Word: navaho
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...bracelets filed nervously past young men in tight Levi's, sunglasses and cowboy boots. Trim coeds talked with old men in shabby clothes and tall black felt hats. Judged by any criterion-age, dress or deportment-the student body that recently turned up for the opening of the Navaho Community College at Many Farms, Ariz., was as varied as could be found on any campus...
Tribal elders were there because they wanted to learn the history of their Navaho ancestors. Others wanted to learn a trade. Many wanted further academic study toward a degree at a four-year college. But all had a particular pride in the first institution of higher education on any Indian reservation in the country...
...were the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, which they called Washington beolta, the public schools, which they called belagona beolta (white man's schools), or the mission schools, called eeneishoodi beolta (for "those who drag their clothes," meaning the first Catholic priests who came to the reservation). The Navaho likes none of those places. White men's creations, they separate children from their families and tribal traditions, are largely inadequate, and have succeeded mainly in teaching young Indians to feel like second-class citizens. As one result, Indians have the country's highest illiteracy rate. Half...
Language and Legends. The community college is something else: dine beolta (the people's school) really belongs to the Navahos themselves. The college is primarily the creation of two men. President Robert Roessel Jr., 42, brought to his dream the experience of 20 years of teaching and school administration among the Navahos, plus the insight of his Navaho wife, Ruth, who is liaison officer for the college. Roessel's indispensable colleague was Raymond Nakai, the Navaho tribal chairman, who has advocated a community college on the reservation for more than a decade...
...working model: the Rough Rock Demonstration School, an elementary school that was started in 1966 with support from the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Office of Economic Opportunity, but has an all-Navaho school board with total administrative authority. At Rough Rock, students learn Navaho language and history, along with such standard subjects as English, math and science. Medicine men come to the dormitories in the evening to tell tribal folk tales and legends. The Navaho's focus on family ties is never forgotten, and children are allowed to go home whenever their parents wish...