Introduction
I teach 9 th through 12 th grader special education students at Monument Valley High School on the Navajo reservation. I have around 40-50 students per semester. My students consists of 95% Native Americans and 5% White, Mexican, Island Pacifiers', or African American. We are small nit community; this town of 7,000 people resides within Kayenta. Our school reaches out to the families of students that live in a 45 miles radius. The closest city is a 3 hour drive in one direction. Most of the students are on a free or reduced meal plan and about ¼ of our high school students live without running water or electricity in their home.
An important culture circumstance has me in a small dilemma. Since we reside and teach on the Navajo reservation, over 50% of the Navajo's continue to implement their cultural lifestyle. Other's choose a religious way of life or are atheist. Since my unit will view Anasazi ruins, a few parents may not want their child to go on the fieldtrip to Monument Valley to see petroglyphs up close. I have been told that Navajo's who live a cultural lifestyle do not step on land where a group has once inhabited the area.
"Native and European Arts at the Boundaries of Culture," in American Encounters, a new college-level textbook in American Art, focuses on the time period from 1820s to the 1850. A key image is a chromolithograph by the American artist and traveler by George Catlin, Wi-Jun-Jon (Pigeon's Egg Head) Going to and Returning from Washington. This image shows a native man twice: once, he is wearing his traditional regalia, in the other image he is dresses in white men's clothing. I believe that when the Navajo students see this image, they will begin to think about the typical stereotypes they hear from their older family members. Not to mention the movie industry continues to portray Native Americans as feather wearing, body painting, long hair, and 70% nudity. The students will need to know how to compare and contrast as part of their curriculum, Wi-Jun-Jon will only make it easier to decipher what is cultural and what is contemporize. Students may note that the headdress worn clearly represents Northern Plains Indian tribe. Such stereotype names may include Chief or Injun. Moccasins are distinct between tribes as well. As for the Native in the military style wear, my students may note the usual way he is holding an umbrella, wearing a top hat with a military uniform on. When students study history, this image is not what they have imaged of the early American wars. This painting is also used on Robert F. Berkhofer Jr book called The While Man's Indian and has become an important symbol of the changes forced upon Native American culture in the nineteenth century. 1
In his Ways of Seeing, John Berger reminds us that all images are man-made. 2 In this book, it focuses on how sight comes before words. Berger shows how our background knowledge can affect what we actually see. In the seminar of Understanding history and society through images, 1777-1914, we all viewed paintings and had to express our thoughts. In a few of the landscapes, I noted that I was the only one that felt the dark clouds hovering over the forest area was comforting while others felt like it was a dark and gloomy place. My background knowledge tells me that rain will water the plants, which in turns will feed the animals, which the animal will feed the people.
In the Yale Center for British Art, paintings by John Constable were viewed during the seminar. As Tim Barringer writes in Opulence & Anxiety Landscape Paintings from the Royal Academy of Arts, 2007, Constable felt a deep sense of connection to the landscape with which he grew up:
"'Painting is another word for feeling', he wrote, 'I associate my "careless boyhood" to all that lies by the banks of the Stour. [These scenes] made me a painter.' Many of his earlier works, meticulously crafted on canvases three or four feet wide, were painted outside, observed detail by detail from the motif byaprocess he called 'natural painture'."
What captured my particular attention was John Constable's Hadleigh Castle, The Mouth of the Thames- Morning after a Stormy Night, 1829 (oil on canvas). I had noticed a sunray in the background just underneath the clouds, painted with extreme truth to nature. The Navajo's believe the sunrays are meant to bring good vibes. In Navajo, the sunray is called Shandiin. In several of John Constable's paintings take up half the picture. This is something I could use in teaching at Monument Valley High School. Weather plays a key factor in our lifestyle. We see big black clouds as welcoming nourishment to our Mother Earth. Navajo lifestyle is based on using the Earth to feed, clothe, and shelter the people. The storm brings life back in our plants and trees, which we use as herbs to heal or treat certain ailments. It also brings water that animals and people will drink.
As my encounter with Constable reveals, art can connect us with people from other places and other times. All around the Navajo reservation, there are numerous cliff dwellings, ruins, and a variety of ancient art works, which long pre-date the arrival of the Navajo in the nineteenth century. Tourists admire these mysterious inscriptions and wonder what these images represent. Most areas are easily accessible to visitors and tour guides are available to offer their best interpretations of the Anasazi's history.
We do not know very much about the Anasazi tribe who inhabited current day Navajo land around the late 1600's and early 1700's. They built their villages in dwellings off the cliffs in very remote areas. Anasazi means Ancient Ones, who are believed to descendants of Pueblo's and Zuni Native American tribes. Four states: Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona; share evidence of these Ancient Ones and their civilization. The Anasazi people are thought to have been farmers, hunters, gathers, and nomadic migrators. Few clear facts or archaeological remains survive to inform us about their existence, their unique life style and their eventual extinction.
Navajos have the advantage of living in the area of these ruins and hieroglyphs and have made use of some motifs from the drawings in their ceremonies. The images used in ceremonies are similar to those seen on the rocks in Monument Valley, Utah or in Navajo National Monument. The Navajo's ceremonial drawings are abstract images that represent animals, humans, deities, and the constellations. Ceremonies are done by the Navajo people. There are four types conducted which all relate to healing. Healing an illness, mental of internal which requires a medicine man (Shaman) to perform.
To make students aware of their existence, a map of the ruins around Navajo land will be shown to the class so students will grasp a visual representation of how closely the ruins surrounds them. Images of the petroglyphs will be posted on poster boards as a reference. Students will also take a field trip down the dirt roads of Monument Valley, Utah to see up close a few of the petroglyphs.
This unit, Anasazi Images on Navajo land, will be a 9-10 th grade writing project. It will be taught integrating ELA Common Core Standards and the Dine' Philosophy of Education Standards. It will cover the course of 4 weeks for 45 minutes every other day. With implementing the Arizona Common Core Standards, we should be working to get our students college and career ready by the time they exit from high school. Each lesson will be aligned to at CCS and short activities will be added to aid and increase the student's comprehension skills.
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