Crossing Between Worlds: The Navajo of Canyon De Chelly

by Jeanne M. Simonelli

The Navajo people of Canyon de Chelly must negotiate a delicate balance between the old and the new as they struggle to maintain their traditional ways of life in the midst of archaeologists, U.S. Park Service employees, and the increasing numbers of tourists who come to visit this hauntingly beautiful part of northeastern Arizona. Anthropologist-writer Jeanne Simonelli, who worked at Canyon de Chelly as a seasonal park ranger, interweaves stories of her personal experiences and friendships with canyon residents with discussions of native history and culture in the region. Focusing on the members of one extended Navajo family, Simonelli describes the small moments of their daily shearing goats, baking bread, attending a solemn all-night health ceremony, washing clothes at the local laundromat, playing traditional games and contemporary sports, talking about the history of the Diné--the Navajo people--and pondering the changes they have witnessed in the canyon and the difficulties they confront. Crossing Between Worlds is sumptuously illustrated with insightful black-and-white photographs that document the everyday activities of Navajo families in one of the most spectacular corners of the American Southwest. Title of related interest from Waveland Downs, The Navajo (ISBN 9780881330373). Visit waveland.com for a complete list of modern and classic ethnographies on Apache, Comanche, Crow, Navajo, Papago, Pueblo, Shoshone, Sioux, and other American Indian cultures.

Genres: Nonfiction

138 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2008

Reviews

[Lenore Kuipers-Cummins]

I thought that this book was a difficult book to read and understand. It would have been more so if I hadn't lived among the Navajo for 7 years. The common Navajo names were there, and the photos were there, as well as some of the vocabulary that I read and used in my time on the reservation. This book put so many of the things that I experienced in context.
This book attempted and succeeded "to record a period of change for the Navajos who live and work in Canyon de Chelly." The author, Jenna M. Simonelli, was an anthropologist who taught at the State University of New York at Oneonta and led biannual summer programs in the Southwest. Her dream was to be a seasonal park ranger, where she tried to understand "the struggle of my Navajo friends to create a balance between cultures"; a "balance between the logic of tradition and the relentless demands of the twenty-first century". She succeeded to do that with her writing, and returning home "surrounded by the familiar trappings of our own lives, we realize we have changed somehow".
I, too, felt changed by my experiences on the reservation (teaching school) and when I returned home I realized that I had changed, but couldn't really explain how. It seemed as though I had lived one life on the reservation, but coming home realized that I had really lived in a different culture that was truly separate from the one I had lived on the reservation. That change is now a part of me.

[Baxter Clare Trautman]

I was an interp ranger at Canyon de Chelly National Monument a year before the author was there, just missed her. My loss. She did a lovely job with her book, capturing that fine-line tension between intruding and helping. Her book took me back, and it was a good place to go.