Traditions of the Diné

Nichole Green

Salt Lake community college

Anthropology 2120 Sacred Traditions

March 14, 2019

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The book I chose to read was the Dinéjí Na`nitin: Navajo Traditional Teachings

and History written by Robert S. Mcpherson. His goal for his book was to make

understanding the Navajo people easier for the non-native audience. Here is a tiny

piece of what I learned while reading Mcpherson’s book.

The Navajo people call themselves the Diné, which means, “the people,” and

they call their land Diné Bikéyah which means “the people’s sacred lands” This land is

also known as the Navajo Nation. It is located at the four corners region of the South-

west U.S. and now includes 27,000 square miles of land of three states of Arizona,

Utah, and New Mexico. It is between four mountain ranges, San Francisco Mountain

(Humphrey Peak), Hesperus Mountain, Blanca Peak, and Mt Taylor these mountain

ranges are scared to the Diné.

The Diné have different spiritual beliefs than the rest of the U.S. Their myths and

stories are bound together with their views and they believe that both good and evil

coexist and are natural in this world. The Diné use divination in their rituals as a way to

foretell the future and look into the past by using the help of supernatural agents. These

unseen supernatural agents are the holy people.

Their elders pass down their history as stories that they tell orally to each new

generation. These stories talk about the creation of life and beliefs on how to live in this

world through the myths and stories of their people.

The Elders believe that the Diné language is essential to the survival of their

culture and beliefs. Metaphors are important to the Diné culture as a unified expression

that can be a teaching tool of their values and can hold their beliefs together. The way
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the Diné live their lives is their religion. Myths, Stories, Metaphors are all fundamental to

the Diné as they are all connected to their understanding of the supernatural and the

universe. The Diné believe that the physical world is connected with the supernatural.

Rituals by medicine men, hand tremblers, and stargazers are a way that they can call

upon the divine powers from the holy people. In every ritual, corn pollen is used when

they perform to communicate with the holy people.

The Diné believe that the Gods defined principles for which the people should

live their lives. The creation story says.

“Before there was even a world the Gods and animals met in the
first Ta'Chééh (a sweat lodge) and Hogan (home) to discuss their plans for
how the world should operate. The gods created this world spiritually
before there was a physical body. Everything the people would encounter
there would be an answer, a reason and a place for the sacred as they
lived on this world. Every disease would have a cure through the
knowledge of the plants and animals and its own prayers and songs of
communication. All will be harmonious as long as every creature abides
by the rules established by the holy people. As the Gods thought, prayed,
sang, and planned, the physical world with all its inhabitants began to take
shape. Only the holy people could manage the complex world discussed
in Diné mythology. Mythology provides the rules for how the five-fingered
people should act, based on divine rules and principles.” (McPherson.
2012. Loc. 117)1

Today, mixed in with the modern housing communities there are still people who live in

Hogans, and they are still in use for ceremonial purposes. The Diné believe that the

Hogan represents life because of the lesson in the creation story. When the Diné builds

a hogan, they "address the mountains" with the four directions each post in the hogan
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is blessed to hold the powers of one of the four sacred mountains. Each cardinal

direction has a mountain associated with it: East is Blanca Peak, South is Mt Taylor,

West is Humphrey Peak (within the San Francisco Mountain,) and North is Hesperus

Mountain. They believe that the sacred mountains represent the deities.

The Navajo believe that there are two set of beings, the Earth people who walk

on earth and the Holy people. The holy people are unseen deities that medicine men

can call upon in their rituals. The medicine men ask for powers from these invisible Holy

people through the prayers and songs that they perform to heal a person or object.

These prayers and songs are passed down orally from other elder medicine men. They

usually only learn a couple of prayers because of the complexity of understanding

everything that goes into these rituals. They need to know which herbs, songs, and

prayers that should be used to counter harmful elements that are affecting the patient.

Otherwise, if they do a ritual wrong, bad things can happen. Medicine men use corn

pollen and have medicine bundles that are used to heal and protect the patient from

evil. Sometimes a Hand trembler or a crystal gazer is called in to detect illness before

the medicine man does his ritual.

Witchcraft for the Navajos is different from western Christian thought. They do

not have good gods and evil gods like in Christianity. Instead, they believe the power to

cause good or evil comes from the user. “Respect, balance, and orderliness become

the means by which positive forces are controlled, while the rituals of evil and witchcraft

are based on excess, lack of reverence, and chaos. The power is there; what one does

with it determines the outcome.”(McPherson. 2012. Loc. 1496)2

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When a person believes they have been bewitched, a medicine man will place a

protective shield on them through prayers and song. This protective shield is thought to

bounce the evil magic back at the witch. Witchcraft can be detected by the use of hand

trembling or crystal gazing. After detection of witchcraft, the medicine man could use the

Blessing way to turn evil into good. The Blessing way prayer when said backward could

be used to cause harm to the patient. Plants can also be used to cure witchcraft or fend

off evil. To practice witchcraft means that you are using the divine powers to cause

harm instead of using it for good.

What I learned from reading this book was that the spiritual beliefs in the Diné

are more complicated than I initially thought because their history and spiritual beliefs

were passed down orally their language is crucial to understanding the meanings in

their culture. Many of their words lose sense or the meaning changes when translated

into another language. To forget their language would be missing a part of their culture

and history. Their beliefs are a way of life. With western influence, they had lost many of

their traditions, but with the help of the elders and many others, the Diné are reviving

their cultural beliefs by reteaching the youth their language, history, myths and with this

knowledge of these stories they can better navigate and live within this earthly world.
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References

McPherson, Robert S. 2012. Dinéjí Na`nitin: Navajo Traditional Teachings and

History. Boulder, Colorado: University Press of Colorado. Kindle edition.

Notes

Most books in Kindle editions do not have page numbers, instead they have

location numbers that do not match other e-readers because of this I included which

chapters I found the two direct quotes from.

1. (McPherson. 2012. Loc. 117)1 Introduction Entering the Ta'Chééh

2. (McPherson. 2012. Loc. 1496)2 Chapter 3 Sacred Evil