Navajo Land: Leonard, Navajo Today, World University for Native People

When I woke up this morning around 7 am, camping on the side of a quiet road near a major highway, near Lupton, Arizona, someone walked by my vehicle, and asked if I could give him a ride. He wanted to go to Gallup, New Mexico, about 20 miles away. He said he was hitching to work, which began at 10. "I don't steal, or anything," he said. He might have been between 35 and 60 years old.


I said I didn't have much space, but I cleared a spot for him, and we rode together. His name was Leonard.


As we rode, he said he was a full-blooded Navajo. I asked how things are for Navajo people today. He said not bad. I asked him what Navajo people are doing these days. He mentioned traditional crafts like weaving and silversmithing, and construction. The mother of his kids works in a hotel, he said. I asked him about a vision for the Navajo people, and cultural processes like vision quests. He didn't say a lot about a contemporary (positive) vision for Navajo, and he said vision quests occurred. He was a little quiet in general, and Native-white ways of relating were a little in the air from the beginning of our interaction.


He asked me where I was heading. And I told him the canyon lands in northwestern New Mexico, and then mentioned "Cuba, NM." He asked what I was going to do there, and I eventually told him I was going to the Rainbow Gathering. He said "What's that?" I wondered how to characterize it to someone who hadn't heard of it, but might be sympathetic. I said it was kind of a gathering of hippies, - a little like a pow wow, maybe. After a while, he said "like Woodstock?" I said yea. And we laughed out loud together.


We talked a little about the Navajo. He said there are around 265,000 - 300,000 Navajo. Navajo have a president these days. It's Joe Shirley now - opvp.org. The Navajo presidency is modeled after the U.S. presidency. Presidents hold office for 4 years, and are elected. The four corners area (Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah) is a center of the Navajo world, and there are some Navajo in Mexico, but I got a sense that he was answering a kind of white (sociological) view. I was interested in his views, but wasn't sure how to elicit them.


He said where I camped was on reservation-land. Having arrived where I camped after dark, the views of Arizona around my camping spot were beautiful, I saw, as we started to drive.


He asked if I had gone to the "Gathering of the Nations," a native gathering which happened last year near Lupton, AZ. He said native peoples had come from as far as Canada. I said I hadn't gone but that I did go to a Sundance last year in northern California, in the Sierra Valley, and there were First Nations people there from Canada, too.


He asked me what I do, and I said I'm a college teacher, with an interest in the information technology and their social effects, that I'm writing a anthropological book about a place in northern California - Harbin Hot Springs - and that I'm developing World University & School {http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University}, which is like Wikipedia, where we can all teach and learn.

He asked if anthropologists study the Anasazi, and I said archaeologists do this. Anthropologists study the current social fabric of life. (I was a little hesitant to say anthropologists study groups of people, and historically have studied native peoples). He said Navajo ancestors were supposed to have come from Alaska. And I said this happened all pretty recently, in a sense, and that North America - Turtle Island - wasn't inhabited by people before 16,000-20,000 years ago.

I asked him if the Navajo were pretty integrated into the modern world these days, and he said "yea." I asked him if he thought this was good, and he replied affirmatively. He told me about a radio station in the Navajo language - 660 on the AM dial. I turned this station on, and we listened to the Navajo language. I asked him if he spoke Navajo. I wasn't sure what he said, but he told me the radio announcers were talking about the weather. I let him out in Gallup, and he said "Do you have any change I can have?" I said I don't have any change, but I thought later to have asked him whether he had any change I can have. The Navajo radio station was still on, and I heard an advertisement from an Apache lawyer for legal services. The station next played country music, and the Navajo announcer mentioend the English title of the song, speaking otherwise in Navajo.


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Leonard mentioned Arizona State University pretty positively in passing, and it made me think that World University & School would potentially help a lot of native people, too.
,
{Getting in touch with Keith Basso, an anthropologist who wrote the fascinating anthropological book "Wisdom Sits in Places" is sensible vis-a-vis WUaS}.


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I'm writing this blog entry from Rick's Cybercafe in Gallup, New Mexico.

Two partners started it 3 months ago, and they look as if they have Native American background. I hear someone nearby talking excitedly about current Firewire and USB (universal serial bus) technologies, and that his daughter is going to school in the fall.


... life today in Navajo land


~ to the Rainbow Gathering ...