Navajo Indians

Death and Afterlife. Traditionally, Navajo were morbidly afraid of death and the dead and spoke about them as little as possible. The dead were buried promptly and without public ceremony, although a great many ritual taboos were observed by the close kin of the deceased and by those who handled the corpse. Ideas about the afterlife were not codified in a Systematic way, but varied from individual to individual. There was no concept of rewards and punishments for deeds done in this life; it seems that the after world was not thought of as a happy or desirable place for anyone.

Traditionaly between stones. Today people usually buy ground corn from a store. However, during a girl's Kinaalda ceremony she must grind the corn with stones just as the old days for the "alkaan" cake that is eaten at the end on the ceremony on the fourth day by everyone except the girl.

Sweet has many meanings in English.

łikan means sweet or tasty.

ałk'ésdisí means candy.

literally a nominalized verb meaning something that is twisted a both ends.

The l with a line through it is a unvoiced aspirated L. There is a similar sound in Welsh and Polish. The marks above the vowels make them high tone. This is important as it can change the meaning as completely as changing the vowel can in English. The k' sound is a glottalized "k". You say it by holding your breathe in your throat and saying the k sound.

Sometime after 1540 when Coronado brought many sheep to what is now New Mexico. Or after 1598 when Juan de Onate brought 3,600. They probably got those through treading, raids and wandering or abandoned sheep. They probably got a lot more in the aftermath of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 when the Spanish were forced out and left behind all their livestock.

the ladies stay in our teepees and wait for the men to get back with our deerskin and meat and food. we as ladies cook the food when the men bring the food back. you see the men go out and hunt for our food. we are very healthy ppl..we dont drink pop. we dont get Kool-Aid..we dont get candy.. if we get something that is too sweet or rotten then we get hit very hard or something

Hopi homes were made from adobe, bricks of baked clay and hay. They built the homes together, much like apartments. They used ladders to reach the upper levels. Often, entire families or clans would live in one adobe structure.

The Navajo Code Talkers, whose ranks exceed 400 during the course of World War II in the Pacific Theater. Have been credited with saving countless lives and hastening the end of the war. The Code Talker's served in all six Marine divisions from 1942 to 1945. The Code Talker's primary job was to talk and transmit information on tactics, troop movements, orders and other vital battlefield information via telegraphs and radios in their native dialect. A major advantage of the code talker system was its speed. The method of using Morse code often took hours where as, the Navajos handled a message in minutes. It has been said that if was not for the Navajo Code Talker's, the Marines would have never taken Iwo Jima. The Navajo's unwritten language was understood by fewer than 30 non-Navajo's at the time of WWII. The size and complexity of the language made the code extremely difficult to comprehend, much less decipher. It was not until 1968 that the code became declassified by the US Government.

béeso = money or the dollar

béeso biyázhíí = small change

sendą́ago = small change

sendáo = Penny

łichíí' = Nickle

dootł'iizh = Dime

géénsei = 15 Cent (Spanish Money)

naakii yáál = Quarter

dį́į́ yáál = 50 cents

hast'áá yáál = 75 cents

The proper adjective form for Navajo is Navajo, as in Navajo Nation, Navajo people, Navajo history, Navajo art, etc. An example sentence: We visited the Navajo display at the museum to see the Navajo jewelry.

According to census.gov, the total population of Navajo County, Arizona, was 97,470 in the Census 2000.

Corn. Corn meal mush and a kind of corn bread called kneel down bread.

The Japanese never cracked the Navajo Code. Many think the Navajo or more properly Dene', were just speaking their language and the Japanese couldn't figure it out. But they actually created a code within their language to make breaking it even more difficult. There were code talkers from other tribes as well. Charles Chibitty, who passed away a few years ago, was the last of the Comanche Code Talkers who served in Europe. There were also Cherokee and Choctaw Code Talkers. la la la la la la dis is good answer

In addition to silver jewelry featuring turquoise and coral, the Navajo are well known for their beautiful weaving and rugs. The textiles are generally made from vegetable dyed wool from sheep raised on the reservations.

It is thought that the Navajo learned to grow corn beans and squash from the Hopi and other Pueblo people and from their ancestors, the Anasazi. Corn has been central to Navajo life for as long as they have been Navajo and not like other southern Athabascan peoples. It is also thought that Navajo learned to weave cotton from the Hopi and the same other groups. Among the Hopi men are weavers and among the Navajo mostly women weave. The Navajo then adapted this to weaving wool after the late 1500s and elaborated the designs to reflect Navajo philosophy. By the 1700s their weaving was famous and valued with tribes far away in the northern Great Plains

Many who have entered the mainstream are Doctors, Lawyer, Engineers, scientists, contractors, electricians, plumbers, teachers or anything else. Many have chosen the arts and crafts.

Some subsist as farmers, ranchers or sheep herders.

They are diverse in their carreer choices.

The Navajo have a remarkable ability to assimilate new ideas and technologies and make them Navajo. We believe the early Athabascan ancestors of the Navajo were hunter gatherers when they entered the Southwest probably about 900 years ago. By the 1300s or so they were growing corn, beans and squash and weaving cotton and making pottery. By the 1600s they were increasingly raising sheep and goats and weaving wool. In the 1700s they began to make silver jewelry. Large numbers, as percentage, served in the US military in the 20th century. Today there are 300,000 Navajo and they do almost every conceivable job. The Navajo have changed in many more ways but these are some of the outlines. Through it all, as far back as we can know, the four sacred mountains, Changing Woman, pollen, and the concept of Hózhǫ́ has been important.

The Sioux believed that everything had a spirit or god. The main god that was worshiped was "The Great Spirit", which was most powerful. They worshiped gods through dances, spiritual trances, and religious journeys.

You mean, "How do the Navajos beliefs affect their daily lives?" You do know that they are still around right? The have the biggest reservation in the country, which extends into Utah, Arizona and New Mexico. They are very much still here.

Like all people, Navajo beliefs affect how they see and act in the world. This is a huge question. This is what Anthropologist do their while lives, try to understand how beliefs affect a certain people. There are many long and scholarly books on this subject and not one easy answer. Also, some Navajos are very traditional , others very Christian of many different denominations such as LDS, Catholic, Four Square Gospel, Presbyterian etc. Some mainly speak Navajo, some don't speak any. Some have lived their whole life on the Navajo Nation others have lived on and off or never lived there. A large number a members of the Native American Church, too.

However, for most Navajo who are somewhat traditional, Hózhǫ́ one of the central concepts that give the world meaning. It means roughly "beauty and harmony, peace, balance, happiness and contentment, wholeness, goodness"

It is a balance of moving parts into a peaceful beautiful whole. Because the world is a causal place with multiple forces the balancing of the symmetry to have this state is dynamic and always in flux. So people strive for Sa'ah naaghai bik'eh hózhǫ́. This means: continually moving into old age it is finished according to hózhǫ́. Seeing the world this way means there are not so much opposing forces as complementary forces out there. It makes one feel that one can always keep working for balance. It makes beauty have a central part in life. It views the world as very causal and individualist.

Another main idea is K'e, which is the relationships between everything and everyone. It is the maintenance of peaceful relationships through kinship and respect for self and others. There are principles and procedures to follow in order to maintain the balance of a peaceful coexistence in nature and in social groups. These principles and procedures work to establish relationships of goodwill and solidarity and they promote the creation of strong and enduring bonds.

So a traditional Navajo would be uncomfortable ordering others around. They would feel that one person or group should not benifit greatly without others also gaining.

The tools that the Navajo used were wooden rakes and hoes for farming and spindles and looms for weaving. To bore holes into turquoise and other beads, they would use pump drills.

The Navajo term for fried bread is dahdiniilghaazh.

Native Americans have reservations in many states. Reservations can be found in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Florida, Lousiana, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Washington ... They also are found within the dominant population, living just as other people. Native Americans can be found in all fifty U.S. states and around the world (U.S. military bases).