USA - Many Nation Army

July 17

Hello everyone!

The United States of America is a country that hosts many cultures. Of course, there was a time before this, before the Europeans came to…well, conquer…when this large land mass was solely occupied by a wide variety of Native American tribes. Today I spent time in the home of one of the larger tribes: the Navajo, pronounced NA-va-hoe.

Monument Valley

Navajo - aka Diné - art

Not that they want to be called Navajo, though the tribe will accept it. This was a name given to this group by one of their rivals, and translates to something like ‘enemy’. Their preferred name is Diné (dih-NAY), though I’ll be interchanging throughout this piece. 

A singer and a weaver at an indigenous evening

This rug is valued at ovr $60,000!

The Diné - though theirs is called Navajo - have a reservation. Not for a fancy restaurant. This refers to land that is specifically set aside for the use of a Native American tribe. This group’s reservation straddles three modern US states, including my current location of Arizona.

Mostly Arizona

We were staying in a small town called Flagstaff, before driving
through Monument Valley to get to another small town called Page

At 17 million acres, the Navajo Nation reservation is the largest in the country. Of the 250,000 or so people who identify as Navajo or Diné, 200,000 live on the reservation. They have their own tribal police and laws, as well as state and federal legislation.

The area is poorer than average in the US, and has an unemployment rate estimated at 40%

The Diné don’t do casinos on their land,

unlike many other Native American tribes

They didn’t always live on this land. Well, for a four year period they didn’t. Throughout the 19th century, white Americans started enacting what was called the Manifest Destiny: their belief that all of the land was given to them by God. For the Diné, that meant being forcibly removed in 1863. The Long Walk, forcing the horse-loving tribe to walk hundreds of miles away on foot, led them to New Mexico. 

They were allowed to return four years later after the signing of a treaty

An example of Raku Pottery - beautiful

The American nation needed the Navajo Nation a few decades later. After entering World War 2 in 1941, the US was having problems as the Japanese were easily able to intercept confidential messages. That was until they employed members of the Diné tribe and used a brilliantly elaborate scheme to convert their own language, which up to this point had never been written, into English. It helped America with later successes in its war in the Pacific. The Navajo Codebreakers are honoured in a small museum…in a Burger King. Yes.

There it is, in a section of Burger King

An example: the Navajo would say 'wol-la-chee'. This means ant.
Ant starts with A, therefore 'wol-la-chee' would be A.

Maintaining past culture is vital to any clan or group’s future. We went to an indigenous cultural evening whilst staying in the small town of Page, featuring colourful regalia, deep singing and entertaining dancing, often using hoops.

A man playing a Native American flute

A man who competes in national hoop championships showing of his skills

On the way to Page, we had diverted the Big Red Bus to an area known as Monument Valley. A place where you can begin to comprehend the enormity of the landscape.

Sentinel Mesa

The Three Sisters in front of another mesa

Entering the valley feels like arriving on an alien planet. A desolate, desert landscape is studded with sudden sheer rises of rock, created by long processes of sedimentation, tectonic uplift and erosion.

Some of the buttes are over 1000
feet - 300 metres - above the floor

The Indian Chief, or Big Chief Butte

There are three types of rock rise found here: 

Mesa: Spanish for ‘table’, these are flat mountains like plateaus

Butte: a smaller version of a mesa, it is wider than it is tall

Spire: a skinny pole that goes straight up, being taller than it is wide

The Diné driver we had whilst trucking around the valley made it clear that we needed to use our imagination when looking at these enormous rock formations in order to ‘see’ things. For example, the Elephant Butte and the Three Sisters. The famous one - or two - are called The Mittens. You’ll see why, hopefully.

Can you see the elephant trunk?

Do a thumbs up pose with both hands - does it look similar to this?

As you can imagine, the formation of these took a long time. A long time ago - in the many millions of years ago - Monument Valley was under an ocean. Minerals were thus deposited here, particularly iron. After the ocean disappeared, the iron in the sandstone oxidised, giving the rocks their spectacular red hue.

Metallica filmed their music video for 'I Disappear'
on one of these buttes, landing on it by helicopter

Movie buffs may recognise some of the backdrops from Western movies. These include Stagecoach, The Searchers, and How the West Was Won. The story goes that two sheep farmers, Harry and Leone ‘Mike’ Goulding, used their last money to go to Hollywood to try to persuade the director John Ford to film his Westerns in Monument Valley, therefore bringing in money for the Navajo. Ford took one look at the pictures, and John Wayne’s Stagecoach was being filmed there two weeks later.

Wayne himself referred to the valley
as "the place where God put the West"

The famous scene in Forrest Gump, where Forrest finally
stops running, was filmed in this area as well

Monument Valley is a stunning and important part of the Navajo Nation Reservation. Its towering rock formations and stunning colours are worth the trek into Arizona.

Squint and you may see a chicken...imagination!

The shorts helped me stand out more than the shirt...

Attempt at creative photography

Love you all,

Matt