Navajo Women Research Articles

Chronic Community Exposure to Environmental Metal Mixtures Is Associated with Selected Cytokines in the Navajo Birth Cohort Study (NBCS).

Many tribal populations are characterized by health disparities, including higher rates of infection, metabolic syndrome, and cancer-all of which are mediated by the immune system. Members of the Navajo Nation have suffered chronic low-level exposure to metal mixtures from uranium mine wastes for decades. We suspect that such metal and metalloid exposures lead to adverse health effects via their modulation of immune system function. We examined the relationships between nine key metal and metalloid exposures (in blood and urine) with 11 circulating biomarkers (cytokines and CRP in serum) in 231 pregnant Navajo women participating in the Navajo Birth Cohort Study. Biomonitored levels of uranium and arsenic species were considerably higher in participants than NHANES averages. Each biomarker was associated with a unique set of exposures, and arsenic species were generally immunosuppressive (decreased cellular and humoral stimulating cytokines). Overall, our results suggest that environmental metal and metalloid exposures modulate immune status in pregnant Navajo women, which may impact long-term health outcomes in mothers and their children.

Doris Howes Calloway: Her Work and Legacy on Nutritionally Vulnerable Populations in North America

Dr Doris Howes Calloway had a keen interest in nutritionally vulnerable populations in North America and around the world. Given her scientific reputation and interests, she advised many national and international agencies on improving the health and well-being of populations at increased risk of malnutrition. In North America, she and her graduate students laid the groundwork for improvement of the diets of several Indigenous peoples including the Cocopah, Hopi, and Navajo. They found that improvement of the nutritional and health status of the Cocopah tribe was unlikely without addressing underlying social and economic factors. Among the Hopi tribe, the replacement of traditional foods by energy-dense foods of low nutritional quality increased the risks of nutrient inadequacies and obesity. Dr Calloway also had a keen interest in understanding the effects of nutrition on biological functions that increase nutritional demand and thus vulnerability, as demonstrated in studies of pregnancy and lactation among Navajo women, and growth of children from Mexican American farmworker families. They demonstrated the limits of federal nutrition programs at that time. They identified the double burden of stunting and obesity among Mexican American children. Dr Calloway's standards of academic excellence and rigorous research influenced her students to pursue careers that enhanced science-based policies and programs to promote the health and wellness of nutritionally vulnerable populations.

The Sound of Navajo Country: Music, Language, and Diné Belonging

The Sound of Navajo Country: Music, Language, and Diné Belonging

Reaching Back to Traditional Teachings: Diné Knowledge and Gender Politics

As Diné, we must understand the traditional teachings that were once in place through oral traditions and teachings. There are many troubles Diné (Navajo) women and Nadleeh (Two-Spirit) people face from outside the community, but due to western influence, we endure the same effects from within our own Nation. Through this paper, I aim to propose resolutions to move our Nation in the right direction for social change and build a community of acceptance by reaching back to traditional teaching philosophies without the influence of cis-heteronormative patriarchal structures. I argue that adoptions of these western institutions have severe effects on Diné women and Nadleeh (Two-Spirit) livelihood and well-being. In this paper, I examine three areas of Diné philosophy and cosmology: (1) the central role of K’é (family) and the matrilineal clanship, (2) Diné women and Nadleeh voices in our creation stories, and (3) Hozhó, the beauty way, to understand the masculine and feminine energies of Diné cosmology in order to address the importance of women and Nadleeh on Dinétah.

Stories of a Healing Way: A Navajo Woman’s Media Production for Cultural Representation and Identification

AbstractLittle research has been conducted on the multimodal writing of contemporary Native American women that would refute stereotypical and outdated notions of Indigenous peoples as a dying population. This case study was undertaken to address that gap in the extant research by examining the writing practices of a young Native American woman to determine why and how she composed and participated in participatory media of personal zines and social media to represent her gender and cultural identities. The inquiry was conducted from multiple perspectives of literacy as a social and semiotic practice, the new literacies, tribal critical race theory, and Indigenous feminist theory. Data were triangulated by observations, formal and informal interviews, questionnaires, screenshots, and the participant’s video recordings of her storytelling. I analyzed these data by thematic and semiotic analyses. Findings demonstrated how she crafted comic strip stories and do‐it‐yourself media to create, teach, and preserve Navajo customs and language as a living culture through story lines, settings, illustrations, genre, and teaching devices in her zines. Descriptions are provided of how Navajo women were positioned as strong and independent participants in traditional and contemporary life. Results revealed the ways in which a Navajo woman engaged in practices of the new literacies for resistance against gender and cultural oppression and colonization. Implications are drawn for positioning Native American women within contemporary culture and for culturally responsive literacy education.

Exposure to uranium and co-occurring metals among pregnant Navajo women

Navajo Nation residents are at risk for exposure to uranium and other co-occurring metals found in abandoned mine waste. The Navajo Birth Cohort Study (NBCS) was initiated in 2010 to address community concerns regarding the impact of chronic environmental exposure to metals on pregnancy and birth outcomes. The objectives of this paper were to 1) evaluate maternal urine concentrations of key metals at enrollment and delivery from a pregnancy cohort; and 2) compare the NBCS to the US general population by comparing representative summary statistical values. Pregnant Navajo women (N = 783, age range 14–45 years) were recruited from hospital facilities on the Navajo Nation during prenatal visits and urine samples were collected by trained staff in pre-screened containers. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Environmental Health's (NCEH) Division of Laboratory Sciences (DLS) analyzed urine samples for metals. Creatinine-corrected urine concentrations of cadmium decreased between enrollment (1st or 2nd trimester) and delivery (3rd trimester) while urine uranium concentrations were not observed to change. Median and 95th percentile values of maternal NBCS urine concentrations of uranium, manganese, cadmium, and lead exceeded respective percentiles for National Health and Nutrition Evaluation Survey (NHANES) percentiles for women (ages 14–45 either pregnant or not pregnant.) Median NBCS maternal urine uranium concentrations were 2.67 (enrollment) and 2.8 (delivery) times greater than the NHANES median concentration, indicating that pregnant Navajo women are exposed to metal mixtures and have higher uranium exposure compared to NHANES data for women. This demonstrates support for community concerns about uranium exposure and suggests a need for additional analyses to evaluate the impact of maternal metal mixtures exposure on birth outcomes.

Development and Evaluation of a Cancer Literacy Intervention to Promote Mammography Screening Among Navajo Women: A Pilot Study.

Develop and evaluate a mammography intervention that provides hope about cancer prevention and treatment. Pilot randomized controlled trial. Two communities on the Navajo Nation. Navajo women and support persons. Both groups received standard care: one home visit discussing mammography pros/cons and barriers. The treatment group received an intervention based on Navajo language via an additional home visit with health education materials (written and oral) in English and Navajo, including a Navajo Cancer Glossary with a new descriptive phrase for cancer. Between control and intervention conditions, we compared baseline sociodemographics; changes from baseline to 3 months on mammography completion and breast cancer literacy scores. (1) intervention feasibility; (2) self- and clinic-reported mammography screening completion; (3) breast cancer literacy. A total of 25 participants were randomly assigned (13 treatment, 12 control), with 7 support persons in each arm. Mean age was 53 years, 90% had a high school degree or higher, 86% spoke Navajo and English. At 3 months, 44% had a clinically verified mammogram. Mammography completion was 57% among those with a support person and 27% among those without (P = .14). Intervention women reported more breast cancer beliefs consistent with mammography (P = .015). Increases in breast cancer beliefs consistent with mammography show promise. Findings highlight a need to tailor education materials to Navajo culture/language and focus on enhancing support.

“So Let Me Paint”

This article explores the status of R.C. Gorman (Navajo) within the art community of San Francisco, California, in the 1960s. Using Gorman’s personal papers, the article addresses how his queer identity, Navajo heritage, and Native urbanization contributed to his production of world-renowned art. Gorman’s representation of strong Navajo women, which made him a universally recognized artist, stemmed from his own exploration of gender performativity and homoeroticism while living in an urban gay mecca. Moreover, Gorman’s use of both resources in the city and the southwestern Indian art market allowed him to forge a successful art career. A formative figure in the Native American Fine Art Movement, Gorman’s experiences in San Francisco suggest that indigenous creative practices challenged a dominant interpretation and construction of the inferiority of American Indians.

Diné Women Building Community from the Ground Up: Profiles in Leadership

As the stories remind us, women's roles, modeled on those of the female deities who figure so prominently in the Navajo creation narratives, indicate that women are conveyers of Diné beliefs and values. Although Navajo women have experienced changes under colonialism, they look to the roles set down in the traditional stories as guidelines for life. As the stories from Asdzáá Tl'ógí [Juanita, wife of Navajo chief, Manuelito] descendants illustrate, women continue to be held in high regard in their communities, where they exercise authority and enjoy a measure of autonomy through their roles as grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. In many ways, women also link the traditional status of womanhood to their roles outside of the home, in the workplace, in professional settings, and in other public arenas.

Introduction: American Quarterly in the Digital Sphere

Introduction:American Quarterly in the Digital Sphere Lauren Tilton (bio), Amy E. Earhart (bio), Matthew Delmont (bio), Susan Garfinkel (bio), Jesse P. Karlsberg (bio), and Angel David Nieves (bio) This special issue explores digital humanities as a designation, as an associated constellation of technologies and practices, and as a site of convergence for inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinary scholarship. Propelled by the ever-increasing power of computing and grounded in the ongoing development of a networked new media, digital humanities scholarship has coalesced around a shared set of values: that theory can be engaged through practice, that scholarship should be open and accessible to all, and that collaboration is pivotal in American studies. At the same time, American studies scholars in the digital humanities have reinvigorated the important work of investigating cultural and political formations, excavating power relations, and expanding scholarly inquiry to encompass the everyday as much as the exceptional. With this special issue, we seek to open a new phase of discussion by overtly exploring the connections between critically engaged forms of American studies and the digital humanities. As American studies scholars have long recognized, disappointment, anger, and agitation can be generative. Work on this special issue began in the spring of 2016, shortly after American Quarterly announced a new initiative to engage more actively with the digital humanities, publishing a section titled "Digital Projects Review." This new initiative was encouraging to the American Studies Association Digital Humanities Caucus (DH Caucus) and other scholars who work at the intersections of American studies and digital humanities. However, the initial manifestation of the "Digital Projects Review" struck many scholars as being out of step with the vibrant and innovative American studies approaches to digital humanities that have emerged over the past two decades.1 This frustration found an outlet on social media, and on the DH Caucus email list, which eventually led the six of us to propose this special issue, "Toward a Critically Engaged Digital Practice: American Studies and the Digital Humanities." The diversity of institutional affiliations, research perspectives, disciplinary backgrounds, and professional roles within our [End Page 361] group of coeditors has enabled a collaboration that, we hope, both reflects and advances the synergies of exciting new work emerging at the intersections of American studies and digital humanities, as highlighted in the following pages. While the spark that catalyzed this special issue was recent, the archives of American Quarterly show that the intertwined roots of American studies and digital humanities are deep. In June 1999 American Quarterly published an experimental online issue and concurrent print symposium combining "hypertext and American studies scholarship." The project, wrote Roy Rosenzweig in his editor's introduction, "tried to bring together something rather old-fashioned and established—the scholarly journal article—with something new and still emerging—the networked and digital space of the World Wide Web."2 Nearly two decades later, scholars are still wrestling with questions about the relationship between print and online scholarship, and are exploring the possibilities enabled by digital tools, methods, and platforms. Several of the essays in the September 2006 special issue, "Rewiring the 'Nation': The Place of Technology in American Studies," edited by Siva Vaidhyanathan, also speak to issues that are of interest to scholars who work in American studies and digital humanities. Nicole Fleetwood, for example, examines how different technological narratives (e.g., news media, meteorology, and governmental reports) during and after Hurricane Katrina rendered African American residents of New Orleans as disposable, focusing on technological failures and solutions rather than examining human catalysts and responses. "Technology here should be understood as a media process of production and as a discursive tool by which particular narratives are naturalized and certain bodies made vulnerable," Fleetwood argues. "In this context, Hurricane Katrina reveals a different kind of determinism—the stark operations of technology in determining who lives and who dies."3 More recently, Lauren Klein's review essay "American Studies after the Internet" (December 2012) and Lisa Nakamura's "Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture" (December 2014) both offer models for what a deeper engagement by American Quarterly with digital humanities might look like. Nakamura shows how labor by women of color has...

Adapting a Cancer Literacy Measure for Use Among Navajo Women.

The authors designed a community-based participatory research study to develop and test a family-based behavioral intervention to improve cancer literacy and promote mammography among Navajo women. Using data from focus groups and discussions with a community advisory committee, they adapted an existing questionnaire to assess cancer knowledge, barriers to mammography, and cancer beliefs for use among Navajo women. Questions measuring health literacy, numeracy, self-efficacy, cancer communication, and family support were also adapted. The resulting questionnaire was found to have good content validity, and to be culturally and linguistically appropriate for use among Navajo women. It is important to consider culture and not just language when adapting existing measures for use with AI/AN (American Indian/Alaskan Native) populations. English-language versions of existing literacy measures may not be culturally appropriate for AI/AN populations, which could lead to a lack of semantic, technical, idiomatic, and conceptual equivalence, resulting in misinterpretation of study outcomes.

Bone Mineral Density in Navajo Men and Women and Comparison to Non-Hispanic Whites from NHANES (2005-2008).

To describe bone mineral density (BMD) at the hip and spine and prevalence of low bone mass and osteoporosis in Navajo men and women across age, gender, and body mass index (BMI) compared with non-Hispanic (NH) Whites from NHANES (2005-2008). Cross-sectional dual energy x-ray absorptiometry measurements at the hip and spine in 1,097 participants from the Education and Research Towards Health study. Bone mineral density was lower among younger Navajo than NH-Whites at lower BMI, and in overweight, younger men at lumbar spine and total hip. Spine BMD was lower in Navajo women, across BMI. Prevalence of low bone mass and osteoporosis in Navajo was higher than NH-Whites, particularly among women. Further research is needed to understand if lower BMD among younger Navajo signals a risk for future fracture, and fracture risk relative to BMD, given the challenges in health care access and fracture morbidity among minorities.

A framework for engaging Navajo women in clean energy development through applied theatre

Through applied theatre, Navajo women can participate in authoring a new story for how energy is mined, produced, developed, disseminated and used in the Navajo Nation. This article is an analysis of a creative process that was utilised with primarily Navajo women to create a Navajo Women's Energy Project (NWEP). The framework for this creative process guided women in deeply considering energy issues from their own perspective and value base, facilitated them in articulating their values around energy, assessing the current energy situation not authored by women and invited them to imagine what kind of energy future they want. Finally, it facilitated women in identifying and rehearsing actions to move from the current story to the new story. This process is designed to include the participation of women who have rich life experience that is often in intimate and direct relationship with the environment, who hold knowledge in their bodies from lived experience and value traditional views and beliefs. The framework for applied theatre in this article helped to lay the groundwork for the NWEP in a relatively short amount of time in a manner that was inclusive, efficient, aesthetically stirring and fun. This framework has the potential to expedite and support the participation of women in authoring a new story for a wide variety of social issues.

Contingent Maps: Rethinking Western Women's History and the North American West by Susan E. Gray and Gayle Gullett

Reviews  historical societies and other interested parties began to interpret and mark the site. Today’s greater South Pass region still encompasses visible emigrant trail ruts, emigrant markers, and the geopolitical boundaries that resulted from emigration.Like all such cultural geographies ,“South Pass is a history-haunted place” where, as quoted by archaeologist Terry Del Bene, “you can stand in 2006 and 1846 at the same time” (p. 293–294). South Pass contains extensive primary source material that tells the story of the peoples of the emigrant trail, which, coupled with its readability and expansive time frames, will make it useful in an undergraduate setting . This book should be on the reading list of any scholar of western United States history, particularly those interested in the history of the emigrant trails. Laura Woodworth-Ney Idaho State University CONTINGENT MAPS: RETHINKING WESTERN WOMEN’S HISTORY AND THE NORTH AMERICAN WEST edited by Susan E. Gray and Gayle Gullett The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2014. Photographs, notes, index. 312 pages. $40.00 paper. Contingent Maps is a wide-ranging collection of ten essays on women and gender set primarily in the twentieth-century West. The editors organize these diverse offerings using a framework inspired by feminist geography and centering on three themes. Part I, “Identities and Place,” opens with a chapter on the social role of menstrual lodges among Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest Plateau, followed by another on the function of dress in blurring gender and racial boundaries in turnof -the-century San Francisco. The next essay discusses sites in interwar Hollywood where women “players” in the movie industry challenged “heteronormativity,” and the section closes with a chapter about the reaction to Chicanas who spoke pachucho slang in 1940s Los Angeles (p.81).Part II,“Colonized Places,” features articles exploring how constructions of gender shaped the “Californio racial fantasy ”of a pastoral early California; how Navajo women artisans were incorporated into the tourist economy of early-twentieth-century Albuquerque; and how the employment of young Indian women as housemaids in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1930s may be seen as a “domestic frontier” (p. 160, 201). Finally, Part III,“Networks and Place,” begins with a chapter focusing on competing definitions of masculinity that fueled the Bisbee Deportation incident of 1917 in Arizona, then concludes with two essays on more recent history — the background and status of Chicanas and Latinas among union organizers in the Los Angeles garment industry of the 1990s,and the struggle for “cultural rights” by progressive artists and activists in late-twentieth-century San Antonio (p. 288). Each of these essays provides valuable insights onto the “infinite variety of social relations”to be found in theWest,according to the editors (p. 11). Yolanda Venegas’ s chapter, for example,illuminates the cultural politics of the Spanish heritage movement in California with a provocative and nuanced reading of the classic novel Ramona.Margaret D.Jacobs’s contribution on American Indian servants neatly illustrates the notion of the “domestic frontier” as a “contact zone” involving the disparate agendas of young Native women, Bureau of Indian Affairs officials, and white women employers (p. 201). Such examples could be multiplied, because each contribution may stand on its own — in fact, each did originally, the editors indicate, because each was published separately in the pages of  OHQ vol. 116, no. 1 Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies between 2001 and 2007. It is up to editors Susan Gray and Gayle Gullett to show readers how these diverse essays “cohere topically, spatially, and temporally ,” despite the fact that they were chosen “more for their quality than because they address a particular theme related to gender, place, and the American West” (p. 13). Gray and Gullett attempt to supply that coherence with their introductions,and readers will have to decide how successful they were. They wish to add “place” to the analytical categories for understanding the North American West, alongside“gender,sexuality,class,colonialism, and race” (p. 10). But readers might note that six of the ten essays on the North American West are about California, and five of these six focus on either Los Angeles or San Francisco — spatial coherence indeed...

Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture

From 1965 to 1975 the legendary Silicon Valley company Fairchild Semiconductor operated a state-of-the-art integrated circuit manufacturing plant in Shiprock, New Mexico on Navajo land. In the face of concerns about high-tech pollution, increasingly empowered labor organizations, and a newly politicized and visible American Indian civil rights movement, indigenous electronic workers at Shiprock were pressed into service as examples of the peaceful coexistence and integration of the past and the future, the primitive and the modern, creativity and capitalism. Navajo women workers were described as ideal predigital digital workers, uniquely suited to the job by temperament, culture, and gender. Their labor as platform builders was cited as evidence that digital work—the work of the hand and its digits—could be painlessly transferred from the indigenous cultural context into the world of technological commercial innovation, benefiting both in the process.

Ten Years ofPreventing Chronic Disease

Ten years are a blink. Ten years are a lifetime. It has been 10 years since the first issue of Preventing Chronic Disease: Public Health Research, Practice, and Policy (PCD). In our introductory editorial, we defined our primary audience as researchers in chronic disease prevention and intervention and health practitioners responsible for reducing the effects of chronic conditions and improving population health (1). We also identified our goals: to promote dialogue between researchers and practitioners, describe interdisciplinary and multisectorial approaches to chronic diseases, and present new theories and concepts of research and practice. The mission of PCD is “to promote the open exchange of information and knowledge among researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and others who strive to improve the health of the public through chronic disease prevention” (2). Public health researchers told us that other journals did not understand or publish prevention research. Practitioners told us they seldom found material in research journals that was relevant to their work. Yet both research findings and practical demonstrations are essential for evidence-based public health policy and programs. PCD was designed to address that gap. We initiated action to address those goals in the inaugural issue. It included articles on multiple health topics, including nutrition, osteoporosis, dementia, breast and cervical cancer screening, and social determinants of health. The study populations included homebound seniors, school children, and racial/ethnic minority populations; the research methods included qualitative semistructured interviews, telephone interviews, public health surveillance, and a dementia registry. The inaugural issue also addressed the role of the community in public health in an article and a book review on community-based participatory research; other articles described population-based interventions and the use of public health law. The inaugural issue included a video on a community-based tobacco use control program. PCD’s premise was that an online journal should go beyond traditional text and take advantage of the ability to offer a range of audiovisual materials. In future issues, PCD would include videos on breast and cervical cancer screening in Navajo women, the African American Health Coalition in Oregon, a preview from the Public Broadcasting Service health series Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?, a school-based health education program in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and many others. We also wanted PCD to be an international journal. Our first issue to include Spanish-language articles was January 2005, and it focused on the Border Health Strategic Initiative (Border Health iSI!) on the US–Mexico border in Arizona. Today, most PCD articles include Spanish translations. In that 10-year blink, how has PCD evolved? A perusal of journal content between December 2011 and July 2012 finds articles on not only subjects of ongoing public health interest such as social determinants, nutrition, breast health, diabetes, and surveillance but also topics such as health financing, veterans’ health, and health informatics. International health is represented by reports from Mexico, Australia, Canada, Jordan, Ethiopia, and Grenada. PCD is now published continually, provides new media opportunities (eg, Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, embedding, e-cards, a PCD app), and offers continuing medical education credits. The number, breadth, and quality of the articles have increased. The journal supports an annual student paper competition and provides podcasts of selected authors discussing their work. In addition, the journal has added a fourth goal to the original 3: encouraging multisectoral partnerships that engage communities (2). Ten years are a lifetime. The classic life-cycle metaphor can be used to describe the growth and development of PCD to date: gestation, birth, infancy, childhood, and adolescence. The journal is well positioned to move on to young adulthood and maturity. Happily, a journal need not experience senescence or death, and we can look for increasing quality, influence, and readership in the future. Ten years ago, my first editorial spoke of chronic diseases in my parents’ generation. Today, all of that generation of my family is gone, and among my own generation others have been lost to chronic diseases. Let us hope our work will enhance the health of our children — they, too, have a lifetime, and we will be gone in a blink.

Food Security Status and Produce Intake Behaviors, Health Status, and Diabetes Risk Among Women With Children Living on a Navajo Reservation

This study of adult women living on a Navajo reservation with at least one child less than 18 years old attending a primary school on the reservation investigated the relationship of food security to produce intake and behaviors, health status, and diabetes risk of these adult women. Of the 42 participants completing the survey, 8 (19.0%) were living in fully food secure households, and 10 (23.8%), 12 (28.6%), and 12 (28.6%) were living in marginally food secure, low food secure, and very low food secure households, respectively. Adult food insecurity was related to increased age (r = 0.260, P = .024); increased household size (r = 0.255, P = .034); decreased education level (r = −0.300, P = .013); obtaining a high school diploma (r = −0.347, P = .011); decreased reliable transportation (r = −0.282, P = .038); receiving food distribution (r = 0.342, P = .012); household participation in the Special Supplemental Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC; r = 0.315, P = .020); receiving benefits from senior farmers' market nutrition program (r = 0.296, P = .032); participation in church, food bank, or pantry (r = 0.447, P = .001); increased diabetes risk score (r = 0.234, P = .049); increased perceived barriers to produce intake (r = −0.301, P = .011); decreased perceived diet quality (r = 0.386, P = .002); decreased vegetable intake (r = −0.302, P = .014); and decreased readiness on the stages-of-change continuum for both fruit (r = −0.274, P = .027) and vegetable intakes (r = −0.259, P = .037). Adult food insecurity was not significantly related to fruit intake (r = −0.197, P = .108), perceived benefits of produce (r = −0.151, P = .339), perceived control of produce intake (r = −0.021, P = .873), or perceived health (r = −0.246, P = .116). Food insecurity was high among our sample, which was related to increased diabetes mellitus risk and poorer perceived dietary intake and patterns. Reducing barriers to food insecurity by improving the economic conditions of households and providing nutrition education on Navajo reservations may help improve the food security status of Navajo women with children. Education focused on the benefits of consuming fresh produce and produce availability, including gardening, may help to reduce the chronic disease risk in this vulnerable population.

Reflections in Place-Connected Lives of Navajo Women - By Donna Deyhle

Anthropology & Education QuarterlyVolume 42, Issue 4 p. 434-435 Reflections in Place—Connected Lives of Navajo Women – By Donna Deyhle Larisa Warhol, Larisa Warhol Arizona State UniversitySearch for more papers by this authorTeresa L. McCarty, Teresa L. McCarty Arizona State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author Larisa Warhol, Larisa Warhol Arizona State UniversitySearch for more papers by this authorTeresa L. McCarty, Teresa L. McCarty Arizona State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 16 December 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1492.2011.01150.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume42, Issue4December 2011Pages 434-435 RelatedInformation

Reflections in Place: Connected Lives of Navajo Women (review)

Reflections in Place: Connected Lives of Navajo Women (review)

Reflections in place: connected lives of Navajo women

Woven together in Donna Deyhle's ethnohistory are three generations and twenty-five years of friendship, interviews, and rich experience with Navajo women. Through a skillful blending of sources, Deyhle illuminates the devastating cultural consequences of racial stereotyping in the context of education. Longstanding racial tension in southeastern Utah frames this cross-generational set of portraits that together depict all aspects of this specifically American Indian struggle. Deyhle cites the lefthanded compliment, Navajos work well with their hands, which she indicates represents the limiting and all-too-common appraisal of American Indian learning potential that she vehemently disputes and seeks to disprove. As a recognized authority on the subject, qualified by multiple degrees in racial and American Indian studies, Deyhle is able to chronicle the lives and 'survivance? of three Navajo women in a way that is simultaneously ethnographic and moving. Her critique of the U.S. education system's underlying yet very real tendency toward structural discrimination takes shape in elegant prose that moves freely into and out of time and place. The combination of substantive sources and touching personal experience forms a profound and enduring narrative of critical and current importance. While this book stands as a powerful contribution to American Indian studies, its compelling human elements will extend its appeal to anyone concerned with the ongoing plight of American Indians in the education system.