Listening Woman (1978)

Long Walk

The name given to the traumatic experience of 8,000 Navajo in 1863 when Kit Carson and the New Mexico Volunteers forced the People to leave their traditional homeland and walk several hundred miles to a new, smaller reservation, Bosque Redondo, to be shared with the Apache.

Wounded Knee (occupation)

On February 28, 1973, Native American activists occupied the small village of Wounded Knee within the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota as a part of the American Indian Movement, after the 19 month occupation of Alcatraz. Wounded Knee was also the site of a massacre of Lakota Sioux by the US Army in 1890, which is considered the last event in long-lasting Plains Indian Wars.

The seizure of the town lasted for 71 days with various eruptions of violence, gunfire, and attempted negotiations. At any given moment, about 300 people were participating in the occupation from over 180 unique bands, tribes, and nations. Even though the village was surrounded by police, US marshals, and BIA officials, a couple hundred more protesters slipped in and out of the occupation.

Originally, local issues on the Pine Ridge Reservation involving tribal police and inheritance conflicts led to the occupation, and many community members supported and took part in what became Aim's more public protest. After threats from the federal government that if they didn't leave, he would force them out, Russel Means declared that the people of Wounded Knee were part of the independent Oglala Sioux Nation as per the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 which also symbolically spoke for all the broken treaties of the United States government since the start of colonization.

Ultimately, several factors including the federal government's lack of cooperation, and a lack of food, medical supplies, ammunition, and electricity led to the end of the occupation on May 13. 1973.

ruins

In the Southwestern U.S., the primary setting for Tony Hillerman's Navajo detective series, ruins typically refer to ancient Puebloan structures that are scattered across the landscape, from cliff dwellings in high canyon alcoves to complex urban and road structures such as those found in Chaco Canyon. The relative remoteness and ruggedness of the Southwest also took its toll on European settlers, and remnants of Spanish rancheros, Hispanic villages, and Anglo-American ghost towns are found along networks of two-track dirt roads, ephemeral waterways, and defunct railroad spur lines.

At the turn-of-the-century in the Southwest, Puebloan ruins "discovered" by photographers, artists, and commercial entrepreneurs provided the perfect backdrop for marketing the Southwest as a land of ancient cultures with haunting echoes of lost civilizations. Since the Renaissance, European cultures tend to revisit their ruins, as ruins were thought to symbolize innate beauty and timeless value. Especially during the Romantic period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, ruins were artificially and artfully juxtaposed into manipulated landscapes to emphasize the picturesque "wilderness" of the landscape.

In comparison, Native American cultures in the Southwest tend to maintain a tradition of staying away from these abandoned sites, associating them ancestor spirits. This intentional distancing is a sign of respect for the ancestors, who are believed to remain tied to these places.

Ganado Mucho

Ganado Mucho, also referred to as Gañado Mucho, was a Navajo leader during 1850s and 1860s, the time of the tribe's conflict-ridden transition to reservation life and away from the indigenous sovereignty of Dinétah. Ganado Mucho preferred diplomacy and treaties over violence and remained officially neutral in many conflicts between the Navajo and the United States, often choosing not to go into battle.

Despite early resistance to Kit Carson's forceful removal of the Navajo from their tribal homelands, Ganado eventually ended up at Bosque Redondo, losing several of his daughters in slave raids to which his party was subjected during their Long Walk from northern Arizona to southeastern New Mexico. In 1868, he signed the treaty between the Navajo and the U.S., which allowed the Navajo to return to their land.

kachina

Among the Native Pueblo peoples of the American Southwest, the term kachina (often also spelled "katsina”) generally refers to protective deities; either ancestors or guardian spirits. Yet the term can also be applied to masked dancers who personify and become gods or spirits, as well as to the dolls created in the likeness of these dancers and/or the actual gods and spirits. The dolls are traditionally used to teach children to recognize the characteristics and attributes of a Pueblo's spiritual belief system. The pantheon of kachinas is different for each Pueblo, although kachinas are generally understood as supernatural manifestations of elements occurring in the natural world, such as weather phenomena, plants, and animals. In essence, kachinas are perceived as reminders of the animating presence that invests all things in the universe with life, vitality, and purpose.

In the Hopi and Zuni tradition, kachinas are tied to the various clans that make up the tribe, and kachina societies are formed accordingly, each with their own origin stories, and with a variety of ceremonies and traditional spiritual practices.

Two Grey Hills

A trading post location in the northeast corner of New Mexico on the Navajo Nation reservation. This trading post is most well known for its unique neutral colored Navajo rugs, a style which originated when the post's founders Frank and Henry Noel showed the weavers pictures of Persian rugs.

A trading post is an establishment where goods can be traded. It is also a social center where news and gossip are exchanged. Trading posts have been associated with American frontier culture since seventeenth century. Overtime, trading posts developed into a cultural institution, at first funded and backed by empire, later by national interests, and most often by enterprising business men. Trading posts became centralized hubs in a network of exchange that both participated in and circumvented the burgeoning capitalist system that was imported into the Americas along with settler colonialism. Although trading posts were intially intended to provide support to the European traders and trappers who traced their way over the North American continent, Native American groups were also drawn into the posts' exchange network, trading furs, pelts, and even scalps for finished goods such as steel knives, firearms, woven textiles, and food stuffs, including alcohol. Although not every post was poorly managed, trading posts earned a nefarious reputation for taking advantage of Native traders, by offering poor exchange rates, trading with products that were infected with diseases, and promoting the purchase and use of alcohol. Many trading posts are still in existence, and in the Southwest, they still mark "the frontier," as they are located, as they have been for centuries, at the dividing line between wilderness, Indian coutnry, or reservations and settled, ordered, and contained "civilization." Today, however, trading posts can be reached by pickup truck, tourist RV, and even the occasional horse. Many trading posts are also preserved as National Historic Sites.

Cow Springs Trading Post, Arizona

This trading post was located off of Highway 160, formerly Navajo Route 1. It was established in 1882 by George McAdams and was acquired by the Babbitt Brothers Trading Company, located in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1895. As trading posts and their mode of business became less relevant the Babbitt’s closed many locations, by the 1970's the Cow Springs trading post was abandoned. The turn off exit for the trading post is noted in Tony Hillerman's fiction.

Black Mesa, Arizona

Black Mesa is an elevated, bowl-shaped region (approximately 4,000 square miles) located in northern Arizona. It is part of the Navajo Reservation; a portion of the Hopi Reservation; and some of the Navajo-Hopi Joint Use Area, which is claimed by both the Navajo and Hopi. The region of Black Mesa includes a mesa itself as well as the surrounding sloping hills, canyons, valleys, and four drainages that are tributaries of the Little Colorado River.

This area has been inhabited by Native peoples for over 7,000 years. It is significant to both the Hopi and the Navajo peoples, there are approximately 16,000 Navajo and 8,000 Hopis on Black Mesa. The Hopi reservation consists of twelve villages located on three mesas: First Mesa, Second Mesa, and Third Mesa, all of which are located upon the larger Black Mesa. The Hopi consider this land sacred and part of their tribal history and origin. For the Navajo peoples, Black Mesa is the sacred female mountain, also known as the Female Pollen Range, and is important to the frequently performed Blessingway ceremony. The Blessingway (Hózhójí) is used to bless the "one sung over," to ensure good luck, good health, and blessings for everything that pertains to them.

Black Mesa is a contested area among Anglo settlers and industrialists, the Hopi, and the Navajo peoples. Despite strong opposition from within and outside their communities, in 1966 the Navajo and Hopi tribal councils sold the mineral and aquifer rights on Black Mesa to the Peabody Coal Company for two million dollars a year. Peabody Coal has been accused of depleting the region’s aquifer; destroying sacred sites; strip-mining; and polluting the area, the Navajo called their actions the “rape of Earth Mother.” Under federal law PL 93-531, at least 12,000 to approximately 16,000 Navajos were forcefully relocated from Black Mesa, in the largest Indigenous relocation in the United States since the Trail of Tears. The Black Mesa mine was closed in 2005; however, in 2008 Peabody Coal received a permit to open again but were denied by administrative law judge in 2010 for not satisfying the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Shiprock, New Mexico

Shiprock is named after the nearby volcanic rock formation known in Navajo as Tse Bit'a'I, or "winged rock." It lies at the junction of U.S. Highways 64 and 491 and is known locally for its rodeos, fairs, and marathons. It is also renowned for its Navajo traditional artisanal works, such as rugs and jewelry, which can be bought from the creators themselves rather than from trading post owners.