Tucson Meet Yourself performances by Navajo performers are exceptional, featuring traditional costumes, dance and music.
Navajo, or Dine, as the Navajo people call themselves, is the largest tribe of North American Indians. Long ago, the ancestors lived in Northwestern Canada and Alaska.
Over 1,000 years ago they began to travel south and reached the southwestern United States. They met farmers who are known as Pueblo Indians, and the Navajo began to settle near them and learn from them. The Navajo learned to successfully plant corn, beans, squash, and melons.
They began to learn a similar style of weaving, making clothing and art from the Pueblo Indians.
The Navajo Indians lived in homes called hogans, made from wooden poles, tree bark, and mud, with doorways that opened to the east so they could welcome the sun.
The Navajo reservation is currently the largest in the United States, with over 140,000 people expanding to over 16 million acres most of which are in Arizona.
They still weave from wool and use natural vegetable dyes for color. Today, people live like the old days the best they can with the modern lifestyle, but others use modern technology to live. |
