Borden, John, Chauncey Neboyia, & Dorothy Neboyia
2004 Seasons of a Navajo. Princeton, New Jersey: Films for the Humanities and Sciences.
Notes: VHS, 59 minutes, color.Reviewed 22 Jun 2006 by:
Raymond A. Bucko <bucko@creighton.edu>
Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, USAMedium: Film/Video Subject
Keywords:Navajo Indians - Social life and customs
Indians of North America - Arizona - Religion and mythology
Indians of North America - Arizona - Social life and customs
Documentary films
ABSTRACT: This short, straightforward documentary chronicles a year of economic and social activities of an elderly Navajo couple and their clan. It illuminates aspects of family interaction, ritual and belief, farming, animal husbandry and the relationship between the reservation and the surrounding world.
Seasons of the Navajo follows a year in the life of Dorothy and Chauncey Neboia, an elderly Navajo couple and their extended family who live on the vast Navajo Reservation. Their story, produced as a film in 1984, introduces information about Navajo kinship, descent systems, gender and age roles, ecology, philosophy, religion, domestic space, child life, and economics. Visually rich, the documentary shows the widely varied ecological zones of the Navajo territory. It also presents social interaction among clan members and within a variety of environments and seasonal changes. Extended narratives in the Navajo language and performances of Navajo music and rituals bring a vivid aural dimension.Seasons of the Navajo is a good example of the functionalist approach used by anthropology in the mid-twentieth century. It offers insight into how Navajo society holds itself together while keeping history and change mostly at bay. It mentions that sheep were introduced in the 1600s. It also mentions that non-Navajo peoples surround the Navajo. However, there is no discussion of the Hopi who are surrounded by the Navajo or their other indigenous neighbors. The film also fails to touch on the Navajos’ long history of interaction with first Europeans and then Americans.
The key moment in the film comes when Chauncey speaks of young people who do not always wake up at dawn as Navajo tradition dictates. The film acknowledges that most Navajo live in urban areas where they can earn a living. They return to the reservation only during certain seasons. There is no discussion of the consequences of this reality. Nor is there discussion of the influence of Western-style education on children who do return seasonally to the reservation to assist their grandparents with planting, craft manufacturing and animal husbandry.
The film shows two examples of transhumance: the first is traditional shifting of herds between river valley and mesa top that come with the changing seasons; the second is modern shifting between urban and reservation life that comes with kinship obligations and economic necessities.
Seasons of the Navajo presents an idyllic portrait of Native life, one that is expected by most high school and college students. Elders are respected, the Native language is spoken and traditional rituals and beliefs guide daily life. Navajo children learn to weave and use natural plants to dye wool; the use of aniline dyes is never mentioned, however. Sheep-dipping, vaccination routines (another intrusion of modernity), and planting and harvesting corn figure into the portrait. The Navajo pray in the sweat lodge which is believed to be the place of creation. They engage in a kinaalda (puberty) ceremony. They are seen as living in harmony with the spiritual world where beauty of the upper world surrounds them in a seemingly easy compromise with the “modern” world outside the reservation.
Students certainly should be encouraged to understand the Navajo’s ideal world, particularly as expressed by the elders. Chauncey is the strongest voice in this regard. In the ideal world there is, indeed, a kinship with Earth, who is mother. Rituals and prayers using sacred substances, such as pollen, are essential to social and spiritual well-being. Traditional Navajo life endures. However, students also should question what happens, as the film symbolically puts it, when young people no longer wake up at dawn as tradition dictates.
Rather than dismiss the film, students should be encouraged to use the film as a point of departure for broader contextualization. Here are questions to help develop greater breadth: How and when did the Navajo come to the Southwest?; What is the Navajos’ relationship with foreign powers, such as the Spanish, Americans and surrounding Indian peoples?; How does urban migration affect the Navajo in positive ways and negative ways?; What health problems are most common among the Navajo?; How do street gangs, methamphetamine, and other contemporary ills affect the Navajo?; How do Navajo people, who in their own language call themselves Dene, maintain their language and traditions?; What are the economic and ecological consequences of uranium and coal mining on the reservation?
Ultimately, Seasons of the Navajo is worthwhile not because it captures a full picture of Navajo life in the 1980s. In fact, it selectively captures only certain elements of that reality. Rather, it is useful because it illustrates how filmmaking produces images of a people that can be both valuable and detrimental. Because the film is short and more visual than narrative, teachers should highlight and contextualize elements that introduce classic anthropological topics, such as cosmology and social change. More important, instructors should go beyond the film itself so that students reflect on the contrast between idealization of a culture and the real struggles and triumphs of Native cultures in the past and today.
To cite this review, the American Anthropological Association recommends the following style:
Bucko, Raymond A.
2006 Review of Seasons of a Navajo. Anthropology Review Database. June 22. Electronic document, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=2707, accessed February 9, 2010.© Anthropology Review Database
(available online: http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/)