Word: navajos
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...medicine men," the teacher tells the class, "who came up with the religious beliefs that are the backbone of our Navajo culture." Lloyd | House speaks in a gravelly voice, has a boxer's much broken nose and wears a traditional turquoise necklace around his neck. "The medicine man we are talking about today was called Naahwiitbiihi -- which means the 'man who always wins.' Sounds like Frank Sinatra, doesn't it?" he says, and chuckles...
...high school students, all Navajos, all shy and soft-spoken, all wearing high-topped sneakers and distressed blue jeans, don't seem to know or care who Ol' Blue Eyes is. On this spring day they are more interested in completing their model hogans, the round, age-old Navajo structures whose doorways must always face east, the direction of dawn, the region of all beginnings...
Until last summer, House, a former Marine Corps and All-Service welterweight boxing champion, was one of two instructors in Navajo language and culture at the Navajo Academy in Farmington, N. Mex. This fall there are three, but House is no longer among them. The academy draws its students from the vast, mostly desolate Navajo reservation next to this charm-free oil-and-gas town. The school has a Navajo headmaster and an all-Navajo board of trustees. It is the only Native American college-preparatory boarding school...
...time when the Indian Self- Determination Act was passed, when the Federal Government was encouraging Native Americans to take their education into their own hands. Until the 1970s, the dominant principle of the Bureau of Indian Affairs was assimilation, and the government was content to let Navajo culture wither away...
...train ride is a visceral excursion into history. You can hear, if you listen carefully, the hiss of escaping steam, the chime of crystal goblets and the rustle of starched table linens. You can see, if you open your mind's eye, a lone Navajo saluting the Super Chief as it pulls into Albuquerque; buffalo racing alongside the Empire Builder in Montana. On board there are movie stars and Senators, Vanderbilts and Astors dining on fresh- caught trout...