Navajo Culture

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NAVAJO CULTURE

Navajo Culture

Navajo Culture

Introduction

Navajo is one of many native tribes of America that have survived to this day. It is currently the largest indigenous group of the United States of America inhabiting mainly the Southwestern region of the country (Stan & Lazzarino, 1989). The tribe offers much attraction for the world in terms of their material culture, religion, social norms, traditions etc. This paper aims at discussing the culture of Navajo people, while exploring the history of largest native America tribe currently living in the United States of America with the purpose of assessing how their unique society, culture, norms, tradition and ways of living have been developed over the centuries.

Discussion

Demography

Navajo are currently the largest Native American tribe living in the United States. Its population consists of nearly 300, 000 tribal members of which 166, 000 live at the reserve located in the four states, namely Arizona, Colorado. From the geographical perspective, it covers an area of about 71 thousand km ², of which most of the land is located within the Colorado Plateau. Navajo call themselves "Dine," which means "the people". Originally it was a tribe of hunters, carrying the herds of wild animals. Historically the tribe led militant lifestyle and attacked the Pueblo Indians (Roessel & Navajo Academy, 1982).

Early Navajo Civilization

Around this time the Navajo people learned the skills of cultivation from Pueblo Indians, and subsequently adopted a more sedentary lifestyle. Later they started cultivating corn which, over the time, became their main food, and also the subject of many myths and legends. Even today, they cultivate yellow corn, which symbolizes prosperity and renewal of cycle life for them. Corn is also a part of their prayer rituals, symbolizing the light from which the first people - a woman and a man were born.

According to the Navajo mythology, this was the last of the five worlds. Four previous existed underground. Each world was symbolized with a different color. However, these colors were never shown to the people living on earth. People lived in each of the worlds, gradually aiming towards the top, and finally escaped to the surface of the earth. Here they established light, created the moon, the sun, clouds and stars (Kluckhohn, 1962).

In about seventeenth century, Navajo began demonstrated keen interest in expanding their role from mere hunters and farmers. They started raising different animals such as horses and sheep. During that time they are one of the prosperous tribes living in America, as evidenced by their possession of slaves, mainly Indians of other tribes. Navajo learned different skills from Spanish and many of them became silver smiths and began making jewelry. However, their freedom of pastures and fields did not last long.

Arrival of Europeans

When the white Europeans have arrived in America, the Navajo people, like other indigenous Indian tribes of the region, were forced to hide in caves rock on the canyon bottoms. It is from this period many pictograms painted on the walls of rock have survived, which occupied by ...
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