The Blessing Way (1970)

Every Southwestern Pueblo society has slightly different ceremonial practices, yet each Pueblo maintains a variety of priesthoods that perform ceremonies in kivas and plazas. These priesthoods are also known as secret or kiva societies. Each society has a different obligation it fulfills for the benefit of the Pueblo at large, including farming, healing, and even warrior duties. Boys between the ages of five to fourteen, depending on the Pueblo, are initiated into a society, and members of the kiva societies act as their sponsors as they learn the duties, rites, dances, and ceremonials associated with their kiva.

One of the spirit guardian creatures of the Navajo people, Big Snake is a mythological creature associated with sacred sand paintings as well as healing ceremonies. According to some versions of the Navajo creation account, First Man and First Woman, after creating the sacred mountains of Dinétah (the Navajo homeland), sent Big Snake to guard the turquoise of Tsoodzil (Turquoise Mountain), or what is known today as Mount Taylor, located just northeast of present day Grants, NM.

In many traditional cultures, turquoise has been valued for its color, which evokes both the sky and water. Because of the significance of the sky, which facilitates the passage of the sun and the coming of rain, turquoise is often referred to as “the sky stone.” Turquoise is associated with life, health, fortune, and blessings. Turquoise can be found in medicine pouches, incorporated into Zuni fetishes, carved into beads, and set as larger stones in traditional Navajo and Pueblo silver work, although it wasn’t until the late 19th century that turquoise was associated with silver jewelry, when Atsidi Sani, a Navajo silversmith, began incorporating turquoise stones into the Spanish-style silversmithing he had learned as an apprentice. Silver and turquoise jewelry was popularized by the burgeoning tourist trade in the Southwest, and nearby Pueblo people, Hopi and Zuni, also began making turquoise jewelry.

In Navajo and Pueblo traditions, as well as many other Native American cultures, the underworld is thought of as the watery, dark realm of creation from which people emerged into the present world. The underworld represents the various levels of existence through which people journey before finally rising onto the surface of the Earth to exist in the world as we know it now. While the underworld is believed to be the place of human origin, it also represents the realm of spirits, gods, or the Holy People, and it is where the dead reside after passing away from this world..

Also spelled Hastiin, Hosteen is a term of respectful address in Navajo meaning man or husband. In Navajo, "First Man," from the Navajo Origin Story, is called Áłtsé Hastiin. Often, Hosteen is used before a last name, functioning in a way that is similar to the usage of Mister (Mr.) in English.

The great blue heron is a large water bird native to North America. It can be found in saltwater as well as freshwater habitats, and is quite common in the Southwest, along riverbanks, marshes, and lakes.

In the Navajo creation myth, the First World (or underworld) was completely dark, with a small island in the middle of four seas. The Heron was one of the supernatural beings who was in charge of one of the seas. The other three rulers were Big Water Creature, Frog, and White Thunder. The Heron is also associated with the Second World, which is characterized by the color blue. Finally, Heron is the creature sent back into the underworld to fetch witchcraft, an ambiguous bundle of powers that can be employed for good or bad reasons, at the behest of First Woman and First Man.

Pressured to cooperate with the U.S. federal government in order retain at least some vestige of recognition as a sovereign nation, the Navajo Nation transitioned from traditional governance to a representative system in 1922. Under the paternalistic guidance of the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, the Navajo Business Council was created to negotiate mineral releases on tribal lands. In 1934 they disbanded after refusing to adopt the Indian Reorganization Act, only to reform under a new name, Navajo Nation Council, in 1937. The Navajo Tribal Council is presided over by a council-elected speaker and includes 24 elected members from 110 tribal chapters. The Navajo Tribal Council meets at Window Rock, Arizona at least four times a year, when they discuss new legislation for and issues on the Navajo Nation Reservation.

This mountain range runs north to south and is located east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The highest peak, Sandia Crest, is 10,678 feet in elevation. The range may have originally been called “San Diaz” or Saint Diaz. Another theory suggests that, because Sandia is Spanish for “watermelon,” Sandia could refer to the pink color the mountains reflect at sunset. The name for the mountain in Navajo is, “Dził Nááyisí” or “Mountain that Revolves,” perhaps referring to the large circular bowls that form the west-facing aspect of the range.

In 1865, in order to subdue the Navajo, the U.S. Army rounded up the Navajo and forcibly made them walk 450 miles from their homeland, centered near Canyon de Chelley in northwestern New Mexico, to the Fort Sumner/Bosque Redondo reservation in southeastern New Mexico. Known as “The Long Walk,” four primary routes comprised the forced march: two skirted the western edge of the Sandia Mountains and two cut through Tijeras canyon and across the Sandia Mountains. Therefore, this unfortunate part of Navajo history is tied to the mountain range.

Additionally, there is a Paleolithic site on the north end of the mountain range in Sandia Cave. This site includes stone tools from the ancient Sandia Culture, which were excavated in the 1930s and 1940s by Frank Hibben, an archaeology professor from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

Also known as hatałii in Navajo, singers, like medicine men, perform traditional ceremonial healing cures targeted at body, mind, and spirit, and call on the patient, his kin, the singer himself, and divine people to restore an individual's harmony with the world. Before a singer, or medicine man (they are seldom women), is called, a hand trembler (ndilniihii), often a woman, will diagnose the source of illness. Through prayer, concentration, and sprinkling of sacred pollen, her hand will tremble and pinpoint the cause, which then determines the proper ceremonial cure. Then a singer who knows the proper ceremony is called and preparations for the sing are set in motion.

There are nearly 100 Navajo sings, or chants, of varying range and intricacy. Originating from the Navajo Creation Story, they are so nuanced and complex that a singer learns only one or two sings over many years of apprenticeship. Sings last anywhere from one to nine days and include chants, songs, prayers, lectures, dances, sweat baths, prayer sticks, and sand paintings. In order for a sing to be effective, everything must be done as prescribed in the legends.

A social, cultural, and political category that refers to the "dominant" culture of the U.S., a category primarily understood as a racial construction that expresses the legacies of Western European hegemony. Many critiques of "whiteness" exist. General analysis suggests that whiteness has functioned since the early Enlightenment period in Europe (the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries) as an expression of increasingly dogmatic, or strict, white supremacist, patriarchal, heteronormative, and classed biases. Although since at least the 1960s critical racial and comparative ethnic frameworks, in addition to versions of feminist and queer theories, have challenged the privileges that have inhered in "whiteness," critical indigenous critiques comprise a burgeoning field of scholarship and activism that also challenge the colonial settler histories and contemporary practices associated with whiteness.