How the Diné People, Whom We Call “Navajo,” Can Help Save America, Again

The Diné blanket pictured is small. It measures a bit over 1.5 by three feet. It’s wool and weave are coarse, its colors soft. It uses traditional, natural dyes that the Diné have used for thousands of years.

I bought it in 1963, decades before the Diné began to weave finer, much larger blankets, colored with modern dyes, and sell them for thousands of dollars in high-end galleries and at “Indian Market” in Santa Fe. I still remember the price I paid for it—63 dollars— because it was the same as the year. I bought it in a teepee-shaped store by the side of old Route 66, a part of what was then being converted into Interstate 40.

I’m not a big lover of things. I live mostly in my head. But that small, native blanket is one of my most prized possessions. I’ve kept it throughout my nomadic life, as I’ve lived in over twenty-one cities, including Cambridge, UK, and Moscow, Russia. Today it hangs in pride of place over our main bed in our home south of Santa Fe, New Mexico. For me, its beautifully stylized eagle is a symbol of our nation and our diverse democracy.

The blanket evokes memories of the road trip when I bought it. We drove from my parents’ home in Los Angeles to Arizona and New Mexico. My companions were two friends from the Summer Science Program that I had attended in 1961. We had little in my hand-me-down car besides our clothes, sleeping bags, camping gear, and some lifting weights for exercise.

As we traveled, we sought places off the beaten path, in the desert wilderness. In Northeast Arizona, we overnighted at a place forty miles by rough dirt road north of the nascent Interstate. It had a decent-sized pond, a concrete picnic table, a metal roof for shelter from the summer rains, and not much else. But our map had marked it as an official “campground.”

We built a fire and cooked a meal of liver and onions in a cast-iron skillet over it. Just after dinner, one of the Southwest’s famous summer storms hit us with torrential rains. We hid under the metal roof until the storm had passed. Then, just as the sun was setting, two huge, young Diné men came by on horseback. They came over to talk and invited us to a native gathering a mile or so down the road.

That gathering was one of the most fascinating experiences of my 79 years. We arrived at a large clearing in the desert, with cars and pickups parked all around the periphery. On one side was a row of small tables, staffed by older women selling food, drink and trinkets. We three were the only non-native people there.

At first, there was dancing in the middle of the clearing. Men danced with men, arm in arm, in a line like the dancers in Zorba the Greek. At the end of each dance, the people standing around would clap their hands, and those in the parked cars and trucks would honk their horns and blink their lights in appreciation. As the natural light faded, the cars and trucks kept their lights on to illuminate the central “stage.”

Then began the “talks.” A lone man would stand in the center of the illuminated clearing and speak for several minutes. The language of course was incomprehensible to us. But it was also strange in another respect. Unlike all foreign languages I had then heard or studied, it was completely uninflected. There seemed to be no accent or change in tone. The only way to tell the end of a sentence, or of the whole speech, was a pause in or an end to the talking. I had never heard anything like that until, nearly three decades later, I learned a bit of tourist Japanese. (More on this later).

Although we were visibly outsiders and “foreign,” everyone there treated us kindly. Someone explained that the speeches, which got vigorous applause and flashing of lights, were campaigns for tribal office. As the evening wore on, we three had had a little too much to drink. About 2 a.m., we stumbled back to our sleeping bags near the pond and fell asleep.

About 6 a.m., the sun woke us. As we stretched blearily out of our sleeping bags, the same two huge men, on horseback, were out tending their sheep, after what could have been no more than three or four hours of sleep. They smiled and waved to us. One of us remarked dryly, “So much for the so-called ‘lazy’ Indian,” and we all laughed.

That experience convinced me of the “land-bridge” theory of Native-American origin. About twenty thousand years ago, the theory goes, people whose descendants are Native Americans crossed a land bridge from Northeast Asia, including what’s now Japan. (At that time, toward the end of the last Ice Age, the seas were lower and the icy land higher, permitting passage on foot.) As soon as I had learned some Japanese, with its peculiar lack of accent, I recalled the Diné speech I had heard that evening, and it all fell into place for me.

Whatever their origin, the Diné have a special place in American history. They are by far the largest Native American tribe, some 300,000 strong. Most live on both sides of the northern border between Arizona and New Mexico.

The Diné used their unique language as so-called “Code Talkers” in our part of World War II. Theirs was the only military “code” that remained unbroken and inviolate throughout the entire war. Even the Nazis’ “Enigma” code, produced by an early form of mechanical digital computer, was broken.   (Movie goers may recall the 2014 movie, The Imitation Game, which told the story of how Alan Turing, a gay British mathematician, and his crew broke that code.)

As of 2023, some 140,000 Diné live in Arizona. They are, of course, American citizens by birthright and therefore eligible to vote. If only ten percent who are unregistered or reluctant voters vote Democratic in November, they could tip the whole state blue. Ruben Gallego could help keep the Senate blue, and Kamala Harris could add a key “battleground state” to her tally.

That’s where you can help. You can donate to the “Navajo County Native Organizing Fund, a Project of the Arizona Democratic Party,” formerly called “The Northeast Arizona Native Democrats.” You can donate through the secure, progressive donation site, Act Blue, as I do. Just type “Navajo” in the donee search field.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Diné people, whose ancestors came across the land bridge 20,000 years ago to become the first Americans, who have been independent and self-sustaining ever since, and who helped win our battles against European fascism and Japanese Imperialism, were instrumental in saving present-day American democracy from the ravages of a narcissistic egomaniac bent on imposing his own personal kind of fascism on us?

What a story! And you can be part of it if you wish.


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