Navajo Language | ScienceGate

Chapter Two examines language and social authenticity as it relates to Navajo expressive culture. I argue that Diné language politics give us greater insight into the broader story of country music, belonging, and generational nostalgia, and I trace ethnographically how language—often portrayed as a key index of culture—is linked to a Navajo politics of difference through specific registers of speech and song. After an overview of Diné language politics, I turn to how a culturally intimate speech genre referred to as jaan or “jaan Navajo” is incorporated into Native band rehearsals and Navajo comedy, forming the bedrock onto which generational wordplay and humor are overlaid. I then interrogate the expectation that “full Navajos” should speak Navajo or need merely “activate” the Navajo language gene that resides within them. In these ways, perception of speaking the Navajo language shifts from being an index of Navajo identity to an icon of Navajoness itself.

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The Navajo Language: III

The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice ◽

10.1016/b978-012349353-8/50046-7 ◽

2001 ◽

pp. 385-387

Author(s):

Ken Hale

Keyword(s):

Navajo Language

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Diné Bizaad Nánílˈįįh. Navajo Language Review.

International Journal of American Linguistics ◽

10.1086/465447 ◽

1976 ◽

Vol 42 (4) ◽

pp. 383-384

Author(s):

Herbert Landar

Keyword(s):

Navajo Language

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World(build)ing in Mohawk- and Seneca-Language Films

English Language Notes ◽

10.1215/00138282-8237531 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 58 (1) ◽

pp. 214-225

Author(s):

Penelope Kelsey

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Comparative Analysis ◽

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Consumer Culture ◽

Oral Tradition ◽

Language Revitalization ◽

Star Wars ◽

Revitalization Movements ◽

Navajo Language

Abstract This essay brings Zayin Cabot’s concept of “ecologies of participation” into conversation with contemporary Mohawk- and Seneca-language films and language revitalization movements. For Indigenous peoples, these participatory events are often interactive storying of worlds, whether told in film, social media, or oral tradition. As a particularly salient example, the essay considers Mohawk director Karahkwenhawi Zoe Hopkins’s adaptation of Star Wars: A New Hope in Star Wars Tsyorì:wat IV—Yonhská:neks (2013) in a comparative analysis with both the Navajo-language Star Wars: Episode IV and the Seneca-language films Kohgeh and Tših to highlight critical choices Karahkwenhawi makes in translation, both linguistic and visual, vis-à-vis settler colonial consumer culture. The essay concludes that her adaptation foregrounds supposed “advances” of Western technocratic capitalism; highlights the constructed, fallible, and ephemeral nature of these technologies; and potentiates other technologies and ecologies based in Mohawk ontologies.

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