Navajo Omens And Taboos

Navajo Taboos is not some scholarly work by an anthropologist, but an insider's look at a body of folk beliefs shared by many Navajos, illuminating their cultural priorities. The taboos were collected by Navajo students for their own information and previously published in pamphlet form by the Navajo Tribe as the first volume in their Cultural Series of publications. The taboos have been organized and interpreted by Ernie Bulow, who has spent his entire life around Navajos and other tribes of the Southwest as a teacher, writer and Indian trader. The book is a respectful compilation of Navajo beliefs that set them apart from all other groups while at the same time illustrating the universal fears and concerns found in all cultures.

Navajo Taboos is not some scholarly work by an anthropologist, but an insider's look at a body of folk beliefs shared by many Navajos, illuminating their cultural priorities. The taboos were collected by Navajo students for their own information and previously published in pamphlet form by the Navajo Tribe as the first volume in their Cultural Series of publications. The taboos have been organized and interpreted by Ernie Bulow, who has spent his entire life around Navajos and other tribes of the Southwest as a teacher, writer and Indian trader. The book is a respectful compilation of Navajo beliefs that set them apart from all other groups while at the same time illustrating the universal fears and concerns found in all cultures.

This text examines the traditional Navajo relationship to the natural world. Specifically, how the tribe once related to the Animal People, and particularly a category of animals, which they collectively referred to as the naatl' eetsoh - the "ones who hunt." These animals, like Native Americans, were once viewed as impediments to progress requiring extermination.

"I think what is always really amazing to me is that Navajo are never amazed by anything that happens. Because it is like in a lot of our stories they are already there."--Sunny Dooley, Navajo Storyteller During the final decade of the twentieth century, Navajo people had to confront a number of challenges, from unexplained illness, the effects of uranium mining, and problem drinking to threats to their land rights and spirituality. Yet no matter how alarming these issues, Navajo people made sense of them by drawing guidance from what they regarded as their charter for life, their origin stories. Through extensive interviews, Maureen Trudelle Schwarz allows Navajo to speak for themselves on the ways they find to respond to crises and chronic issues. In capturing what Navajo say and think about themselves, Schwarz presents this southwestern people's perceptions, values, and sense of place in the world.

This volume grew out of a symposium held at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in November 1969 at New Orleans, Louisiana. The "Apachean Symposium" was designed to provide an opportunity for scholars engaged in research on southern Athapaskan cultures to report upon their findings, and wherever possible, to link them to known fact and existing theory. The diverse work presented here will add significantly to the knowledge about Apachean cultures, and each of contributions also pertains directly to wider spheres of anthropological concern.

A comprehensive guide to the historic and contemporary indigenous cultures of the American Southwest, intended for college courses and the general reader.

The most complete and current history of the largest American Indian nation in the U.S., based on extensive new archival research, traditional histories, interviews, and personal observation.