Navajo Placenames and Trails of the Canyon de Chelly System, Arizona

Navajo Placenames and Trails of the Canyon de Chelly System, Arizona
Author: Stephen C. Jett
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2001
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN:

Placenames also function as mnemonic devices that may facilitate communication, travel, resource-finding, and mythological memory, and as such are highly charged linguistic symbols.".

A Diné History of Navajoland

A Diné History of Navajoland
Author: Klara Kelley
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2019-10-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0816540535

For the first time, a sweeping history of the Diné that is foregrounded in oral tradition. Authors Klara Kelley and Harris Francis share Diné history from pre-Columbian time to the present, using ethnographic interviews in which Navajo people reveal their oral histories on key events such as Athabaskan migrations, trading and trails, Diné clans, the Long Walk of 1864, and the struggle to keep their culture alive under colonizers who brought the railroad, coal mining, trading posts, and, finally, climate change. The early chapters, based on ceremonial origin stories, tell about Diné forebears. Next come the histories of Diné clans from late pre-Columbian to early post-Columbian times, and the coming together of the Diné as a sovereign people. Later chapters are based on histories of families, individuals, and communities, and tell how the Diné have struggled to keep their bond with the land under settler encroachment, relocation, loss of land-based self-sufficiency through the trading-post system, energy resource extraction, and climate change. Archaeological and documentary information supplements the oral histories, providing a comprehensive investigation of Navajo history and offering new insights into their twentieth-century relationships with Hispanic and Anglo settlers. For Diné readers, the book offers empowering histories and stories of Diné cultural sovereignty. “In short,” the authors say, “it may help you to know how you came to be where—and who—you are.”

Viewing the Ancestors

Viewing the Ancestors
Author: Robert S. McPherson
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2014-03-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806145706

The Anaasází people left behind marvelous structures, the ruins of which are preserved at Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, and Canyon de Chelly. But what do we know about these people, and how do they relate to Native nations living in the Southwest today? Archaeologists have long studied the American Southwest, but as historian Robert McPherson shows in Viewing the Ancestors, their findings may not tell the whole story. McPherson maintains that combining archaeology with knowledge derived from the oral traditions of the Navajo, Ute, Paiute, and Hopi peoples yields a more complete history. McPherson’s approach to oral tradition reveals evidence that, contrary to the archaeological consensus that these groups did not coexist, the Navajos interacted with their Anaasází neighbors. In addition to examining archaeological literature, McPherson has studied traditional teachings and interviewed Native people to obtain accounts of their history and of the relations between the Anaasází and Athapaskan ancestors of today’s Hopi, Pueblo, and Navajo peoples. Oral history, McPherson points out, tells why things happened. For example, archaeological findings indicate that the Hopi are descended from the Anaasází, but Hopi oral tradition better explains why the ancient Puebloans may have left the Four Corners region: the drought that may have driven the Anaasází away was a symptom of what had gone wrong within the society—a point that few archaeologists could derive from what is found in the ground. An important text for non-Native scholars as well as Native people committed to retaining traditional knowledge, Viewing the Ancestors exemplifies collaboration between the sciences and oral traditions rather than a contest between the two.

Homelands

Homelands
Author: Richard L. Nostrand
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2003-05-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0801876605

What does it mean to be from somewhere? If most people in the United States are "from some place else" what is an American homeland? In answering these questions, the contributors to Homelands: A Geography of Culture and Place across America offer a geographical vision of territory and the formation of discrete communities in the U.S. today. Homelands discusses groups such as the Yankees in New England, Old Order Amish in Ohio, African Americans in the plantation South, Navajos in the Southwest, Russians in California, and several other peoples and places. Homelands explores the connection of people and place by showing how aspects of several different North American groups found their niche and created a homeland. A collection of fifteen essays, Homelands is an innovative look at geographical concepts in community settings. It is also an exploration of the academic work taking place about homelands and their people, of how factors such as culture, settlement, and cartographic concepts come together in American sociology. There is much not only to study but also to celebrate about American homelands. As the editors state, "Underlying today's pluralistic society are homelands—large and small, strong and weak—that endure in some way. The mosaic of homelands to which people bonded in greater or lesser degrees, affirms in a holistic way America's diversity, its pluralistic society." The authors depict the cultural effects of immigrant settlement. The conviction that people need to participate in the life of the homeland to achieve their own self realization, within the traditions and comforts of that community. Homelands gives us a new map of the United States, a map drawn with people's lives and the land that is their home.

Landscape in Language

Landscape in Language
Author: David M. Mark
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2011
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027202869

This volume focuses on how landscape is represented in language and thought and what this reveals about the relationships of people to place and to land. -- Back cover.

On Zion’s Mount

On Zion’s Mount
Author: Jared Farmer
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 472
Release: 2010-04-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674036719

Shrouded in the lore of legendary Indians, Mt. Timpanogos beckons the urban populace of Utah. And yet, no “Indian” legend graced the mount until Mormon settlers conjured it—once they had displaced the local Indians, the Utes, from their actual landmark, Utah Lake. On Zion’s Mount tells the story of this curious shift. It is a quintessentially American story about the fraught process of making oneself “native” in a strange land. But it is also a complex tale of how cultures confer meaning on the environment—how they create homelands. Only in Utah did Euro-American settlers conceive of having a homeland in the Native American sense—an endemic spiritual geography. They called it “Zion.” Mormonism, a religion indigenous to the United States, originally embraced Indians as “Lamanites,” or spiritual kin. On Zion’s Mount shows how, paradoxically, the Mormons created their homeland at the expense of the local Indians—and how they expressed their sense of belonging by investing Timpanogos with “Indian” meaning. This same pattern was repeated across the United States. Jared Farmer reveals how settlers and their descendants (the new natives) bestowed “Indian” place names and recited pseudo-Indian legends about those places—cultural acts that still affect the way we think about American Indians and American landscapes.

Native American Placenames of the United States

Native American Placenames of the United States
Author: William Bright
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 632
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780806135984

This volume combines historical research and linguistic fieldwork with native speakers from across the United States to present the first comprehensive, up-to-date, scholarly dictionary of American placenames derived from native languages." "Linguist William Bright assembled a team of twelve editorial consultants - experts in Native American languages - and many other native contributors to prepare this lexicon of eleven thousand placenames along with their etymologies. New data from leading scholars make this volume an invaluable reference for students of American Indian culture, folklore, and local histories. Bright's introduction explains his methodology and the contents of each entry. This comprehensive, alphabetical lexicon preserves native language as it details the history and culture found in American indian placenames.

Crossing Between Worlds

Crossing Between Worlds
Author: Jeanne M. Simonelli
Publisher: Waveland Press
Total Pages: 153
Release: 2008-03-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1478610239

The Navajo people of Canyon de Chelly must negotiate a delicate balance between the old and the new as they struggle to maintain their traditional ways of life in the midst of archaeologists, U.S. Park Service employees, and the increasing numbers of tourists who come to visit this hauntingly beautiful part of northeastern Arizona. Anthropologist-writer Jeanne Simonelli, who worked at Canyon de Chelly as a seasonal park ranger, interweaves stories of her personal experiences and friendships with canyon residents with discussions of native history and culture in the region. Focusing on the members of one extended Navajo family, Simonelli describes the small moments of their daily lives: shearing goats, baking bread, attending a solemn all-night health ceremony, washing clothes at the local laundromat, playing traditional games and contemporary sports, talking about the history of the Dinthe Navajo peopleand pondering the changes they have witnessed in the canyon and the difficulties they confront. Crossing Between Worlds is sumptuously illustrated with insightful black-and-white photographs that document the everyday activities of Navajo families in one of the most spectacular corners of the American Southwest.

Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World

Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World
Author: Susan E. Alcock
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2012-03-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1118244303

Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World reveals the significance and interconnectedness of early civilizations’ pathways. This international collection of readings providing a description and comparative analysis of several sophisticated systems of transport and communication across pre-modern cultures. Offers a comparative analysis of several sophisticated systems of overland transport and communication networks across pre-modern cultures Addresses the burgeoning interest in connectivity and globalization in ancient history, archaeology, anthropology, and recent work in network analysis Explores the societal, cultural, and religious implications of various transportation networks around the globe Includes contributions from an international team of scholars with expertise on pre-modern India, China, Japan, the Americas, North Africa, Europe, and the Near East Structured to encourage comparative thinking across case studies

Landscapes of Movement

Landscapes of Movement
Author: James E. Snead
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1934536539

The essays in this volume document trails, paths, and roads across different times and cultures, from those built by hunter-gatherers in the Great Basin of North America to causeway builders in the Bolivian Amazon to Bronze Age farms in the Near East, through aerial and satellite photography, surface survey, historical records, and excavation.