Quotes About Navajo

From the time I was a kid, I was crazy about anything having to do with the West. I'd look at all of these photos of Montana, and they all seemed so magical and majestic. I just wanted to go west, and I finally did it when I was barely 21. I went off to volunteer at a Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

Along the deserted road to the gas station were mercury-vapor lights that seemed weaker than those in New Prospect, as if Navajo impoverishment extended even to amperage.

In almost every photograph I have ever made, there is something I would do to complete it. I take that to be the spirit hole or the deliberate mistake that's in a Navajo rug to not be godlike, but to be human.

I was stolen from my family by Navajo raiders when I was fourteen, and taken in by a Navajo family who had lost a daughter of their own." Josefina

I stayed with the Navajo for several years. I had no idea how to get home! But one day another captured New Mexican arrived. He was a boy, just twelve or so, but he told me he knew how to get back to the nearest town. He was determined to run away, and when the time came, I—I ran with him.

I couldn't help smiling back. Maya had decided opinions and didn't keep them to herself. "Jones had his chance, and he blew it. There's an old Navajo saying that I think applies here: 'You snooze, you lose.'

honey." Anne sighed, leaned back against his shoulder. Well out on the mesa, Grimes pulled up at a tinaja whose slow ooze of water filled a small rocky basin just enough for the grass that covered the thin soil for a few yards about the basin. He spread out the Navajo rug, and Anne snuggled beside him, in the lee of the boulder that sheltered them from the cool wind.

I like some of the old spaghetti westerns because the Navajo extras they hired spent the entire time talking smack about the actors in the Diné language. With proper translation, it's incredibly entertaining.

impenetrability of the Navajo code was all down to the fact that Navajo belongs to the Na-Dene family of languages, which has no link with any Asian or European language.

A Navajo message could never be faked and could always be trusted.

the greatest tribute to the work of the Navajo is the simple fact that their code is one of very few throughout history that was never broken.

Did you know that the highest form of respect for the Navajo is to call someone Grandfather? In fact, that's how they address God.

We need only look to our Navajo Code Talkers during World War II to see the value that Native languages bring not only to their culture, but to the security of all Americans.

In 'The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow,' part of the 'Dear America' series, I took my childhood bravery and stubbornness and put that at the core of the Navajo girl, Sarah Nita. It helped me to identify with her survival and to write about her courageous journey and that of her people.

I always have one or two, sometimes more, Navajo or other tribes' cultural elements in mind when I start a plot. In Thief of Time, I wanted to make readers aware of Navajo attitude toward the dead, respect for burial sites.

Mom, I promised to behave. It wasn't easy. I mean, she couldn't help herself. She was all over this hunk of Navajo manhood and I had to keep telling her I'd promised not to let her violate me. Eventually she wore herself out and fell asleep.

There is a well-worn joke about every Navajo family consisting of a mother, father, two children, and an anthropologist, and the fascination with the Pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona for anthropologists and ethnomusicologists extends back into the nineteenth century.

the soul of the animal, as I've read that Native Americans do. It strikes me as a form of grace. Saying grace. Or just being grace. I am still on the Navajo Nation, wishing Navajo grace traveled with me on this land, or that Everett had packed some with my dried beef. But I don't go so far as to complete the ritual. I say a word or two of apology out loud,

There's a Navajo saying, "Even the still wind has a voice." In the quiet, confessing hotel room, I listen.

Years later, in America, I was told that Navajo Indians believed coyotes ushered in the Big Bang of the world with their song, stood on the rim of nothingness, before time, shoved their pointed muzzles in the air, and howled the world into existence at their feet. The Indians called them longdogs. The universe was etched with their howls, sound merging into sound, the beginning of all other songs.

I follow the scent of falling rain And head for the place where it is darkest I follow the lightning And draw near to the place where it strikes —NAVAJO CHANT

Polygamy was common [amongst the Navajo], but women had superior property rights, owning sheep and the houses. A man who deserted his family would be destitute -- a powerful incentive to stay married.

Today the most numerous Native American tribe in the United States is the Navajo, who on European arrival were just one of several hundred tribes. But the Navajo proved especially resilient and able to deal selectively with innovation. They incorporated Western dyes into their weaving, became silversmiths and ranchers, and now drive trucks while continuing to live in traditional dwellings

I always have one or two, sometimes more, Navajo or other tribes' cultural elements in mind when I start a plot. In Thief of Time, I wanted to make readers aware of Navajo attitude toward the dead, respect for burial sites.