In the story of my people, the Navajo, there were many changes that occurred since the first interactions between the Navajo and the American settlers. Upon first contact, the two distinct groups had started exchanging ideas and custom to one another.
An example would be the sexual orientation of the two cultures. In American culture, the government allows its citizen to choose their own sexual orientation without the questioning the purpose of their actions. Before the arrival of American settlers, the sexual orientation of the Navajo tribe has also been a heterosexual nature, due to morals and religion. After the loss of most traditions of the Navajo people, the idea from the United States replaces the tradition and allows the Navajo people to choose their sexual orientation. I feel the idea of someone choosing their sexual orientation is awkward and bizarre coming from a background where there was only a heterosexual background. Because the United States allows its citizens to choose, some of my cousins, uncles, and friends chose to become gay, believing it was due to change in ideas and environment. There is nothing wrong to have homosexual aspects in part of someone’s life, like my own relatives. It is their decision to be gay or not, but I do not believe it stems back to the change of morals and ideas.
Another example of a change of ideas in the two cultures would be the issue of abortion. In the society of America, the women who have become pregnant have the right to choose whether she will keep the unborn child or abort the fetus. Before the arrival of American culture, the idea of abortion was unknown to the Navajo tribe. As in many other cultures, the Navajo believe that all life is sacred, including the unborn child of a woman. After the loss of most traditions of the Navajo people, the idea from the American culture replaces the tradition and allows the Navajo women to choose abortion or the child. Although, the women of my family had never aborted a child, even with the idea of abortion is generally acceptable in American culture. I believe the Navajo tradition of the sacredness of life is strong in my family; the thought of abortion is by no means the choice in the women in my family.
Language is a way of knowing that is a common human activity that it is without doubt taken for granted. Language can be a major component of a society’s culture and traditions, including my culture, the Navajo. After the conclusion of the “Navajo Wars” in the 1860s, which led to the defeat of the Navajo tribe, the Dawes Act, an act enforced by Congress to force American Indians to assimilate to the white culture, created Navajo boarding schools were created to replace the traditional cultures of the Navajo with the mainstream American culture. At first, the government forced countless Navajo families to send their children to these boarding schools. But, eventually, the Navajo families decided to send their children to boarding schools because there were no other schools that were available for them. Among these children my great grandfather, grandfather and father. They were attendees of the Navajo board schools. At these boarding schools, the Navajo children were force to eradicate the “Indian” in them by cutting their hair, forgetting their language, and surrender their traditional clothing. The Navajo children may seem that the eradication of the clothing and the hair was nothing compared to the eradication of their language. The theory was if the Navajo forgot the essence of their culture, which in this case, the language, was destroyed, then Navajo would become less barbaric and more like the civilized, mainstream American.
In my culture, language is the essence of Navajo way of life. They were not only taught to speak English, but were punished for speaking their own language. Politics, an area of knowledge, is enforced in this situation. Their own traditional religious practices were forcibly replaced with Christianity. Without the loss of their language, the Navajo children forgot the histories and stories told by their ancestors for thousands of years. The Navajo children were taught that their cultures were inferior to the American culture. Some teachers scorned the students’ traditions. These lessons humiliated the students and taught them to be ashamed of being American Indian, a Navajo. Ashamed of having American Indian culture, the Navajo students lost their cultural ties and being to live as mainstream Americans.
Despite the negative phases of boarding schools, many Navajo students stubbornly held on to their tribal individualities. One of the positives of the Navajo boarding schools is it gave the Navajo children the ability to speak two languages, Navajo and English. This was convenient when the United States Marine Corps search for a language to be used for a code during the start of World War II. Thus, began the Navajo Code talker program. It is ironic how the Navajo language, the heart of their culture the American government tried to suppress and destroy, would help turned the tide in the Pacific during World War II.
Reason is a way of knowing that involves different elements. In a very general sense, reasoning is a combined attempt by which people create meaning together by exchanging, modifying and improving their ideas and opinions. When someone makes a claim to know, it is legitimate to ask for reasons and to expect that these will be coherent. The requirements of logical validity and rigor serve these various purposes. In different degrees and in different ways, it is arguable that reason has its place in many, if not all, areas of knowledge as well as in the everyday experience of individuals and the groups to which we belong.
Ethics is an area of knowledge that is a part of our daily lives and therefore should also be tested. Like history, it also cannot be evaluated scientifically or empirically. Every individual is affected by a principled or moral structure which is acknowledged by their own society. In the early years of exploration, American settlers had the general thought of Native Americans to be “savages” and “barbaric”, due to the nature of their individual cultures. But, contrary to the shared thought of the American culture, my culture had something created long before the existence of it happening in the United States: the equality of men and women. In the culture of the Navajo, women had an equal status of men, due to the stories told by the medicine men orally to their people. how is it that the dominant culture, such as the United States, call the culture of the Navajo inferior due to the culture they follow, despite the fact that the Navajos had equality before the American culture ever did?
It seems then, that the nature of human societies collides together and begins to learn each others culture. Although, the exchange of ideas and customs can resort to violence, due to the worlds apart of cultures, in the end, the exchange of ideas can turn out to be positive. Through the ways of knowing, people are capable to discover the different cultures that occupy this Earth.
