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The Japanese encounter with Navajo (Diné) “code talkers” in World War II 149
have acknowledged themselves as such. The book also has many associated
wartime photographs.
Part of the culture conflict with the Anglo and Spanish invaders is this fact
that “property rights” belong to the Mother of the family and Clan property is
hierarchical according to who is the mother of a mother. In consequence, males
have no property rights and, therefore, have a cosmological view of Nature in
which anything that is “found” is “community property” and may be taken and
used until no longer needed where upon the item is simply discarded. There is
the obvious fundamental conflict with the derived European idea of “personal
property rights” where land is fenced, “owned”, possessed, and upon death is
passed from one male owner to his eldest son.
The Navajo clan system is rather precise and accounts for the way in which
the polysemy of the name Diné is often confusing because linguistic markers
designate precise interpersonal relationships (just like Japanese honorifics!).
The Navajo descent system includes six main categories: (1) mother’s clan;
(2) father’s clan; (3) born for mother’s clan; (4) born for father’s clan; (5) clan
for which mother is born; (6) clan for which father is born. A child becomes a
member of his mother’s clan, for it is that clan which gives him birth. Although
children are only given birth by their mother’s clan, they are said to be born for
their father’s clan. The “born for” concept further relates a Navajo to those who
are born for his clan and to those who are born for his father’s clan. One is also
related to the clans for which his mother and father are born. The feature of
giving birth or “born of” establishes the ego’s primary descent identity, while
the “born for” concept establishes five additional categories of k’éí to which the
ego is related (Witherspoon 1977: 95–96).
With regard to the Navajo sociocentric group culture, we need to note the
way in which it has been historically reinforced by contact with other group
cultures. As a consequence of the frequent attacks upon, and periodic destruction
of, the Pueblos, it was common practice for the Pueblo people to take refuge
with the largely nomadic Navajo people, thus leading to an integration of
the two native cultures giving the Navajo the emerging flexibility to be both
nomadic (sheep herding introduced by the Spanish; cattle herding introduced by
the Anglos) and place (farming) communities.
Navajo families live in a “house” that is five-sided and circular called
a hooghan [English = Hogan].The nature of communal living is such a structure
probably derives from the ancestral influence of the Kiva or circular ceremonial
room (where secret societies of men gathered for spiritual ceremonies) of
a typical Pueblo as shown in Figures 4 and 5. The Kivas at Pueblo Bonito are
the highest, most complex historical development of the group social structure.