Diné professor keeps language alive, one class at a time
Special to the Times | Colleen Keane Navajo language student Oshauna Sandoval helps her professor Esther Yazzie-Lewis hold up a blanket featuring many of the Navajo words used by the code talkers during World War II.
Special to the Times | Colleen Keane
Navajo language student Oshauna Sandoval helps her professor Esther Yazzie-Lewis hold up a blanket featuring many of the Navajo words used by the code talkers during World War II.
ALBUQUERQUE
Spreading out a blanket in her Navajo Language 102 class at the University of New Mexico, Esther Yazzie-Lewis shows how one side depicts a map of all the places the Navajo Code Talkers fought during World War II.
Turning it over, the blanket displays many of the Diné words the code talkers used as a secret weapon against the Japanese, words like has-clish-nih (platoon) and t’sidi-moffa-ye-hi (aircraft).
The blanket was made by Phyllis Hill-Ellis of Edgewood. When needing the translation of words to complete the blanket, Ellis turned to Lewis for help.
Lewis, who has been teaching Diné Bizaad at UNM for the past couple of years, said that she mixes in Diné history and brings different materials to class, like the Navajo Code Talker blanket, so that students can see how the Navajo language can be preserved in versatile ways.
Special to the Times | Colleen Keane
Referring to a story in the Navajo Times, Esther Yazzie-Lewis, a University of New Mexico professor, integrates history and current events into her Navajo language classes.
It’s a recent Wednesday morning and her class, which is composed of about 12 Navajo students, listen intently as Lewis shares other historical information.
Stepping back into time Lewis remembers how uranium was being mined when Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald was in office and the early work of environmental advocates like Laurie Weahkee, (Diné/Cochiti/Zuni), who is the now the executive director of the Native American Voters Alliance.
“It’s important to know your Native American history. You have to know where you come from,” she tells the class.
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