it
is hard for me to forgive my bilagaana ancestors—kit carson and the raiders of
1863, the missionaries and “educatorsEof the fifties, the lawyers who
orchestrated the relocation act of 1974. I pray that it be easier for those who
walk beyond this generation to forgive the flaws that we do not see in what we
do. or better yet that we are forgotten, that this road of ‘historyEpeters out
into a rocky path through aged juniper and cedar.
with
hesitation i offer this fruit of my young efforts to learn dine bizaad. i am
conscious of the compromise and contradiction entailed in operating with in the
confines of naaltsoos. my reasoning is scattered and incomplete; i have only
known a strong, depth-dwelling compulsion to learn this language. i feel i can
go on that intuition, and perhaps you have the same one. i fear i repeat the
mistakes of my predecessors, but find solace in the possibility that this book,
created as a tool for teaching a certain people something (and thereby
disabusing them of so much) can be used to humbly listen for their
teachings. in their own tongue. on their terms. the old ones still survive in
pockets and are willing to help us if we will train our ears. we may be able to
help them in our little ways.
In
resistance to short-sighted exploitation of the land i offer
this
In
resistance to the technocratization of our surroundings i offer
this
In
resistance to cultural genocide i offer this.
---stub
x
notes
on the text:
garth wilson, irvy goossen, and leonard faltz, though I find their platforms
obnoxious (faltz would be the best of them), are decent precursors to this book,
which is not going to be very accessible if one has no understanding of the
pronunciations and the verb structure. do not think that I am suggesting that
you buy them.
This
book seemed broken to me and I wanted to fix it a little. I have added, in
general, only english to it. I will leave it to a fluent dine speaker to add
bizaad, to update and cross-reference, a job which I imagine is as badly needed
as the repairs which I tried to make on the bilagaana side. I have axed outright
the bogus navajo-english section, on the fact that it is simply not worth the
copier ink—to dine much less bilagaanas. I have not tried to represent anything
but my own language, a hodgepodge of dialects from around the country. My hope
is that it will overlap somewhat with that of whoever gets their hands on this
and that it will make the book a little more useful. They are of course
encouraged to add their own twists before they pass it onward. I have one small
request with respect to the process from here—no new paper needs be used. Let
the people who photocopy put it on the wasted backsides of the gluttonous
culture’s recycle bins. AheheeE
I
have illustrated the text with photos from the late 40’s taken by one of
youngandmorgan’s anthropologist cronies. Let these serve as a reminder (as if
the sermonizing sentences about the panacea of education were not enough) of
what we inherit. They have been placed over the sections where y&m found it
appropriate to comment on the nature and specifics of certain ceremonies. these
ceremonies have no place in a book and out of fear of the disfavor of the
spirits involved I will not be involved in any further bastardization of them.
there are some nice shots of dibe in there that I like too.
I
must admit a grudging admiration for young and morgan. What a pair of crazy old
bastards they are.
Navajo font is sometimes available free on
the web at ftp://ftp.sanjuan.k12.ut.us/webfiles/
tradition is in
fact the enemy of progress.