Navajo Life & Culture
This Navajo ceremony is meant to bring balance, protection, and harmony before difficult journeys.
What is the Blessingway?
Ned is sent to this type of school where Navajo children were punished for speaking their language.
What is a boarding school?
This is the Navajo name of the novel’s main character.
Who is Kii Yazhi?
This branch of the military recruits Ned and other Navajo men.
What are the U.S. Marines?
This theme is shown as Ned learns to value his culture after being taught to reject it.
What is identity?
These stories and teachings from elders help pass down Navajo traditions and values.
What are oral traditions?
At school, Ned is forced to give up this important part of his identity.
What is his Navajo name?
Ned eventually feels this emotion toward his Navajo language, despite earlier shame.
What is pride?
The Marines are interested in Navajo men because of this unique skill.
What is their ability to speak Navajo?
The novel shows how this once-forbidden language becomes powerful and respected.
What is the Navajo language?
This language, spoken by the Navajo people, later became a secret weapon in WWII.
What is the Navajo language?
This cruel punishment was used when students spoke Navajo.
What is having their mouths washed with soap (or being beaten)?
This war motivates Ned to join the U.S. Marines.
What is World War II?
This enemy nation the U.S. fights in the Pacific creates the need for a secret code.
What is Japan?
What is Japan?
Ned’s experiences highlight this injustice faced by Native American children.
What is cultural discrimination or forced assimilation?
Ned’s family raised these animals as part of their traditional way of life.
What are sheep?
Teachers at the boarding school believed this about Navajo culture.
What is that it was inferior or needed to be erased?
Ned believes joining the Marines will help him do this for his people and country.
What is protect them / serve / prove himself?
The Navajo language is chosen because it is this to outsiders.
What is unwritten and difficult to understand?
This idea shows how some groups of people are treated as insignificant, less important, or peripheral.
What is marginalization?
This belief emphasizes harmony, balance, and walking in beauty in Navajo culture.
What is hózhó?
Despite harsh treatment, Ned learns this valuable skill at school.
What is English (reading and writing)?
Ned struggles internally with this conflict throughout the early chapters.
What is balancing his Navajo identity with American expectations?
Ned and other recruits are sworn to secrecy about this role.
What is being Code Talkers?
By Chapter 12, Ned begins to see his Navajo heritage as this.
What is a source of strength and pride?