Listening Woman (1978)

Found throughout almost every region of the Northern Hemisphere, golden eagles are one of the most common and largest predatory birds on the planet. They mainly prey on ground mammals, but have been known to attack larger animals including coyotes and bears to defend their offspring. This eagle is distinguishable because of the gleam of its golden-brown feathers because of its powerful beak and large talons.

Gila monster is one of the Navajo Holy People and is thought to be the original medicine man (according to the Flintway ceremony). When drawn in sand paintings and other representations, Gila monster appears as the large, venomous lizard known as the Gila monster, whose native habitat is the Southwestern U.S.. The Gila monster is associated with Navajo traditional healers, especially "hand trembles," because the animal's foot is thought to shake when he walks. Trembling hands are a sign that one has been infected by the Gila Monster is meant to be a healer.

Geology is the study of the Earth, what it's made of, how it came to be made out of those materials, and the processes that have acted, and continue to act, upon those materials, including natural and human-caused disasters at the local and global scales.

A scientist whose work it is to understand the history of our planet. Geology is the study of the Earth, what it's made of, how it came to be made out of those materials, and the processes that have acted, and continue to act, upon those materials, including natural and human-caused disasters at the local and global scales.

Ganado High School is located on the Navajo Reservation in Northeastern Arizona. Most of the students who attend Ganado High School are Native American. The school is a member of the Arizona Interscholastic Association and its mission is “to ensure all students a quality education and strengthen Diné cultural values for life-long learning.”

The two most common ceremonials in the Navajo religion are the Blessingway (Hózhójí) and the Enemyway (‘Anaaʼjí). While the Blessingway is often sung over individuals to ensure good luck and blessings, the Enemyway is sung in order to protect Navajos from harmful ghosts of slain warriors, or in more contemporary parlance, to protect Navajos from the deleterious effects of non-Native influences. This ceremonial can be used for returning military personnel to rid them of the harmful effects of evil spirits, or chindi, of the slain, as well as the associated harmful effects of modernity both on and off the reservation. Leland Wyman defined the Enemyway as a ritual used to “…exorcise the ghosts of aliens, [which] makes much of war, violence, and ugliness; in fact it belongs in a native category of ceremonials usually translated as Evilway” (1983).

In the Navajo origin story, the Earth Surface People were created by Changing Woman. Later, the Holy People taught them how to live in the Navajo Way. This is how the ways of the people were first learned by the inhabitants of the fourth world, in which the Navajo now live.

Some accounts note that when some of the Holy People became exposed to death, they became the Earth Surface People.

A nitroglycerin-based explosive material often used for construction, mining, and demolition. Dynamite was patented in 1867 by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish chemist, and ironically, the inceptor of the Nobel Peace Prize. The name “dynamite” comes from the Ancient Greek work for “power”, δύναμις (dýnamis). Dynamite is composed of earthy materials, such as sawdust, soaked in nitroglycerin, which when exposed to heat can cause a detonation. If left in storage for too long, nitroglycerin can seep from the sawdust into surrounding materials and make the dynamite unstable, thereby causing unexpected explosions. Today, dynamite is wrapped in plastic or a wax-coating to eliminate this risk.

A sinuous, vertical column of air that twists from the ground into the atmosphere, a dust devil is a small version of a tornado. Developing during hot, dry conditions, dust devils are a sign of instability in the atmosphere caused when air near the surface of the earth rapidly heats and rises, pulling in its wake dust and and small debris.

The temporary state of a person's physical and mental functions being impaired by the over-consumption of alcoholic beverages.

The history of alcohol use by Native Americans is a long and tortured one. Alcohol was introduced to many North American tribes by European settlers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, first as an item of trade and later as a substance that was intended to deliberately interfere with the groups’ traditional way of life. Alcohol has been and continues to be extensively "abused" by Native Americans on and off reservations, and the reasons for this abuse are many, and include problems of social, political, and financial nature. None of these reasons, however, can nor should be linked to a supposed indigenous or cultural predilection toward drunkenness. Instead, the effects of poverty, isolation, and lack of educational and other resources are the stimuli that engender alcohol abuse in Native American populations.

In his Navajo detective novels, Tony Hillerman notes both the beauty and the darkness he saw in the Southwest. Substance abuse, physical violence, greed, and crime were examples of the darkness he found; expressions of individual and cultural imbalances whose root causes he depicts as originating in modern U.S. society, rather than as organic to Native communities.