Preface

This book is the result of my first sabbatical from Eastern Kentucky University. These six months were spent primarily on the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona. I worked for a month as an official tribal archaeology volunteer out of both the Flagstaff and Window Rock offices of the Navajo Nation Archaeology Department. In this capacity I participated in recording archaeological sites and in conducting traditional cultural property interviews. During the fall semester of 2000, I took courses in Navajo Studies at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona, including Navajo Tribal Government, Navajo History, Navajo Oral History, Navajo Holistic Healing, and Navajo Rug Weaving. I also began writing this book.

Through seven years of heavy undergraduate anthropology teaching at Eastern Kentucky University, I have become convinced of the need for literature that is specifically oriented to general readers as well as undergraduates, many of whom may not be anthropology majors. This literature needs to be accessible in the sense that it is relatively easily read by interested, intelligent non professionals. Too often, anthropological case studies contribute to the common problem of not being able to see the forest for the trees. Following good anthropological tradition, great quantities of descriptive detail and copious references are provided without enough emphasis given to central themes. Students, initially excited about learning about a new culture, are often intimidated by the detail and eventually lose interest. Thus, this literature must strike a delicate balance between main theme and detail, where the former is not overshadowed by the latter, and yet where the issues are not over-simplified. In this book I have attempted to strike such a balance. My main motivation in writing it stems from the belief that if anthropology cannot be made interesting, worthwhile and at least somewhat conceptually transformative, then something is wrong with our collective anthropological pedagogy.

This literature needs to provide not only sound description of cultural and historical processes, but also needs to serve as an anchor point for understanding important contemporary issues. Students often are more motivated to understand a new culture if there is a specific topical issue woven into the presentation of that culture. Additionally, students need to be provided a clear point of articulation at which their own culture and the new culture meet. This meeting may be antagonistic or beneficial; the specific nature of the meeting is less important than the fact of the meeting itself. Without a point of articulation, students fumble about in a kind of “cultural vertigo” where they are unable to see the relevance of studying the new culture because it lacks meaning for them. Rather than placing the burden on the student for overcoming his or her own cultural vertigo, it is the responsibility of anthropological pedagogy overall.

Through teaching it has also become clear that students learn best if an entertaining but relevant story is embedded in the lesson. Such stories add a personal dimension to a lecture or a reading that helps paint a visual picture for the learner, thus enabling him or her to relate to the material differently. In an effort to provide this personal dimension here I have included what I call “Journal Entries.” I did indeed keep a journal during my sabbatical, which included sketches, maps, descriptions of personal experiences, events I attended, factual information, impressions, poems and emotions. The Journal Entries included here are in some instances taken almost verbatim from my journal, others are slightly altered, after I made the decision to include such entries in the book. Every entry has substantial basis in my actual experience. The order in which the reader encounters the journal entries is not necessarily the order in which they actually occurred. All of the personal names have been changed.

The Journal Entries also provide the basis for one of the central themes of the book: continuity and change. Through occasionally fast-forwarding to the present, the reader is able to see how various aspects of Navajo life have remained similar, and how others have changed. The theme of continuity and change is also apparent through the relationship between the Prologue and the Epilogue–how Spider Woman of the original stories may be understood by Navajo today.

The choice of Spider Woman is deliberate. She is a common and well known Navajo supernatural entity, with a very prominent home. Anyone who has–or will–visit Canyon de Chelly will most likely also visit her home, Spider Rock. Thus, the choice of Spider Woman and Spider Rock as continuing narrative threads, although perhaps approaching the cliché for Navajo scholars, allows the average reader both a geographically and culturally-accessible entry point into both Navajo culture and traditional cultural properties.

My interest in writing this book centers on two main goals, both directed to undergraduate students as well as the educated lay public. The first goal is to introduce the concept of traditional cultural properties. This legal concept centers on the tangible and intangible physical manifestations of our collective experience in this continent. Our collective experience includes Native American creation era events, prehistoric archaeological sites, and the historic period since the European invasion of the continent. I discuss key pieces of legislation to provide the foundation for understanding traditional cultural properties–those locations on the landscape that are important reflections of our collective cultural experience.

The second goal of the book is to serve as an albeit brief but nevertheless stand-alone introductory ethnography of the Navajo. This is a tall order for a short book, particularly given the tomes of written work on the Navajo. Thus, I wish to make it clear that I have made no attempt to create a comprehensive Navajo ethnography. Rather, this work provides an introduction and further references to other sources and/or various web sites that contain further information about Navajo culture as well as other perspectives on Navajo issues.

These two themes meet in this book, and their meeting complements each other. Students can recognize the importance of understanding Navajo culture because it may touch their own activities through visiting Canyon de Chelly or the Grand Canyon, or skiing at the San Francisco Peaks. Even if students live far from Arizona, they may be able to envision themselves doing such things, or may choose to visit the Bighorn Medicine Wheel or Devils Tower in Wyoming, or even far away Uluru (Ayers Rock) in Australia–all high profile traditional cultural properties far from Navajoland. My hope is that the lessons learned from the Navajo context will enable readers to look at their own landscapes differently, and to appreciate the fundamental importance of all such landscapes to different cultures. Thus, this book serves as a springboard towards recognizing the importance of traditional cultural properties where ever in the world those properties may occur.

In working toward these goals I provide two perspectives concerning traditional cultural properties. One perspective is that of the western, legalistic framework that seeks to manage traditional cultural properties, and the other is the Navajo perspective that creates the traditional cultural property itself. The Navajo perspective appears in the Prologue and Epilogue, thus “book-ending” the main text firmly in that perspective. I have also sought to keep the reader tied into the Navajo perspective by liberally peppering the main text with reference to the Navajo creation era, even when the text concerns the western, legalistic perspective. My hope is that the reader does not forget the cultural context–whether it be Navajo or other traditional culture–that breathes life into the very same traditional cultural properties that the western, legalistic framework is designed to manage.

I also hope to provide a sense of the difficult-to-escape cultural tension that exists between Indian, land-based religions and federal land management needs, oftentimes concerning identical tracts of land. No easy answers to this cultural tension appear in this book, for there often are none. Although at first this fact may seem disappointing, hopefully readers will come to accept this fact as a reality of the complex world in which we now live.

Chapters One and Two provide a cultural and historical background to the Navajo. Chapter Three presents Navajo examples of traditional cultural properties. Chapter Four introduces the concept of traditional cultural properties and the legal background that created the framework to manage such properties. Chapter Five outlines the current Navajo Nation economy with its focus on natural resource extraction and the substantial royalties that flow into tribal coffers through such extraction. This current economic situation is discussed within the difficult irony that traditional cultural properties–an embodiment of traditional Navajo culture–are often threatened by the very projects that fund both traditional Navajo cultural programs as well as improve the current standard of living for tribal members. Chapter Six describes how cultural resource management–including traditional cultural property work–is carried out on the reservation. Finally, Chapter Seven compares and contrasts traditional cultural properties at various scales, and addresses the difficult issue of material benefit and cultural loss in the Navajo context. This final chapter also broadens the discussion beyond the Navajo context to briefly consider several high profile traditional cultural properties in other North American contexts, as well as in Australia.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for a student in my North American Indians class to ask why Indians need to be treated fairly today, since they were conquered by a technologically superior society. I believe that this position, even if voiced by few, is shared by many. As a teacher, I owe that student a reasonable, well-considered answer rather than a piercing look of disdain stemming from a sense of political correctness. Indeed, that moment may be my best opportunity of the semester to actually teach that student something truly important.

I suggest several issues for the student to consider. I suggest that the manner in which the dominant society treats its minority members is a reflection of the values of the dominate society. If minorities are treated with injustice, then we are an unjust society. If not all members of our society are allowed to practice their religious beliefs, then we are an intolerant society. Since most of us believe that the United States is founded on justice and tolerance, it is incongruent that the dominant society should treat a minority group–even if they were militarily conquered–with anything other than justice and tolerance. This suggestion encourages students to reconsider their position from a new perspective.

I also speak about the tremendous loss in the number and variety of cultures that exist in the world today. This loss is due to the spread of industrialization into the far corners of the globe, in search of both natural resources and markets for their products. Thus, students are able to understand the unpleasant truth that the loss of world cultures is tightly linked to our own “progress.” As traditional cultures–embodied in traditional cultural properties–fall by the wayside and are replaced by the modern, industrially-based values of individualism and competition, our world becomes less interesting, more blandly uniform. The loss of world cultures is our communal loss, as cultural diversity enriches the lives of everyone.

By educating students as well as the lay reader about traditional cultural properties as understood from the Navajo perspective, readers are better able to understand the role that tradition plays in the contemporary lives of the Navajo today. A new insight is gained into the tension that exists between economic development, traditional heritage, and cultural resource legislation. This insight, in turn, allows these individuals to recognize and support the need for progressive legislation–and the consistent application of that legislation–that enables our society to be both just and tolerant. This new perspective can only help the Navajo people as new policies, procedures and agendas are set that impact their lives and culture both on and off the reservation.

Royalties from the sale of this book go to the Native American Scholarship Fund, sponsored by the Society for American Archaeology, to support Native Americans and Native Hawaiians in their pursuit of degrees in archaeology.