This is the most complete version of the Navajo creation story to appear in English since Washington Matthews' Navajo Legends of 1847. Zolbrod's new translation renders the power and delicacy of the oral storytelling performance on the page through a poetic idiom appropriate to the Navajo oral tradition. Zolbrod's book offers the general reader a vivid introduction to Navajo culture. For students of literature this book proposes a new way of looking at our literary heritage.

The most complete and current history of the largest American Indian nation in the U.S., based on extensive new archival research, traditional histories, interviews, and personal observation.

The Book of the Fourth World offers detailed analyses of texts that range far back into the centuries of civilised life from what is now Latin- and Anglo-America. At the time of its 'discovery', the American continent was identified as the Fourth World of our planet. In the course of just a few centuries its original inhabitants, though settled there for millennia and countable in many millions, have come to be perceived as a marginal if not entirely dispensable factor in the continent's destiny. Today the term has been taken up again by its native peoples, to describe their own world: both its threatened present condition, and its political history, which stretches back thousands of years before Columbus. In order to explore the literature of this world, Brotherston uses primary sources that have traditionally been ignored because they have not conformed to Western definitions of oral and written literature, such as the scrolls of the Algonkin, the knotted strings (Quipus) of the Inca, Navajo dry-paintings and the encyclopedic pages of Meso-America's screenfold books.

A History of the Navajos examines these circumstances over the century and more that the tribe has lived on the reservation. In 1868, the year that the United States government released the Navajos from four years of imprisonment at Bosque Redondo and created the Navajo reservation, their very survival was in doubt. In spite of conflicts over land and administrative control, by the 1890s they had achieved a greater level of prosperity than at any previous time in their history.

Designed for both the beginning learner and the more advanced language student, Dine Bizaad is the ideal tool for improving Navajo speaking, reading, and writing skills. Each chapter starts with practice dialogues and concludes with written exercises. Navajo-English and English-Navajo glossaries are available in the back of the textbook. Perfect for teaching yourself Navajo!

A collection of stories, poems, and meditations that illuminate the spiritual world of the Navajo. • Explores the Navajo's fundamental belief in the importance of harmony and balance in the world. • Shares Navajo healing ways that have been handed down for generations. • Includes meditations following each story or poem. Navajo myths are among the most poetic in the world, full of dazzling word imagery. For the Navajo, who call themselves the Dine (literally, "the People"), the story of emergence--their creation myth--lies at the heart of their beliefs. In it, all the world is created together, both gods and human beings, embodying the idea that change comes from within rather than without. Poet and author Gerald Hausman collects this and other stories with meditations that together capture the essence of the Navajo people's way of life and their understanding of the world. Here are myths of the Holy People, of Changing Woman who teaches the People how to live, and of the trickster Coyote; stories of healings performed by stargazers and hand tremblers; and songs of love, marriage, homecoming, and growing old. These and the meditations that follow each story reveal a world--our world--that thrives only on harmony and balance and shares the Dine belief that the most important point on the circle that has no beginning or end is where we stand at the moment.

The Navajo creation myth, called the Diné Bahaneʼ, is one of the greatest stories of the Native American peoples, filled with evocative images of nature and wondrous storytelling. Hasteen M. Klah was a Navajo medicine man who grew up among the culture, whereby ceremonial events and sandpainting were a direct expression of the people's beliefs. Over the course of his life he sought to write down the various myths of his people, plus the ritual events and songs. The greatest challenge Klah faced was relating the entirety of the creation myth - being true and accurate to the Navajo peoples, but understandable to readers unaccustomed to such an immense religion. The reader will find the complexity and intricacy of their spiritual lore rewarding; this book contains not only the full narration of the Diné Bahaneʼ, but also the verses sung by the Navajo during the telling of the story. We hear further parts of the creation myth; stories whereby gigantic beasts lay claim to parts of the world, influencing the ancient Navajo tribe's affinity with nature and its creatures. Towards the conclusion, Klah includes further songs that celebrate the Earth, or commemorate certain occasions and ceremonies. Lastly, there is a lengthy glossary explaining the many names and terms used in the mythos.

These essays by linguists, folklorists, anthropologists, literary theorists, and poets, bring to a new level of sophistication the structural analysis of Native American literary expression. Their common concern is for the appreciation and elucidation of Native American song and story, and for a historical, philosophical, psychoanalytic, and linguistic kind of commentary. The essays address the overlapping issues of presentation and interpretation of Native American literature: How to present in writing an art that is primarily oral, dramatic, and performative? How to interpret that art, both in its traditional forms and in its later, written forms. ISBN 0-520-05790-2: $60.00.