Essay on Navajo Code Talkers in WW2

Kristofic and Darren started Ganado Primary School. Kristofic was teased by being called “Bilagáana” (The white Apple) and bullied by his classmates (Kristofic, 2011, pp.8-10). As days went by, Kristofic started making new friends and did not hate Ganado so much anymore. He learned things he never knew before. He first learned, that Navajos are not Indians (Kristofic, 2011, p.13) and Navajos are called “Dine” (Kristofic, 2011, p.47). As years went by, Kristofic started to appreciate the culture, tradition, and started to learn the language. Within the first few years, Kristofic’s mother dated a Navajo man and married him. Kristofic mother had two children for him. A girl called Yanabah (Kristofic, 2011, p.99), and a boy called Glen (Kristofic, 2011, p.120). After graduating middle school in Ganado, Kristofic and his family moved to the Navajo Generating Station outside Page, Arizona (Kristofic, 2011, p.125). His mother got another job in this location to be able to have college savings for both her sons. Kristofic and Darren both attended Page High School.

Navajo culture distinctively took hold in the four corners area of the Colorado Plateau around 100 A.D., although they are believed to have been around for centuries before then. Disliking the term “Navajo Indians”, they refer to themselves as the “Diné” which means “The People” or “Children of the Holy People”.

Although this idea had been successfully implemented during World War I using the Choctaw Indian's language, history generally credits Philip Johnston for the idea to use Navajos to transmit code

Let’s start with the language portion of the Peoplehood matrix and the affects that settler colonialism has had on Navajo. In Peoplehood, it is stated that the language portion of the Peoplehood matrix is “a group-particular language, by way of its nuances, references, and grammar, gives a sacred history a meaning of its own, particularly if origin, creation, migration, and other stories are spoken rather than written” (Holm, et al. pg. 13). Especially in the late nineteenth century, Navajo children like many other indigenous children were sent to boarding schools. Settler colonialism resulted in a need to as Native Words Native Warriors puts it “eliminate traditional American Indian ways of life and replace them with mainstream American culture.”

Likewise, “pronunciation of even one Navajo word is nearly impossible for someone not used to hearing the sounds” (Nez 91). This talent can be obtained, but is seemingly impossible to be learned later in life, as “the language was so complex it could be learned only is one began in infancy” (Nez 91). That being said, this talent was in high demand because of the very small percentage of people who could speak Navajo in the United States and the US Government could not simply take shortcuts in learning the language because they would need to grow a colony of Navajo speaking children over the span of about eighteen years. Which, was time no one had.

“Navajo trading has been a crucial component of that tribe's localized economy for generations and has been the subject of much scholarship over the years (Kiser, 2012).” Trading is what has really distinguished the Navajo from other cultures. They traded with the Spanish at first and then on to other tribes. They were first introduced to a horse from being able to establish trade with the Spanish in the 1620’s. Many other native cultures went

knew that Native American languages, notably Choctaw, had been used in World War I to

Native American code transmission began in World War I, with the Choctaw Indians (Meadows, “Honoring”). “Because the Native languages were not based on European languages or

“The white men first showed up in the summer of 1943. They came from the north, from Colorado, in teams of half a dozen each, hunkered down in trucks until the roads ran out. Then they switched to horses, riding into the silent reaches of the Navajo reservation, leaving their own country behind through they were still within its borders. They entered a place that seemed mystical and wild, where the residents spoke little or no English and only a few could write their names, where medicine men chanted and sifted colored sand and witches were said to haunt the deep night along with coyotes and bears” – Prologue, S-37, SOM, and SOQ (pg. 1)7

This article, Honoring Native American Code Talkers: The Road to the Code Talkers Recognition Act of 2008, is about the code talkers in World War ! and World War II. The work done by the code talkers helped the United States win both wars. The helpful acts done by the various tribes should have been recognized sooner but they went years without any recognition for all of their

The Navajo believe there are two classes of beings, The Holy people and the Earth people. The Earth people of the Navajo must do everything they can to maintain the peace and harmony of Mother Earth since they are an integral part of the universe. According to Discover Navajo, “it is believed that centuries ago the Holy People taught the Navajo how to live the right way and to conduct their many acts of everyday life“ (Navajo culture, 2008). The Navajo people were taught to live one with animals, insects, man, and plants. Mt. Blanca to the east, Mt. Taylor to the south, San Francisco Peak to the west and Mr. Hesperus to the North near Durango, Colorado, were put in place by the holy people in the four different directions. Jet Black, Turquoise, White Shell, and Yellow Abalone represent the four directions. The Navajo culture uses the number four to symbolize many other different things. For example, there are four seasons and four distinct directions.

In this book that I read it is about the life and heroic contributions Chester Nez, and his one of the 32 Code Talkers used by the military to transmit classified information during World War II. Honestly this book to me is about enduring the courage to defend what you believe in even when your own country is hostile towards you, as it is about the actual Code Talker program its critical contribution to the winning of the war. Chester Nez the last surviving member of the Code Talkers discussing his life growing up in checkerboard Area of the Navajo Reservation. At the age of 17, Nez (an English name assigned to him in kindergarten) volunteered for the Marines just months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Growing up in a traditional

Unlike English, Navajo has few to no grammar and has a hard pronunciation. Navajo is also rare as there are less than 330,000 speakers after we won the war. This makes the language “Navajo” the perfect code language. Unlike other Indian languages, there is no grammar in Navajo. Japanese cannot decode languages like this.

The world view of the Navajo who had lived for many centuries on the high Colorado Plateau was one of living in balance with all of nature, as the stewards of their vast homeland which covered parts of four modern states. They had no concept of religion as being something separate from living day to day and prayed to many spirits. It was also a matriarchal society and had no single powerful leader as their pastoral lifestyle living in scattered independent family groups require no such entity. This brought them repeatedly into conflict with Spanish, Mexicans and increasingly by the mid-nineteenth century, Americans as these practices were contrary to their male dominated religiously monolithic societal values. The long standing history

This resulted in an additional 200 words, which brought the total number of terms in the code to 411. After becoming fluent in this newly created war-time language, “Navajo code talkers participated from 1942 until 1945 in numerous battles in the Pacific, including Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Peleliu, and Tarawa,” and played a vital role in the Allied success in the Pacific regions at the end of the war, (Rosenberg, J. 2015).