American culture

Navajo

Navajo Nation (Navajo: Naabeehó Dine'é) is the name of a sovereign Native American nation established by the Diné. The Navajo Indian Reservation covers about 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometres) of land, occupying all of northeastern Arizona, and extending into Utah and New Mexico, and is the largest land area assigned primarily to a Native American jurisdiction within the United States.

The 2000 census reported 298,215 Navajos living throughout the United States, of which 173,987 were living within the Navajo Nation boundaries. 131,166 lived in Arizona. 17,512 of these lived in Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix. Because the Navajo Nation encompasses land in three states, its Division of Economic Development extracts census data for the Navajo Nation as a whole, and sends a representative to the Census Board.

Each tribe establishes its own requirements for being an enrolled tribal member, which is usually based on "blood quantum." The Navajo Nation requires a blood quantum of one-fourth for a person to be an enrolled tribal member and to receive a Certificate of Indian Blood (CIB). In comparison, some tribes require a one-thirtysecond blood quantum for issuing a CIB. Recently, the Navajo Tribal Council voted down a proposal to reduce the blood quantum to one-eighth, which would have effectively doubled the number of individuals qualified to be enrolled Navajo tribal members.

1. History

The Navajo (Diné) and Apache tribal groups of the American Southwest speak dialects of the language family referred to as Athapaskan. Linguistic similarities indicate the Navajo and Apache were once a single ethnic group, with substantial numbers not present in the American Southwest until the early 1500s.

Trade between the long-established Pueblo peoples and the Athapaskans become important to both groups by the mid 16th century. The Pueblos exchanged maize and woven cotton goods for bison meat, hides and material for stone tools. Coronado observed Plains people wintering near the Pueblos in established camps.

The Spanish first mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to people in the Chama region east of the San Juan River. By the 1640s, the term was applied to Athapaskan peoples from the Chama on the east to the San Juan on the west.

2. Culture and education

The name "Navajo" is the name given to them by the Tewa Pueblo Indians, whose settlement preceded the Navajo, and may mean "thieves" or "takers from the fields." (The names by which many Native American tribes are commonly known are derived from epithets used by their enemies.) The Navajo, who came to the Southwest millennia after the Tewa, call themselves Diné, which is often translated to mean "the people." (Most Native American groups call themselves by names that mean "the people.") Nonetheless, many Navajo now acquiesce to being called "Navajo."

The Navajo Nation runs Diné College, a two-year community college which has its main campus in Tsaile, as well as seven other campuses on the reservation. Current enrollment is 1,830 students, of which 210 are degree-seeking transfer students for four-year institutions. The college includes the Center for Diné Studies, whose goal is to apply Navajo Sa'ah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózhóón principles to advance quality student learning through Nitsáhákees (thinking), Nahatá (planning), Iiná (living), and Sihasin (assurance) in study of the Diné language, history, and culture in preparation for further studies and employment in a multi-cultural and technological world.

Navajos are known for their sandpainting, performed for healing ceremonies and as part of other spiritual activities.

3. Navajo music

3.1 Traditional

Traditional Navajo music is always vocal, with most instruments, which include drums, drumsticks, rattles, rasp, flute, whistle, and bullroarer, being used to accompany singing of specific types of song (Frisbie and McAllester 1992). As of 1982 there were over 1,000 Singers, Medicine People called Hatathli, qualified to perform one or more of thirty ceremonials and countless shorter prayer rituals (Frisbie and Tso n.d.) which restore hózhó or harmonious condition, good health, serenity.

These songs are the most sacred holy songs, the "complex and comprehensive" religious literature of the Navajo, may be considered classical music (McAllester and Mitchell 1983), while all other songs, including personal, patriotic, work, recreation, jokes, and less sacred ceremonial songs, may be considered popular music. The "popular" side is characterized by public performance while most Navajo people prefer diyin not be made public (and thus not featured on the recording listed at bottom). (ibid)

The longest ceremonies may last up to nine nights and days while performing rituals that restore the balance between good and evil, or positive and negative forces. Songs, music, sandpaintings, masked performances, and other rituals call upon deities and natural forces to restore the person to harmony and balance within the context of the world forces. The person to be supernaturally assisted, the one "sung over," becomes the protagonist, identifying with the deities of the Diné Creation Stories, and at one point becoming part of the Story Cycle by sitting on a sandpainting with iconography pertaining to the specific story and deities. (McAllester 1981-1982)

The lyrics, which may last over an hour and are usually sung in groups, contain narrative epics including the beginning of the world, phenomenology, morality, and other lessons. Longer songs are divided into two or four balanced parts and feature an alternation of chantlike verses and buoyant melodically active choruses concluded by a refrain in the style and including lyrics of the chorus. Lyrics, songs, groups, and topics are cyclic: the main deity, Changing Woman, is immortal and grows old in the winter and young in the spring. Long myths are also spoken during ceremonies and elaborate the origin stories found in lyrics. (ibid)

The "popular" music resembles the highly active melodic motion of the choruses, featuring wide intervallic leaps and melodic range usually an octave to octave and a half. Structurally the songs are created from the complex repetition, division, and combinations of most often no more than four or five phrases, with short songs often immediately following each other for continuity as needed in work songs. Their lyrics are mostly vocables, with certain vocables specific to genres, but may contain short humurous or satirical texts. (ibid)

3.2 Peyote songs

Peyote songs are a form of Native American music, now most often performed as part of the Native American Church, which came to the northern part of the Navajo Nation around 1936. They are typically accompanied by a rattle and water drum, and are used in a ceremonial aspect during the sacramental taking of peyote. Peyote songs share characteristics of Apache music and Plains-Pueblo music. (Nettl 1956, p.114)

In recent years, a modernized version of peyote songs have been popularized by Verdell Primeaux, a Sioux, and Johnny Mike, a Navajo.