any complex society today, The Apache had many inter-tribal differences, although the tribe as a whole was able to see through these conflicts. Women and the extended family played an important role in the society and also in the lives of young children. Groups of different extended families, called bands, often lived together and functioned democratically. The Apache also evolved as the coming of the white man changed their lives. These Indians became adept at using horses and guns, both introduced to them by the coming settlers. As with most Indian tribes in North America the lives of the Apache were destroyed as their life-blood, the buffalo were slaughtered by the whites. The Apache were forced into surrender after years of struggle. One leader, Geronimo, was especially hard for the whites to capture. After years of evading white soldiers Geronimo was taken to Florida and treated as a prisoner of war. Government sponsored assimilation saw English forced upon the Apache robbing them of their culture. In 1934 The Indian Recognition Act helped establish the Indian culture as a recognized way of life. This act gave the Apache land, which the Apache in turn used for ranching. The destruction of the Apache culture was not recoverable and saw the Apache lose much of their language.
In Marianne Mithun and Wallace L. Chafe’s article “Recapturing the Mohawk Language”, the two authors focus on an important aspect of language that I strongly agree on. Mithun and Chafe demonstrate how native Mohawk speakers acquire unconsciously all necessary rules of the Mohawk language. I find that their discovery can be used as an argument to prove professor Ray Jackendoff’s first fundamental rule: mental grammar.
Why did the Navajo code talkers of World War II receive more public attention after the war than their counterparts, the Comanche code talkers?
had to be spelled out letter by letter. The developers of the original code assigned Navajo
The story Navajo Lessons conveys the theme that “It is important to learn and appreciate your heritage.” This story is about a girl, Celine, and her brother that visit her grandmother on the Navajo reservation in Arizona. Celine arrives at a place in the middle of nowhere at her grandmother’s house and is not excited because she had better plans for the summer. Her family is encouraging her to deal with it and make something good out of it. Over time, Celine learns that this trip was worth it because she realized that it is important to learn and appreciate your heritage. Celine learned this in many ways, one of them being that she wanted to learn and listen to the stories that her grandmother was telling.
Although this idea had been successfully implemented during World War I using the Choctaw Indian's language, history generally credits Philip Johnston for the idea to use Navajos to transmit code across enemy lines. Philip recognized that people brought up without hearing Navajo spoken had no chance at all to decipher this unwritten, strangely syntactical, and guttural language (Navajo). Fortunately, Johnston was capable of developing this idea because his missionary father had raised him on the Navajo reservation. As a child, Johnston learned the Navajo language as he grew up along side his many Navajo friends (Lagerquist 19). With this knowledge of the language, Johnston was able to expand upon the idea of Native Americans transmitting messages in their own language in order to fool enemies who were monitoring transmissions. Not only did the Code Talkers transmit messages in Navajo, but the messages were also spoken in a code that Navajos themselves could not understand (Paul 7).
During the first World War, the US military saw great benefits in relying on the Choctaw and Comanche languages to relay important messages in the battlefield (Bixler 37). When World War II began, it was the idea of an anglo-american called Philip Johnston who suggested to once again use Native American languages to send important messages during the war (Bixler 39). Philip Johnston was a World War I veteran who was born in 1892 to a missionary who lived in the Navajo Reservation. Growing up, Johnston was able to become a fluent speaker in the Navajo language and during World War II, he alongside 4 other Navajo Indians were the first to help develop the Navajo language as code for the war (Bixler 39). This turned out to be a great idea because according to a book title “Navajo Code Talkers” by Nathan Aaseng, in the year of 1940, there were “fewer than 30 people outside the Navajo tribe that knew their language (19). In addition, during the years prior to the start of WWII, Germany had sent out German students to study various Native American tribes, but they failed to connect and penetrate the Navajo tribe during those years(Aaseng 19). Thanks to this, the Navajo code talkers became one of the most well known and effective code units during and beyond the end of WWII. It is estimated that as many as 3,600 Navajo tribe members served overall during the years of WWII (Aaseng 10). Out of those 3,600 members, about 540 of them enlisted in the marine corps and about 420 became qualified as Navajo Code Talkers (Paul 117). These Code Talkers played a huge role in many of the biggest battles against Japan in the Pacific arena. A quote from communications officer Major Howard M. Conner of the fifth Marine Division states that if “Were it not for the Navajo, the Marines would have never taken Iwo Jima”(Davis
Wheelwright, M. (1942). Navajo Creation Myth. Navajo Religion Series, Vol. 1. Santa Fe: Museum of Navajo Ceremonial Art.
Why is it significant that the Pueblo tradition of story telling makes no distinction between types of stories, such as historical, sacred, or just plain gossip?
...op a Navajo code. The Navajo language seemed to be the perfect option as a code because it is not written and very few people who aren’t of Navajo origin can speak it. However, the Marine Corps took the code to the next level and made it virtually unbreakable by further encoding the language with word substitution. During the course of the war, about 400 Navajos participated in the code talker program. The navajo helped end the second world war.
First of all, the Navajo lifestyle is very similar to the concepts of Bless Me, Ultima. In the Navajos' daily life ceremonies and rituals are practiced. These ceremonies are performed to treat and heal physical and/or mental illnesses. There are more than 50 different kinds of ceremonies that the Navajo may use. Like how Ultima sings a song while she cures Uncle Lucas, the Navajo chant during their performances. Navajo performers also dance and sand-paint for the rituals. As Ultima and Tony heal Uncle Lucas, the two take many days to cure him. The Navajo also hold their ceremonies that may last from one to nine days, depending on how long it takes for the sick person to be revived. Color is also very symbolic, as there was different, separate meanings fo...
At first, this tribe moved from the Great Lakes region to the North Dakota area. This happened in the 1600-1700s. Also at this time, the Cheyenne were a sedentary tribe who relied on agriculture and pottery. Though, in the 1800s, they decided to abandon this lifestyle and become nomadic and move to South Dakota (Black Hills), Wyoming, and Colorado areas. No matter where the Cheyenne lived, they always kept their natural language, which was part of the Algonquin language family (Lewis). The Cheyenne tribe, like other tribes, had their own lifestyle, beliefs, and customs and also had conflicts with the whites. Even today, the Cheyenne Indians exist and are living well.
The Navajo Indians used to live in northwestern Canada and Alaska. 1,000 years ago the Navajo Indians traveled south, because there was more qualities they had seeked there. When the Navajo Indians traveled south there was a lot of oil in the 1940’s. Today the Navajo Indians are located in the Four Corners.
The beginning of time. In the First World, there lived various spiritual beings. They were given Navajo ...
He was seen as wanted and needed in the Marines, because he was in order to send coded messages to the allied forces. Ned explains, “For so many years I had been in schools where I was told never to speak our sacred language. I had to listen to the words of bilaga’anaa teachers who had no respect at all for our old ways, and who told us that the best thing we could do would be to forget everything that made us Navajos. Now practically overnight, that had all changed.”(Burchac 81) As Ned explains, for the Navajos they were told to stop being Navajo, but now as they become Code Talkers that all changes.