Reed clan

Mentioned in Tony Hillerman's 1970 Navajo detective novel THE BLESSING WAY in regards to a totem that can fend off ghost sickness, the Reed Clan, known as Lók’aa’ Dine’é in Navajo, is one of more than forty family lineages, or clans, that comprise the complicated ancestral network of Navajo ancestry.

In Native American social structures, a clan is an interrelated social group whose connections derive from parentage as well as kinship. Clan configurations develop and are expressed uniquely in different indigenous groups, and each tribe is comprised of numerous various clans. Clan names often originate in the natural environment of the tribe’s homeland, and refer to place names, fauna and flora, or significant natural phenomena.