The Dark Wind (1982)

An intrusive igneous rock that forms when magma slowly crystalizes beneath the earth’s surface instead of erupting through the earth's surface as a dynamic expression of volcanic activity. When magma cools underground, it forms large crystals, giving granite its speckled appearance. Granite is commonly found throughout the U.S. Southwest since there are many volcanic mountain ranges in this region.

A fine-grained sedimentary rock formed out of mud, clay, silt, and other small minerals. In large quantities, for example on a mountain side, shale has the appearance of thin stacked layers of rock. Shale is often used in ceramics, tiles, bricks, and pottery.

Two Gray Hills is the fictitious Indian boarding school that Jim Chee attends. It is located near the Two Gray Hills trading post in the northwest corner of New Mexico on the Navajo Nation Reservation. Indian boarding schools often operated as missions; their main goal was to assimilate Native American children into what was understood as the dominant U.S. culture via conversion to Christianity, loss of indigenous language and lifeways, and training in service work. Physical, sexual, and psychological abuse were common at boarding schools.

A high school located in Tuba City, Arizona, serving students from the surrounding rural parts of the Navajo Nation Reservation and the Hopi Reservation in Northeastern Arizona. The school, which was founded in 1935, was and still is a very small institution. The graduating classes of the first few years consisted of one alumnae each, 1986 had a record number of 29 graduating students, and the class of 2015 had six graduating students.

Springs are areas on the landscape where groundwater is pushed by gravity or pressure to the surface through unconsolidated sediment or fractures in the bedrock. Springs often manifest as ponds or seeps of water on the surface.