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What is the Navajo Night chant?
The Nightway chant, in Navajo Tłʼééʼjí, is one of sixty or so Navajo chantways to heal and restore Hozho, (order, harmony and peaceful beauty). It is prescribed to cure mental disturbances, head ailments, blindness, hearing loss and other conditions. It is a Holyway ceremonial. It is performed under the direction of a hataałii, a chanter or singer, who directs his assistants in the nine day ceremony. Each part must be performed exactly as taught. there are sandpaintings, songs, prayers, sweat baths, dances, prayers and offerings. the final dance is sometomes called the ye'ii bicheii. The famous "house made of dawn song" is at the end.
How do you say safe return in Navajo?
You might say: Dííjį' yéego hózhǫ dooleeł. It means "with greater intensity" hozho "make it so" Or have a peaceful, balanced day. To say "return" one needs to know if it is one person, two, or more than two, and ones needs to know the manner in which you are returning, ie, is it from round trip, like you usually do, one way, etc. Al this information changes the way the verb conjugates. It actually gets even more complicated than that depending if they are doing it right now or later and other aspects of the motion like how they are traveling, wheeled vehicle or walking or riding on a horse. Culturally, it's better to remind people that they have control in keeping a good balance in outlook - or hózhǫ́. Wishing someone luck or goodness or safety, in the way English intends to, doesn't quite keep the same sentiment in Navajo since you'd be saying something like "If only you had luck/goodness/safety", implying they might not have it or even that you are checking or wishing to see they don't. It is also impolite to be implying you are commanding or telling them to do something.
What were the roles of Navajo children?
The Navajo have a very different and larger sense of personal autonomy than most American families. From the time a child first laughs it is seen as a fully autonomous being. This means parents explain things and teach things but do not order children to do things (or anyone else). It is thought that they can learn from their own mistakes better. So children are and were seldom scolded. If there was any discipline it was often done by your mother's brother (maternal uncle) not your father. You belong to your mother's clan. It is said you are "born for" you father's clan. A child is expected to gradually learn what it is to understand clan and family relationships and the relationships to the world. This is called K'e. A child is expected to slowly learn to moderate and control his/her emotions and speech and actions. To be balanced and moderate. To not be able to control them is a sign of being a child. Teaching was and still is seldom done with direct instruction but more with indirect stories. Children are expected to not be lazy, to get up at dawn and help out and to not complain. As they get bigger they were and sometimes today still learn to help out with the sheep and planting and growing corn and other crops. As they get bigger if they were a girl they might learn to help with shearing, sorting, cleaning, carding, spinning, dyeing and weaving the wool. If they were a boy if their father did silverwork or another craft or was a ritual practitioner they might learn to help out. In the older days they would learn to hunt. They would catch rabbits and other small game as kids. today some people still hunt in the mountains but with rifles. They would learn prayers and chants and songs and taboos. Some people still do. About 30-40% are now only christian so they don't today. Everyone is expected to slowly learn how to create and maintain Hozho in their inner and outer worlds. This central Navajo concept encompasses in one word the English ideas of harmony, beauty, the good, health, happiness, and balance. It is both a way to seeing and thinking about the world and a thing to be created. For this reason, perhaps the majority of Navajo take part in some art or craft.I would like to note that the word "were" is not really appropriate and most Navajo kids would not like it. They ARE. There are 300,000 enrolled Navajo members and most live on or near the Navajo Nation which is where is always has been in the modern states of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. There are many school on the Navajo Nation and all kids go to K though 12. There is also Dine' college and several other schools for after 12th grade.
What holiday or celebration do the Navajo celebrate?
Traditional Navajo try to practice their religion at all times by balanced beautiful thought and speech. The inner and outer forms should be in a dynamic balance of complimentary pairs of polarities. Many people carry corn pollen on them in special bags for prayer. Many people get up before dawn to pray facing east and use it at other times during the day as needed. Some people pray four times a day. Ceremonies are held as needed, like a babies first laugh or a hogan blessing or a girls first menstruation or a healing ceremony. Many ceremonies last several days some up to 9 days.
How Navajo members are there today?
The Navajo (Dine') are a thriving and growing tribe. Except for 4 years in the 1860's they today live on much of their original and sacred lands. These are defined by the four sacred mountains, Mt Blanca, Mt Taylor, The san Fransisco Peaks and Mt Hesperus. Each has a Navajo name and color, gem, gender, attributes and Holy People. Each represents one of the four directions, always starting in the east. After the Long Walk and confinment in the 1860's there were about 10,000 who returned to their lands. A few thousand more probably escaped Kit Carson and hid out. Today there are 300,000 enrolled members. There are many more who are part Navajo but members of other tribes or not enrolled. The Navajo Nation in 27,000 square miles. They have an Executive and Legislative and Judicial branch. The Nation is broken down into 110 Chapters which are a bit like counties. There is a police force. There is a school board. The nation runs a Headstart. There is a Prep school. There are Arizona, Utah and New Mexico and BIA schools. There is a Navajo College, Dine' College. There is a Navajo language radio station KTNN. There is a newspaper, The Navajo Times. About 170,000 people speak Navajo. Tradional religion and philosophy are live and well. The traditional religious leaders are called hataałii or medicine men. There is a Medicine Men's association and they sometimes help out in the local hospitals. There are many people who are also members of Native American Church and many Christian denominations. There are several coal mines and oil. There was once much uranium mining. The navajo Nation has the most mineral resources of any US tribe. Arts and crafts are an important source of income. Traditional lifestyles of raising sheep and corn still exists. For traditional religious reasons largely, they have declined to have casinos on their land but recently they have entered into compacts to run four. Navajo Agricultural Products runs the largest contiguous irrigated farm in the US and supplies Lays potato chips. Navajo Pride brand grows potatoes, corn, alfalfa, beans, and small grains, such as barley, wheat and oats. Tourism is also important. The tribal park in Monument Valley gets visitors from a around the world. There is also the Little Colorado, Canyon de Chelly, Navajo Mountain and Rainbow Bridge, Navajo National Monument Park with the Keet Seel ruins, and Lake Powell. There Navajo are very proud of their US veterans especially the Code Talkers. The code takers were important when they came back after the war as people who modernized the Nation. The Navajo serve in the military at much higher rates than the rest of the US population. The Navajo have a unique and vibrant artistic and philosophical culture that is very important to this day. Navajo weaving and jewery are world renowned. Traditional Navajo outlook on the importance of Hozho,( balance, peace, the good, beauty, and dynamic harmony) and the proper relations between individuals, family, clan and all living things is very much alive an noticiable if you live on the Navajo Nation.
What role or job were assigned to the children in the anasazi tribe?
Oh honey, in the Anasazi tribe, children were expected to help out with chores and learn essential skills like farming, weaving, and pottery-making. They were basically being prepped to be self-sufficient adults, none of this participation trophy nonsense. So yeah, those Anasazi kids were basically mini-adults in training, no time for slacking off.
What does the Navajo origin legend show the origin of?
It describes Navajo creation stories. It is called the Diné bahaneʼ in Navajo. It is very complex and has many parts and versions. There is a English language translation available, ( see attached link). In broad outline it describes the creation and travels of creatures and people and Holy People (deities) and geography and mountains and plants. In most versions it goes through four worlds, three before this one. In a few versions this is the fifth world. Each successive world is more complete, complex, ordered and beautiful. In each world arguments or fighting or breaking taboos cause the problems that lead to the need to escape up into the next world. In each world new knowledge and rituals are gained. Each world is described as having a dominate color. Color in Navajo thought is related to directions, sacred mountains and certain qualities and deities. The first world (Nihodilhil) is black, the second (Ni'hodootl'izh) is blue, the third (Nihaltsoh) is yellow, and this is the glittering or white world (Nihalgai) . The emergence place is called "Hajinei". Many people say this place is somewhere in the La Plata Mountains, in Colorado.In this world the six sacred mountains are reestablished, Changing Woman is born and then she gives birth to the hero twins who rid the world of monsters, except for a few like Cold and Hunger, Poverty and Death. They leave those because without cold it would always be hot and the would be no snow or water in the summer for plants, without hunger there will be no pleasure in eating and feasting, without poverty nothing will wear out and no one will create new things, without death the people will never increase and there will only be old people.Changing woman creates the first four Navajo clans and sends them to the Dinetah.There is much more but this is the outline. All of it is seen as having 12 levels of deeper and deeper meaning. The surface, literal story is for children and simple minds. At core it is about the complex Navajo ideas of Są́'ah naaghaii bik'eh Hǫ́zhǫ́ǫ́ and inner and outer forms, male and female, dynamic symmetrical balance and K'e.
How did the apache resistance differ from that the of the Navajo?
They stole their candy
How did the Navajo and hopi manage to adapt survive and even grow as a culture?
This is a very good and difficult question. Both the Navajo and Hopi benefited early on by being in a difficult part of the continent which had few resources that white colonists wanted and was not on a major wagon and later train route. The Hopi had first contact with the Spanish by de Tovar in 1540 but they did not return until 1583, 1598, and 1605. They did not establish a presence however. In 1629 the Spanish started a mission. The Hopi participated in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and destroyed the Mission. In 1692 the Spanish tried to start it again. In 1700 all the male converts were killed and the Spanish never returned. The Hopi didn't have much contact with colonial powers until after the Mexican American War in 1846. Mormons started moving in in the 1870s. The US didn't have much economic interest in the area until the uranium boom of the 1950s. They live in an area that kept them safer from diseases. Their economy of small farming did not conflict with white interests. When they contacted new crops that would grow there such as peaches, melons, onions, chilies they added them. This economy could be continued up to the present day. This gives them a strong sense of cultural continuity. But there were other more elusive reasons that they have thrived. Although the Hopi fought at times, they also had a large cultural interest in peace and that served them well. They have cultural practices that are secret in some aspects even to other tribal members. They have a continual set of seasonal ceremonies that takes commitment to the group. they have a very strongly developed sense of why they live where they do and how their ceremonial activity maintains and sustains the whole world. In their view they chose the harder, more righteous life. These traits in turn impressed important outsiders who respected and defended and supported them against colonial interference from the US government. The Navajo also benefited in the earlier first contact era with being in the same a remote and undesirable area. They also benefited by their traditional land-use patterns. They had no villages or single area to be controlled in. Their territory was the whole area between the four sacred mountains. They did not have traditional hereditary leadership or unified tribal structure and that could be defeated and controlled. They also have a very strong traditional of personal individual autonomy. Neither the Spanish nor the Mexicans ever controlled the area. The Navajo mobile fighting tactics were very effective. They really didn't come into serious conflict until 1863 when certain leaders in the US army decided that they should be attacked as their raids on peoples around Santa Fe was felt to benefit the Confederates. Instead of having a single strong and secret traditional the Navajo have had a very adaptable one. They have over and over met other cultures and taken up parts that they liked and made them completely theirs. So the learned corn and squash agriculture and weaving and some cosmological ideas from the Pueblo peoples. They got sheep and goats and horses, peaches, melons, chilies and jewelry from the Spanish. Flour, guns, certain clothing, and now pickup trucks have followed that. At the same time things that they borrowed have been completely "Navajo-ized'. They have borrowed almost no new words but instead make up new ones. Many of the new ideas gained mythic Navajo stories to completely assimilate them. The Navajo are matrilineal and exogamous to such a degree that it is incest to marry into the clan of any of your four grandparents. This means many clans have roots in neighboring tribes which allowed them perhaps to embrace new ideas and expand. In 1864 came disaster but that in the end was solved too. Kit Carson, largely against his will, was ordered to defeat the Navajo. His scorched earth tactics forced them to internment camps for 4 years. However, there is something very appealing to many key people in the larger Anglo culture about traditional Navajo beliefs and culture. The overwhelming emphasis on Hozho, beauty and balance and health, the tendency to believe moderation in expression was the proper adult mode of communication won over many. The scandals about the corruption at the internment camps were exposed. The Navajo were also forged into perhaps a more united people during this time as a response to the horrible losses. When offered to move to Oklahoma they united and said they would rather die. This shamed those that had imprisoned them. In 1868 they were allowed to return home. They gave up raiding as part of their life ways but they still had sheep and goats and raising corn as traditional occupations. Perhaps the strong matrilineal traditions helped too. The healing chantways and the ideas behind them undoubtedly helped a great deal as well. The emphasis on not holding on to anger, on balance and growth surly was very important. So in the end by 1868, they were back in their traditional lands and able to practice most of their traditional lifestyles and beliefs. They rebuilt their herds and crop lands. They continued to have powerful members of the colonial white establishment who lobbied on their behalf as well. Their lands were expanded over and over until today they are 27,000 sq miles and the population is 300,000. They retained their language loner and better than most people were able to in part because they lived in such a remote place even with the terrible attitudes on of the boarding schools. They still practice their traditional religion and philosophy. The took advantage of changes in law whenever they could, setting up the first tribal college, a representative government with real power, taking over the police and many other activities. They were lucky to have some oil and mineral revenue. They have built large scale tribal agriculture projects.
What are the names of the sons of god?
Christians believe in the one God of Abraham, also revered by Judaism and Islam. The Hebrew tradition represented the name of this god with the tetragram (transliterated from hebrew): YHWH. They further believe that this same deity revealed Himself via incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ, whose name means (roughly translated from several derivations): the annointed savior. The vast majority of Christians also believe in the triune nature of god, meaning that the one God comprises three persona: The Creator, The Sustainer, and The Redeemer traditionally referred to as: the father, the son and the holy ghost. These three persona are collectively called The Holy Trinity.I assume you mean the Christian God?His name is Elohim (a plural form of El) suggesting what is later revealed that He is a Tri-unity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit.His name is Jehovah (Yahweh) - the Covenant Keeping GodHis name is El Shaddah - the All Sufficient GodHe is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.He wants you to be in Heaven with Him for He loves you. He gave His Son to die for you. If you have an interesting in him read The Bible - especially John's Gospel.Check out this website www.gospeltruthforyou.comHe has many other Names - but I love Him for He first loved me and He saved me from my sins and made me fit for heaven.Please seek Him - nothing else in the world matters so much.God blessAndrew
