Table of Contents
Navajo Traditional Teachings takes winter stories as lessons about a gift from the Holy People. Coyote tales and emergence accounts are there to show useful acts and errors worth avoiding. One story sends two boys toward their father. Spider Woman gives them directions, a feather, and the wind. A cornfield on the road would have closed and cut them, so the wind turns them aside. The feather belongs in that picture because the slightest air moves it. Daily life, he says, is full of false leads. Each person is born with a spirit that can tell the genuine from the fake, like a soft breeze that quietly marks what is right. Wanting to do right is how a person hears it more clearly. The Beauty Way in this teaching is a road of joy, confidence, and peace, modeled on those boys walking back toward their father. The warning is that good things are given up when someone follows a false lead, and a saying of his people puts that choice on the hearer.
Key points
- Winter stories about Coyote and the emergence are treated as lessons, not only as entertainment.
- Two boys traveling toward their father are given directions, a feather, and help from the wind through Spider Woman.
- The wind turns them away from a cornfield that would have closed and cut them apart.
- A feather is the picture for this help, because it answers the smallest movement of air.
- Every person is said to be born able to separate what is genuine from what is fake.
- Joy and peace on the Beauty Way depend on not handing good things over to a false lead.
Short quotes
learn from the things that coyote does or the things that coyote doesn't do
Navajo Traditional Teachings, Navajo teaching on the guiding spirit
Coyote stories in this teaching are lessons in what to imitate and what to refuse. Watch at 1:44
we are all born with that particular spirit
Navajo Traditional Teachings, Navajo teaching on the guiding spirit
He says the guiding help is present from birth, already in each person. Watch at 5:11
we all know what's right and wrong
Navajo Traditional Teachings, Navajo teaching on the guiding spirit
The lesson ends by saying people can already tell a true path from a false one. Watch at 7:38
Video by Navajo Traditional Teachings. Watch on YouTube.