Canyon De Chelley and Oscar our Navajo Guide

When touring away from the paved roads in the Navajo Nation, a non-Indian requires an Indian guide.  The benefit of the guide besides knowing how to get to where you want to go, is that the guide provides a vehicle capable of traversing the often quite rough terrain, and they explain the background or history of the area.  Our guide for this day was a gentleman named Oscar.  Oscar is a large, middle aged man who runs a guide company of five, and is also a Shaman.  He grew up in the canyon.  The photo above is the home he grew up in with his brothers and sisters.  Every school day he would climb out of the canyon along a trail not far from the house, and catch a school bus.  As you can see, there is no electricity, running water, and no washroom facilities.

Just around the corner from the house is a large recess in the wall of the canyon where ancient Indians painted the rock.  The photo above is the best remaining example of this art at this location.  You can see that the pictographs continue along the wall in the lower part of the photo.

 

 

 

I was looking from Oscar's old home across the canyon floor and noticed this very flat vertical face of rock on the opposite wall of the canyon.  I asked Oscar if that face had been like that for as long as he could remember.  His answer was surprising.  No he said.  One day when he still lived here his brother came home and said that the rocks on the opposite side of the canyon were going to fall today.  The family gathered some chairs and sat to watch the wall.  In time, a cracking sound was heard, and part of the canyon wall started to separate.  Immediately there was an avalanche of rock and dust filled the entire canyon.  As the dust settled, the rock slide had fallen to half way across the canyon floor, and up on the wall was the smooth, vertical surface seen today, and captured on the left side of the photograph above. I asked him how his brother knew that the rocks would fall imminently.  He did not answer.

 

I really have tried to imagine what it would be like to grow up in that home.  To me, that life shows the resiliency of the human condition and pays witness to the huge range of environments that we can live in.  Quite astonishing that here is a man who started his life in a similar environment to his ancestors, and now in middle age is much closer to us.  That's a lot of change.

 

I enquired about being a Shaman.  Oscar explained that his was a spiritual roll, and that he healed people through the spirits.  A medicine man will use native medicines to heal.  Asked if the patient need to believe in the healing spirits, Oscar gave me a surprised look and said yes.  Then he went on to say that the white man came to Navajo country with their black book and spoke of their God.  And the Navajo accepted that the white men spoke the truth.  But that it was their truth, for them.  The Navajo truth is in their tradition.  But did I know that my God was also their God.  What a wonderful conversation.