Table of Contents
Most of what this site holds on the Navajo comes from elders speaking on camera, not from books about them. They talk about the Holy People who put each person in their place, about a blanket over the doorway of the mind that hides a life lived before this one, and about the Anasazi, a people they remember very differently from the way the guidebooks do. These talks turn up across many video pages, so this page puts them in order.
The Holy People and the life before
On Remembering a Life Before This World every person is a sacred being, the offspring of holy people, with a life that came before this one. Native American (Navajo) Ceremony Insights explains why that life is forgotten through the door covering of a hogan ceremony: a blanket over the mind keeps us from seeing the holy people, and at the end of this life they will ask who we are before we may pass. On The Truth About The Rainbow the rainbow is the way the holy people speak to us, and it is pointed at with the thumb, like a medicine bundle or a newborn child.
The elders also teach how to live with that place. On Navajo Sacred Teaching About Returning to The Place The Holy People Put You an elder is taught to go back to the land where he was born and take some of its earth, in thanks to the holy people. On A Navajo teaching on people who do harm each person picks a direction and keeps growing that way, toward what is good or toward harm.
The Anasazi and the cliff dwellers
The strongest Navajo teaching on the site is about the Anasazi. On The True Origins of the Anasazi… Navajo Teachings the Anaza were in the Southwest for only about 300 years. The Anasazi: Slave trade and enforced obedience sets out the rest: the Pueblo people and the cliff dwellers were there first, many clan names come from the cliff dwellers, and the Anasazi built walls to keep slaves in rather than enemies out. Their pottery is said to boast that they could move the heart of one dog into another and keep both alive.
On How one telling derives the Navajo name, Six Fingers Xi traces the name Navajo itself to the Anasazi, and from them to the Spaniards who came north looking for gold:
they were looking for this fabled Seven Cities of gold
Six Fingers Xi, A telling of the Navajo name, at 2:51
The same Spanish search reaches the canyon the Navajo call Bahas on Legend of the Grand Canyon.
Where the Navajo themselves came from is told on Changing Woman, where the speakers rely on the oral history of the elders, which says the people came from the north.
K’é, the clans and the land
On The Power of Family & Clan: Native American (Navajo) Teachings on K’é family reaches far past parents and siblings, and the clans begin with four groups: the Towering House People, the Black Streak Wood People, the Bitterwater People and the Edgewater People. On Navajo Teaching about Sedona the teacher asks listeners to recover their own family history, because the children are no longer learning it correctly.
Visitors in the sky
On Navajo Stories of Unexplained Flying Objects the elders keep a place for what cannot be explained:
All people always wanted us to be aware that there are times that when we see things that cannot be explained
Navajo Traditional Teachings, Navajo Stories of Unexplained Flying Objects, at 2:22
Such sightings were rarely shared by a crowd. One or two people saw them, and what they saw was carved into the rock so that later generations would remember.
Related pages
- The Anasazi: Slave trade and enforced obedience
- The True Origins of the Anasazi… Navajo Teachings
- Remembering a Life Before This World
- Native American (Navajo) Ceremony Insights
- The Power of Family & Clan: Native American (Navajo) Teachings on K’é
- Navajo Stories of Unexplained Flying Objects
- How one telling derives the Navajo name
- Legend of the Grand Canyon
- The Truth About The Rainbow
For every page I tagged with navajo, see the navajo tag archive.
