Cultural Reference

Anthropologically, a tribe is a group of people united based on their social organization, belief systems, family relationships, common geneology, and shared language and culture. A more conservative definition includes the caveat that the peoples who live as tribes operate self-sufficiently in their social groups outside of mainstream society and developed as a distinct people many generations ago, before the modern incoporation of nation-states. A more general definition, on the other hand, opens up the meaning to include any groups of people who are united to one another with a collective leader and idea. This can extend beyond ancient peoples to include bands of people that form to collaborate on issues or even behind a music group.

In the United States, the term is probably most familiar in reference to Native American tribes. There are 562 federally recognized Indian tribes, and many others that have not yet achieved federal recognition. 229 of these tribes are located in what is now Alaska, and the others are spread over the United States, some much larger than others. Some tribes have formed distinct, sovereign nations that span multiple states.

These tribes have their own customs, traditions, spiritual views, origin stories, languages, and ways of life developed over thousands of years, long before European settler colonialism.

The more conservative definition of a tribe that specifies the people as living outside mainstream society is not fully appropriate when discussing Native American tribes in what are now the United States. In many cases, tribes have adapted their traditional practices to contemporary times, and many tribal members do not necessarily live in the same place as the majority of their tribe (in the US, often on federally-designated reservations). However, they can still considered a part of the community.

A sacred ceremony in the tradition of the Native American Church, in which healing, spiritual cleansing, and vision quests are conducted through praying, chanting, and drumming, involving as well the ingestion of peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus that induces an altered state of consciousness believed to enhance connection with the spiritual realms. The ceremony usually lasts at least one night, and can be performed regularly (once a moth, for example), or according to need, in cases when an individual suffers from acute illness or when the community faces an urgent challenge.

A communal and spiritual leader in the Native American church. Formed in 1918 as a Pan-Indian movement and in response to government abuses and relocations, the Native American Church centers on the sacramental use of peyote, a small, spineless cactus that grows primarily in Texas and Mexico. Although using peyote for religious purposes precedes the church in various tribes, the Native American Church is the first, large organized spiritual establishment across tribes. The church still exists today, despite U.S. legal objections to the use of peyote, which is classified as a controlled substance.

Services usually take place on weekends, but there is no set schedule, and many gatherings occur in the context of healing ceremonies, blessings, or prayers for specific individual or community needs. Peyote is a psychoactive substance, and participating members often have visions, but it is the community experience of these effects that gives the ceremony spiritual power. The peyote chief is the one who conducts services and ceremonies according to the specific traditions of the tribe. This is a sacred learned skill that chosen chiefs transmit through the generations.

In Hillerman's Boy Who Made Dragonfly this is a Zuni word used to express approval of or agreement with a spoken statement. The spelling of the term may vary in different contexts, or it may be that Hillerman has invented this expression based on his knowkledge of the Zuni language.

Hillerman uses the term as an informal reference to a Navajo cult within the peyote religion, a pan-Indian, semi-Christian religious movement. The rituals of the peyote religion involve ingesting peyote cactus buttons containing mescaline, a hallucinogenic substance that produces psychotropic effects. The term "People of Darkness" originates in Navajo myths relating to the mole, which was the sacred totem animal adopted by the Navajo peyote cult.

A vehicle with an enclosed cab and an open rear compartment for transporting cargo.

A state of being where one has an infinite knowledge of the world and an understanding of everything.

To obtain a cash loan by providing a material object as collateral. The act of pawning, also known as "hocking," usually via a pawnbroker at a pawn shop, has been in practice in the United States for over two hundred years. When a person needs money, she or he can go to a pawn shop and exchange a valuable item, such as jewelry, electronics, antiques, or musical instruments, in exchange for a cash loan. The object left behind is used as collateral against the cash loan. When customers are able, they can return to repay the loan, essentially buying back the collateral they left behind, often at interest. If borrowers can not repay their loan within a specified time, pawnbrokers sell the abandoned collateral accumulating in their shops in order to recoup their lost "investments," or the loans they extended to their clientele.

In the Southwest, pawnshops are often associated with reservation trading posts, as many early trading posts worked in a fashion similar to pawn shops. If customers were unable to pay cash for supplies, traders preferred obtaining objects as collateral rather extending lines of credit to their rural clientele. Cities such as Gallup, New Mexico, for example, became famous for their pawn shops, which were filled with high quality Navajo textiles and Zuni silversmithing. The flip side of pawn shops, trading posts, and contemporary businesses such as "payday loan" lenders is that, while they offer a "service," they are also often considered predatory. The rates of return on the loans extended always favor the broker, the trader, or the lender and never the individual who requests the loan. This sort of criticism demands that one consideration of the legacies of settler colonialism in the Southwest and elsewhere, including the imposition of cash economies on communities and cultures for whom the use and exchange of currency was an alien concept, yet a practice that was increasingly necessary. Having been forcibly removed from traditional life ways of sustenance and sustainability, traditional communities often struggled to negotiate a landscape where they could no longer provide for themselves unless they were able to purchase the goods, or versions of the goods, they used to provide for themselves. The commodification of their cultures and cultural artifacts has been facilitated, if not demanded, by institutions such as pawn shops and trading posts. So, while the ability to pawn an item for fast cash does provide a service for many folks on and off reservations, pawning items is usually a sign of desperation, or at least desperate times.

The act of surveillance, with the potential for taking disciplinary actions, as well as offering other peace-keeping services, throughout a particular area. In small areas, called "beats," police personnel, called patrolmen, may patrol on foot or on horseback, moving through the streets as a way to ensure order and enforce the law. A highway patrol unit, typically maintained at the state level, is a police unit in charge of enforcing traffic laws and safety regulations on U.S. roads and highways. A patrol car is the most common of several vehicular options utilized for maintaining a police presence in larger areas. Bicycles, motorcycles and helicopters can be used to patrol as well.

A soldier in the army who is part of a special unit that is trained to jump out of airplanes using prarachutes.