Code Talkers
Dine=poetry and metaphor
• The Holy Ones placed all the peoples on the earth
where they were meant to be; the Navajo were
placed between the four sacred mountains
• The four sacred mountains of the Navajo people
are Mt. Hesperus in Colorado, marking the
northern reach of Navajo Land; Mt. Blanca in
New Mexico, marking the east; Mt. Taylor in New
Mexico as well, to the southeast; and San
Franscisco Peak to the west. The actual, official
boundaries of the Reservation are smaller
In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk.
With beauty behind me I walk.
With beauty around me I walk.
With beauty above me I walk.
With beauty below me I walk.
The Navaho have that wonderful image of what they call the pollen path. Pollen is the life
source, the pollen path is the path to the center
Corn Pollen
Male (white) and Female (yellow) Corn
A gift from the gods when they
entered the 4th world
Grown as tall as man
Last only one season (annual)
Literally, “You are what you eat.”
Changing Woman to Navajo Mother
“You will speak for us with pollen
words. You will talk for us with pollen
words… I made you, my children,
because I dressed you with corn
pollen, because I dressed you with
dews” (A form of prayer)
Corn Pollen must go through a
Blessingway Ceremony to become
blessed and sacred
Symbol of fertility and life.
Corn is the Navaho staff of life, and
pollen is its essence
To the Navajo, Corn Pollen is prayer.
Corn pollen is used to mark the
stages in a person‘s life. There are
four main ceremonies of life—
the celebration of birth,
the baby‘s first laugh,
the puberty ceremony of the
Blessingway,
and the wedding.
Corn pollen plays a primary role in
transitioning a person through these
ceremonies of life. Corn pollen plays
no role in the ceremonials of death,
as death is the end, and pollen is life
Corn Pollen
• The source of the sacred
• “I can do this. I pinched some corn pollen
from my medicine bag, touched my tongue,
my head, and gestured to the east, south, wet,
and north.” (11)
• “’Holy water and corn pollen. Kind of the
same idea.’ I said” (61)
• “Torn between two cultures we were unable
to fully embrace either one” (62).
Navajo must always have corn pollen with them
when they travel, as anything can happen when
they leave home or Navajo land. For example,
crossing the path of the messenger Coyote,
crossing a body of water, leaving the area within
the four sacred mountains, or finding a sacred
herb requires corn pollen offerings. Navajo were
told long ago not to cross large bodies of water.
So when they do, they throw pollen to the river
or to the body of water.
A culture of metaphors
• Hummingbird = beauty
Landforms and weavings
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Sacred
They tell stories
Oral culture, not a written culture
“With the snow growing deeper, I
remembered the “string game” . . . Honored
Spider Woman, who taught the Dine to
weave” (51)
• “Grandmother had been an especially fine
weaver” (52).
Emergence Tales
• “I turned and stared up into the dark. The sky
arched above me, decorated by First Man and
First Woman with familiar groupings of stars” (24)
• Even the rain is gendered “a soft, female rain, had
lasted for only a short while” (25)
• Coyote. “Everyone knew evil people came back
as coyotes after they died” (29).
• Coyote. The trickster. . .flung the stars into the
heaven (36).
Death
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•
No word for it in Navajo language
Adin = no longer available
Matriarchal society
“If death came, our absence kept us from
following the dead person into the next world”
(31).
• “Afterward, they told no one where the grave
was. . . No one spoke of my mother’s last days or
her death” (31).
• Death brought into the 4th world by Coyote.
Monsters
• After the argument between First Man and First
Woman, monsters came in to the world, killing
• Changing Woman married the Sun and had twins.
The twins slew each monster. Corpses turned to
stone. Stone formations created by dead bodies can
still be seen (37)
Navajo Language
• Played an important part in the creation of the
world
– Light, earth, water, air
• “Speaking our language created the world the
world, and the creation of the world made our
language” (36)
The Long Walk (1920s)
• 350 miles from Fort Defiance to Fort Sumner,
New Mexico
• “The walk took twenty days, and along the way,
hundreds died. If someone got sick, they were
killed by soldiers. If a pregnant woman stopped
to have her baby, she was killed. Anyone who
tried to help her was also killed. If someone
collapsed from thirst or hunger, he was killed”
(39). Nez’s grandmother was 14 and survived.
• One of the great tragedies of Navajo history (39)
Boarding School
• Laura Tohe No Parole Today
• “The Names”
“Suddenly we are immigrants
Waiting for the names that obliterate the past”
• The missionary had just assigned us “English”
names.
• English names were designed to rid them of the
“burden” of their culture and tradition” (45).
• Children were physically punished for speaking
English
• Hair cut “People should not leave parts of
themselves scattered around to be picked up by
someone else. Even the smallest children knew
that” (46)
Hogan
• “A hogan was a real home.”
• Life in the new dwelling was now ready to
start—in harmony and balance, the Right Way.
The Great Livestock Massacre
• 1930s
• Chester Nez was 14
• “Fryer fried the Navajos” (E. Reeseman Fryer,
who, during the New Deal, worked for BIA)
• Effect of reduction: fences, weakening of
neighborly ties, loss of self-esteem
• After the Long Walk, the livestock massacre is
considered the second great tragedy. . .
Woven into oral tradition.
Public School in Gallup, NM
• Bombing of Pearl Harbor “We are Warriors”
(87)
• “Whereas, there exists no purer concentration
of Americanism than among the First
Americans. . . Therefore, we resolve that the
Navajo Indians stand ready. . . to aid and
defend our motherland, our Navajo Nation,
and our families” (unanimous resolution
passed in 1940).
The original 29
• Chester Nez is one of the original 29 recruited
to develop the “code.”
• Used to the physical challenges of military life
(rolled in the snow early in life). 122 lbs?
• Real challenges were cultural. Taught to keep
voices lowered, not look directly at people.
The Code
• Use an English word to represent each letter of
the alphabet
• Those words translated into Navajo
• Navajo word represents English letter
• Also, came up with words to represent things
• Many of the sounds of Navajo language are
impossible for the unpracticed ear to distinguish.
It is very exact. Illustrates Dine’s relationship to
nature (104)