Friday, June 30, 2017

Navajo Notes


      More Letters From Paradise
            Navajo Notes
The Navajo Nation Police Department patrols approximately 27,000 square miles of the Navajo Nation. The police responds to over 200,000 calls for service and conducts over 25,000 arrests every year. This is a huge amount of work for approximately 200 officers on patrol duty.
The Navajo Nation's Department of Corrections is in need of 75 facilities. The average daily population is roughly 199 individuals per day at the six facilities.
Major crimes like murder is handled by the F.B.I. "Navajo Times" Thursday,April27, 2017.
Much of what I know about the Navajo people  has come from the detective novels of Tony Hillerman, which all take place on the reservation.

The Navajo Nation is about the size of West Virginia. It is located primarily in Arizona, but also extends into Utah and in  New Mexico. In addition there is much Navajo country in New Mexico which is outside the nation.

The Navajo call themselves "Dine"-"The People." They have been living there for more than four hundred years. But no discussion of the Navajo would be complete without telling of the terrible trials they were forced to endure.

In 1863 the U.S. Army under the command of Colonel Kit Carson, began a systematic campaign of destroying all means of livelihood of the Navaho. Thousands of sheep and livestock were slaughtered, and crops burned.

The winter of 1863 and faced with starvation, thousands of Navajo surrendered to a forced removal policy known as the "Long Walk."  More than 9,000 Navajo walked more than 300 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, to a reservation called Bosque Redondo. In 1868 and after many hardships, the Navajo under treaty were allowed to return to their homelands.      

The focus of the Navajo economy, culture and weaving is the the Churro breed of sheep. This breed was the first breed of domesticated sheep imported by the Spanish explorers. During the 1930s and 1940s the federal government called for the reduction of the sheep on Navajo land.Tens of thousands of sheep were killed. By the 1970s fewer than 450 Churro sheep were left. Today there are organizations that promote the restoration and development of the Churro sheep. The wool is highly valued by hand spinners and weavers.

The Navajo Nation is divided into sections like townships, called chapters. Each chapter hosts a clan group, often a house called a hogan surrounded by house trailers. These clusters are to be found all across the wide space of the Nation.

There is a story of how a group of white men were trying to build a Navajo hogan but they were undecided  how many sides the building  would require. A Navajo man seated nearby watching them,left and returned giving them a stop sign!

One important story concerning the Navajo is the newly de-classified role played by  Navajo code talkers in the Pacific during World War II. All six U.S. Marine Divisions used Navajo speaking code talkers which the Japanese were unable to break. The town of Kayenta on the reservation has a small museum located in a fast food restaurant run by the son of one of the famous code talkers.

The reservation has its share of problems,   alcoholism, domestic abuse, and unemployment. And to make matters worse hills of tailings from uranium mines  dot some of the landscape. Children playing in these tailings debris are poisoned. The Federal Government built a hospital and surrounding outbuildings only to find out that the well water was poisoned by uranium. The hospital remains empty.

One source of income for the Navajo has been a coal mine. Coals sent by rail to Laughlin, Nevada where several casinos are located. But now with the emphasis on cleaner forms of energy such as solar and natural gas, I wonder what will happen to this source of income, and the employment of a thousand miners.

In reading the novels of Tony Hillman, there is frequent mention of Navajo tacos.A Navajo taco is nothing like its cousin. The  Navajo taco is only made from Blue Bird flour grown in Colorado. The flour provides greater elasticity, which creates a high rim around the taco. The taco is then covered with the usual fixings. A Navajo taco is the size of a dinner plate and will feed two people easily.

The Navajo are famous for their hand loomed wool blankets, and beautiful silver jewelry. Recordings of Navajo flute music are hauntingly beautiful. I have a hand-crafted cedar flute and a song book. The flute is called a"Love Flute," as young men play the flute when courting. I find that there is a steep learning curve.

As I write these sentences the television reports that temperatures in the Southwest are 117 to 120 degrees. I pity the Navajo, without even a tree for shade.

    Aloha
    Grant