Infrequently a horse is butchered and all of the animal is used: the meat and entrails are eaten fresh or dried for later needs and the hide is made into footwear, belts, and articles of clothing. Mutton is commonly eaten other meats are small game like rabbits and prairie dogs and large game such as deer and antelope. Their food is simple and easily prepared.
Many prayers for blessings are addressed to Mother Earth, Father Sky, the Four Winds, and White Dawn, to name a few.įood and shelter are more than utilitarian objects for the Navajos who are always conscious that they are Mother Earth’s gifts. Mother Earth is also sacred and all that she offers the Navajos is therefore sacred: mountains, vegetation, animals, and water. Also, they asked, who in his right mind would hold absolute ownership when his existence on this earth is but brief?įather Sky is sacred as are his offerings: air, wind, thunder, lightning, and rain. The Dine’ philosophy embodied Father Sky and Mother Earth as the parents of all and gave no individual absolute title to a piece of the sky or the earth. Use-rights were established by anyone who used and needed the land.
In this red earth country of monoliths, buttes, and bridges of rock made by erosion of time, the Dine’ had no concept of real ownership of land but instead one of communal property. colorful, beautiful to look at, but hard to make a living from.”1 The Navajos live “in severely eroded plateau country. This relationship justifies to them permanent ties and absolute use-fights to the native land that is bounded by four sacred mountains: the Blanca Peaks in New Mexico on the east, Mount Taylor in New Mexico on the south, the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona on the west, and the Hesperus Peaks in Colorado on the north. The Dine’ mention their strong relationship to their Anasazi, the Ancient Ones, in their mythology and ceremonies. 1300, even though the Dine’ (“the People”) themselves do not attest to this. It is generally agreed that the Navajos, the largest Indian tribe in the United States, came into the Southwest sometime after A.D.
0 kommentar(er)
