Word: hillerman
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...advice given to aspiring writers is to "write what you know." In one sense, New Mexican author Tony Hillerman has done that very well; his accuracy and skill in portraying the Navaho religion and culture in his best-selling mystery novels has won him the "Special Friend of the Dineh" award. But the name of the award is important: Hillerman is not of the Dineh, and in choosing a Navaho narrator, he enters a potential mine field the old adage is designed to avoid...
...Hillerman, a World War Two veteran who has navigated some literal minefields and emerged with "unreliable" knees, is not fazed by this particular one. His sureness appears to spring from two sources: his personal fascination and identification with the Navaho culture and a willingness to leave some things undescribed...
...Hillerman, who first met Navahos during a his wartime convalescence, says he felt an immediate cultural tie--most of culture, in his opinion, being economic in nature...
Then there is a favorite tourist spot a little farther along the road--the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut factory. But don't expect to find John Hillerman, fending off several beautiful women as he munches away at his macadamia nuts...
That grisly episode (from Tony Hillerman's novel Talking God) is fictional, but it epitomizes the tensions in a dilemma that confronts curators, anthropologists and those Native Americans who angrily oppose them. To many scholars, and to much of the museum-going public, the Indian bones and burial artifacts are valuable clues to humanity's past. But to many Indians, these relics are sacred and the archaeologists who have appropriated them no better than grave robbers...