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Navajo Nation - 1993

45 images Created 6 Dec 2011

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  • In the vastness of the Navajo Reservation, Dorothy Reid parys to her tribe's ancient deities.  Her faith endures, but ageless Dineh traditions are inexorably yielding to the outside world's modern ways and beliefs. Bodaway, Arizona.
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  • Junior Billy(10) and Fabian Denesto(15) play basketball at the site of the old airport in Tuba City.  Thousands of kids in isolated sheep camps learn to shoot through homemade bailing-wire hoops.
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  • Edward Shepherd slaughters a sheep for meat to be used in a Native American Church ceremony blessing a shipment of peyote from Texas.  The ever-pragmatic Navajos blend elements of the peyote-based church's teachings with both Christianity and traditional beliefs. Sunrise Springs, Arizona.
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  • The forbidding terrain of Bodaway, near the Grand Canyon has finally been opened for development.  But so far, there are no takers.
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  • West of Tuba City, Arizona.
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  • Gallup's Historic Route 66 has what may be the world's thickest concentration of trading posts and pawnshops not to mention laundromats, carwashes and fast-food restaurants.
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  • Irene McCabe, with her son Jerry and grandson Jared, cashes a Social Security check at Griswold's trading post in Tse Bonito.  Pawning is especially important to elderly Navajoos, to whom savings accounts are alien.
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  • Near Monument Valley.
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  • Robert Sage (8 - Window Rock) passes the time doing needlepoint in Crystal Boarding School.  Once scorned, tribal traditions now are respected in such schools.
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  • Rickson Bedoni was jailed for killin a man he believed to be a witch.  "When I saw two half-nude men with painted bodies and a feather, I started kicking, punching and swinging that crowbar," he says.  "They wew witches." He sonce has been released on probation.
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  • "We've got to have pickups," tribal official Roman Bitsuie says.  "Car just can't take" the rugged terrain of navajoland.  The 11 members of a Tuba City family crammed into this truck would surely agree.
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  • Although he aspires to become a medicine man, Sawmill resident Kenneth Begay does not mind that other family members practice Christianty.  A picture of Christ inside his home attest to his flexible beliefs.
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  • A believer listens to repentant sinners at Eugene Chee Sr., Methodist revival.  Oljato, Utah.
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  • Eugene Chee Sr., who used to chastise Navajos who believed in Christ, is now a minister in the United Methodist Church.  "Jesus will accept you if you let him," the former traditionalist says.
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  • The home of Eugene Chee Sr. in Oljato is equipped with a television antenna.  A cord strung from a generator behind a nearby house provides electricity.
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  • Reflecting the clash of old and new, Eugene Chee Sr.'s grandchildren watch Sesame Street in Chee's hogan near Monument Valley.  They, like yungster, probably will be more influenced by the teachings of Christianty than the old ways.
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  • As the son of a minister, Eugene Chee Jr. has found that Christianity often clashes with tribal customs -- for example, through "mutton hunger."  Oljato, Utah.
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  • Sheep crossing creek bed near Oljato, Utah.
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  • The grime of a veteran sheepherder coats Shone Holiday's gnarled hands.  "Herding sheep keeps you in shape," he says.
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  • Sheep shears of Shone Holiday.
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  • Ella Shirley and Ester Yazzie (both Lupton, AZ) sells their wares at the Window Rock Swap Meet.
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  • After a night of marathon prayer, the sun rises on the tepee of a "roadman" next to the Harvey compound complex.  Tsaile, Arizona.
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  • A prayer fan used to direct smoke to a suppilicant's body, hangs in the harvey family's home.
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  • About to face the dangers of a world of high-powered machinery, young Navy sailor Rex Harvey turns to an arduous peyote ceremony for strength.  "I need your prayers and songs to guide me through the next four years," he told his loved ones.
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  • Vincent harvey waits for the start of a rite to safeguard his eldest son, Rex.  During the peyote ceremony, he told the young serviceman that fear "will always be there, so live wiht it, accept it."
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  • Gasing-up at the Oljato Trading Post.  From left: Bradley (10), Herman (15) and Berkeley Chee (12).
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  • Offically sanctioned coal mining is one of the biggest business operations on the reservation.  But would-be Navajo entrepreneurs say the tribe discourages them from using their talents to launch firms. Tse Bonito, NM.
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  • The mattresses are filled at an alcohol-detoxification in Gallup.  Such tragic people are only a small percentage of the Navajo population, but haunting evidence of the dilemma of modern Indian life.
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  • Picked-up on the streets of Gallup, two intoxioicated clients sit in the back of the protective custody van awaiting their ride to the detox center.
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  • Henry Lane at his Bodaway sheep camp.  For generations, herds of sheep wee the aNavajos' paramount measure of wealth and well-being.  Amoung younger people, cattle now are seen as easier to raise and more valuable - if they opt for livestock life at all.
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  • Henry Lane at his Bodaway sheep camp.  For generations, herds of sheep wee the aNavajos' paramount measure of wealth and well-being.  Amoung younger people, cattle now are seen as easier to raise and more valuable - if they opt for livestock life at all.
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  • Irene Begody - grandmother of Lane family.
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  • Kristie Tsosie (4 - grandchild) at Mary and Henry Lane's Bodaway sheep camp.
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  • On a frigid night, a newborn goat finds warmth beside a wood stove within the hogan of Ernest nelson.  Aptly, hogans are the symbolic of Father Sun.
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  • Betty Nelson with her husband Ernest Nelson, who believes his pneumonia was the result of a prayer mistake.  Oljato, Utah.
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  • Vietnam veteran and Greasewood resident Paul Keams before his Blackening Way Ceremony.
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  • Vietnam veteran and Greasewood resident Paul Keams before his Blackening Way Ceremony.
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  • Paul Keams and his brother, Thomas, discuss the Blackening Way over a meal before the traditional seven-day ceremony of prayers, singing and dancing.
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  • Medicine man Sam Begay begins to extract the enemy taint, incurred by contact with Keams' fallen Vietnamese foes.
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  • Outside his family's hogan, Paul Keams has been instucted to montion four times away from his body and toward the sun.  navajos consider the Blackening Way essential to restoring hozho, the balance between harmony and peace.
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  • Portrait of Paul Keams near the end of his Blackening Way.
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  • For the cure to materialize, Paul keams has been told to sleep for four nights in a ceremonial hogan before bathing.
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  • Sacred tabacco was smoked my family and friends outside the ceremonial hogan before the start of Paul Keams Blackening Way.
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  • Desiree Taliman (6) and a friend.  Greasewood, Arizona.
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  • Sheep Camp.  Bodaway, Arizona.
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