"I think what is always really amazing to me is that Navajo are never amazed by anything that happens. Because it is like in a lot of our stories they are already there."--Sunny Dooley, Navajo Storyteller During the final decade of the twentieth century, Navajo people had to confront a number of challenges, from unexplained illness, the effects of uranium mining, and problem drinking to threats to their land rights and spirituality. Yet no matter how alarming these issues, Navajo people made sense of them by drawing guidance from what they regarded as their charter for life, their origin stories. Through extensive interviews, Maureen Trudelle Schwarz allows Navajo to speak for themselves on the ways they find to respond to crises and chronic issues. In capturing what Navajo say and think about themselves, Schwarz presents this southwestern people's perceptions, values, and sense of place in the world.

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.

Navajos Wear Nikes reveals the complexity of modern life on the Navajo Reservation, a world where Anglo and Navajo coexist in a tenuous truce. With tales of gangs and skinwalkers, an Indian Boy Scout troop, a fanatical Sunday school teacher, and the author's own experience of sincere friendships that lead to hozho (beautiful harmony), Kristofic's memoir is an honest portrait of an Anglo boy growing up on and growing to love the Reservation. --publisher's description.

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.

Constructing culture means constructing knowledge and making it operational for the benefit of sustained community life. As a cognitive process, knowledge-construction does not evolve in a vacuum but rather interacts with belief systems and worldview. Cultural knowledge is modulated by key factors such as time (linear versus non-linear), conceptions of reality (physical, imagined, virtual), identity, and intentionality. The critical investigation and comparison of cultures in space and time call for a revision of several concepts. These include utility (as the maxim of modern Euro-American society), prototype (as an allegedly unified concept of culture evolution), and replacement (as a generalizing signifier for the exchange of old items for new ones). The working of cultural memory is understood as the storage capacity of items of knowledge (relating to the past, present and future) according to parameters of experienced rather than absolute time. This study discusses a wide selection of the variables shaping the foundations and fabric of culture, starting with the human capacities for symbol-making and using sign systems. The impact of knowledge-construction on the culture process is articulated in 30 postulates concerning the dynamics of communal life and patterns of sustenance, the relationship between the natural environment and cultural space, and the life cycle of cultures.

Without Destroying Ourselves is an intellectual history of Native activism seeking greater access to and control of higher education in the twentieth century. John A. Goodwin traces themes of Henry Roe Cloud's (Ho-Chunk) vision for Native intellectual leadership and empowerment in the early 1900s to the later missions of tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) and education-based, self-determination movements of the 1960s onward. Vital to Cloud's work was the idea of how to build from Native identity and adapt without destroying that identity. As the central themes of the movement for Native control in higher education developed over the course of several decades, a variety of Native activists carried Cloud's vision forward. Goodwin explores how Elizabeth Bender Cloud (Ojibwe), D'Arcy McNickle (Salish Kootenai), Jack Forbes (Powhatan-Renapé, Delaware Lenape), and others built on and contributed to this common thread of Native intellectual activism. Goodwin demonstrates that Native activism for self-determination was never snuffed out by the swing of the federal government's pendulum away from tribal governance and toward termination. Moreover, efforts for Native control in education remained a vital aspect of that activism. Without Destroying Ourselves documents this period through the full accreditation of TCUs in the late 1970s and reinforces TCUs' continuing relevance in confronting the unique needs and challenges of Native communities today.

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.

Meet Oz . . . he's got a talent for trouble but his heart's always in the right place (well, nearly always). Uprooted from his friends and former life, Oz finds himself stranded in the sleepy village of Slowleigh. When a joke backfires on the first day at his new school, Oz attracts the attention of Isobel Skinner, the school psycho - but that's just the beginning. After causing an accident that puts his mum in hospital, Oz isn't exactly popular at home either. His older sister's nohelp, but then she's got a problem of her own . . . one that's growing bigger by the day. Oz knows he's got to put things right, but life isn't that simple, especially when the only people still talking to you are a hobbit-obsessed kid and a voice in your own head! Packed with action, heart and humour, Waiting for Gonzo takes you for a white-knuckle ride on the Wheel of Destiny as it careers out of control down the Hillside of Inevitability. The question is, do you go down laughing? Or grit your teeth and jump off?

In Navajo Land, Navajo Culture, Robert S. McPherson presents an intimate history of the Diné, or Navajo people, of southeastern Utah. Moving beyond standard history by incorporating Native voices, the author shows how the Dine's culture and economy have both persisted and changed during the twentieth century. As the dominant white culture increasingly affected their worldview, these Navajos adjusted to change, took what they perceived as beneficial, and shaped or filtered outside influences to preserve traditional values. With guidance from Navajo elders, McPherson describes varied experiences ranging from traditional deer hunting to livestock reduction, from bartering at a trading post to acting in John Ford movies, and from the coming of the automobile to the burgeoning of the tourist industry. Clearly written and richly detailed, this book offers new perspectives on a people who have adapted to new conditions while shaping their own destiny.