After reviewing Reclaiming Diné History (which cites this work, at that time was in the process of publication) I picked this book to read. The federal government's livestock reduction program on the Navajo Reservation during the 1930s stands as one of the most significant events in Diné (Navajo) history during the twentieth century. In the midst of the Great Depression federal officials hoped to stop overgrazing on Navajo lands in the Southwest and to prevent another environmental disaster like the Dust Bowl. However, the livestock reduction program proved to be a disaster of its own. Historian Marsha Weisger presents a new interpretation of Navajo pastoralism and why the livestock reduction of the 1930s failed. By the early 1700s the Navajo began to herd small flocks of sheep after the Spanish introduced these animals and other domesticated livestock to the Southwest. However, the Navajo considered sheep as an integral part to their identity going back to their very beginnings. In the creation story Changing Woman gave life to Diné and their livestock by forming people of the first four clans from her own skin and with another piece of skin created horses, sheep, and goats. These animals were the most important gifts to the Navajo, offering subsistence, a medium of exchange, and a spiritual identity for the Diné. As one Navajo man stated in the 1950s in the program's aftermath: "With our sheep we were created." However, New Deal officials (particularly Bureau of Indian Affairs Commissioner John Collier) made a grave mistake by ignoring the cultural relationship of sheep to the Navajo. They believed that the range had been overgrazed and overstocked and relied on conservation, which treated ecological problems facing the reservation as a mathematical equation solved in universal terms. After all, the New Deal had rescued the southern plains from the Dust Bowl by introducing new farming methods, but government agents did not face a cultural divide there. Several advisers warned Collier against harsh measures to reduce livestock and prevent erosion, but he went ahead with his plan. Consequently, many Navajos were outraged at Collier and the New Deal, having been forced to slaughter hundreds of thousands of sheep. he Navajo believed as a result that the rain disappeared. Conservationists were correct that environmental damage had been done to the range (partially due to encroachment by Anglo and Hispanic ranchers), but their faith in science blinded them from utilizing Diné knowledge of vegetation and soil and realizing the cultural implications of stock reduction. To this day, Collier's heavy-handed approach has left the Navajo with a deep distrust of the federal government. One of this book's most intriguing parts is how gender and ecology are intertwined. Navajo women owned most of the sheep herds and almost all of the goat population. When a woman married, she typically brought her husband to live with her and her hogan was situated near those of her mother and married sisters. Women stood at the center of Diné life, including spiritual beliefs, kinship, and residence patterns. Most importantly, Navajo women were important to economic production, especially weaving, producing rugs for sale in commercial markets. Women's economic status increased through weaving as they traded rugs at trading posts for food, coffee, clothing, fabric, and other supplies. Livestock reduction had a direct impact on women's status in Navajo society because dwindling flocks reduced women's claims to land. After World War II (in which many Navajo men and women served with distinction in the armed forces, including the Code Talkers) men increased their power in Diné households as wage earners in coal or uranium mines and other jobs. However, according to Weisiger, women still remained influential in Navajo society. I believe that Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country is only one of a few environmental history books to incorporate gender and ecology together. Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country is an extension of Jennifer Nez Denetdale's argument in Reclaiming Diné History that our views of Navajo history and culture have been mainly shaped by whites and their belief system. When conservationists like John Collier set out to plan stock reduction in the 1930s they were driven by Western science, not Navajo cultural considerations. True, the Navajo lands suffered from years of environmental degradation as more people and animals were hemmed in by non-Indian ranchers, but slaughtering livestock in mass numbers without recognizing the importance of sheep in Diné society was not the answer. Weisiger's book illustrates how white American and Native American understandings of nature clashed as the federal government imposed its values on the Navajos with disastrous effects. Weisiger, Marsha L. Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009.
0 Comments
To many people, the prospect of living in the city of Phoenix, Arizona, with its oppressive desert heat, is unthinkable. But since 1940, when Phoenix was only a small, agricultural community of 65,000 residents, the city has grown to over 1.5 million people and become the sixth most populous metropolis in the United States. Cheap electricity has been the key to its growth, as Phoenix lawyer Frank Snell attributed “airplanes and air conditioners” in an interview in the 1970s, claiming, “If you hadn’t had either we’d never grown.” This energy is produced by coal-burning power plants and mining on the Navajo Reservation, which has taken a toll on both people and the environment of the Southwest. Severe pollution has marred the landscape. While Phoenix residents have taken inexpensive power for granted, a large percentage of impoverished Navajo households have remained without electricity and viewed the power lines as a form of white colonialism. This uneven social structure is the subject of Andrew Needham’s book Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest. Coal deposits exist throughout the Southwest, storing ancient energy to be harnessed for electricity. However, this resource remained buried until technology made it accessible in the twentieth century. During the 1930s the Bureau of Indian Affairs found that coal was found “very cheaply and with very little trouble” on Navajo land. By the middle of the decade, thirty-four mines had opened on the reservation, producing 3,300 tons of coal annually. It seemed like a win-win situation for the Navajo. Coal mining provided jobs for many tribal members seeking employment. Coal could be exchanged for cash or credit, like wool at trading posts. A report by the Bureau of Reclamation in the 1950s declared that the coal supplies of northern Arizona would “last one thousand years.” Moreover, coal production was cheaper than natural gas or atomic power. Many Navajo leaders stressed energy development as a way to improve the economic status of their people. After the end of World War II a consumer culture ethos emerged in white American society as domestic appliances (powered by cheap electricity) became linked to social status. Phoenix was no exception. Most of the city’s white population had all the trappings of middle class life. Although the Navajo supplied Phoenix with electricity from power plants on reservation land, they did not share any of these benefits. It was only a matter of time before many Navajos spoke out against the colonial nature of the electrical system. One disgruntled letter to the Navajo Times newspaper in 1970 complained that Phoenix’s white population “destroyed our land so they can use electric can openers and tooth brushes.” Much of the criticism was directed at the Navajo leadership, which did not use energy profits to help the common people and instead used the money to enrich themselves. Navajo resentment against the power plants and coal companies sharply increased during the 1970s, a time of Native American nationalism throughout the United States. Power Lines is a sobering, eye-opening book that raises awareness of the electric utility system’s social effects in the Southwest. Previously I was unaware of the significance of coal as a energy source, which is even more important than dams and hydroelectric power. There are no easy answers, as I was disturbed to learn that environmental groups like the Sierra Club opposed the construction of a dam at the Grand Canyon (a picturesque Southwest landscape) during the 1960s while supporting coal plants on Navajo lands because they were removed from public view. However, this current system is unsustainable. For example, the Four Corners Power Plant in northwestern New Mexico (and the largest coal-fired plant in the state) produces almost 16,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, significantly contributing to climate change. The Southwest's population is expectedly to grow significantly during this century, putting more strains on natural resources. As I read this book I was reminded of William Cronon's classic environmental history Nature's Metropolis (1991) of nineteenth century Chicago and its relationship to the entire West. Like Chicago, Phoenix has reached out into the hinterlands of rural areas with commodity flows (in Phoenix's case, electricity). Power Lines is an excellent combination of urban, environmental, and Native American history that illustrates how one society's wealth often comes at the expense of another culture. Needham, Andrew. Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest. Princeton University Press, 2014. In my earlier blog review of The Spanish Frontier in North America, I listed James F. Brooks as one of the premier historians of the Southwest borderlands. When I heard about his new book Mesa of Sorrows about the Awat'ovi Massacre on Arizona's Antelope Mesa in 1700, I rushed to read it. Brooks' examination of this atrocity committed against the Hopi community by fellow Hopi Indians belongs in the same category as Karl Jacoby's Shadows at Dawn (previously reviewed) concerning the history of violence and Native Americans in the Southwest. It is intriguing that many Hopis would not claim the land and have attempted to forget these tragic events at Awat'ovi over three centuries ago. The word Hopi translates into "The Peaceful People," but after reading Mesa of Sorrows, this name seems very contradictory. Based on his excellent use of historical and archaeological records and Hopi oral traditions, Brooks argues that the massacre occurred as a result of tensions among the Hopi- between those who had converted to Catholicism of the Spanish Franciscans (under coercion) and others who felt that Awat'ovi had fallen into koyaanisqatsi (moral chaos and corruption) and forgotten the old ways. The massacre was the climax of the Pahaana prophecy, the Hopi cycle of destruction, resurrection, and renewal to purge the social order of all evil. The Franciscan missionaries were forced out of the Southwest along with the rest of the Spanish settlers during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 by Indians led by Po'pay (or Popé), allowing many Hopis to return to their old traditions. However, the friars returned to Awat'ovi in 1700 following the Spanish reconquest of New Mexico, creation tension between Hopi Catholic converts and those who practiced traditional religion, culminating in the slaughter of men, women, and children that fall. The fact that the Hopi did not consider themselves as belonging to the same tribe, but rather by village (Walpi, Oraibi) contributed to the tragic event. Brooks' argument of upheaval and renewal at Awat'ovi is convincing not only because of his sources but also because he draws on other similar examples in history. For example, when Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés led an expedition into Mexico and conquered the Aztecs in 1519-20, the Aztecs conjoined the story of the feathered serpent deity Quetzalcoatl with the cataclysmic arrival of the Europeans. During the early 20th century, a schism emerged between Hopi Indians opposed to the allotment policies of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs who did not want their children to be exposed to white culture and those who believed in acculturation. The Pahaana prophecy seemed to be back again as a severe drought struck the Hopi in 1902-03 during this turbulent period with the U.S. government. In 1906 the "Oraibi split" occurred, dividing the village between the pavansinom (Indians conciliatory to white reforms) and the sukavungsinom (Hopis hostile to Anglo culture). Overall, Mesa of Sorrows adds to our understanding of the history of the Hopi Indians and the American Southwest. It is academic in style and can be repetitive in places, but it examines a very important event: historical memory and how we remember events, even tragic ones. This theme runs across all cultures in the world. Brooks, James F. Mesa of Sorrows: A History of the Awat'ovi Massacre. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. |
CategoriesAuthorTom Schmidt lives in Prescott Valley, AZ. Archives
October 2018
CategoriesArchives
October 2018
|