Our Story... A Two Man Show

My Name is Shane Brown, I am half Navajo (Diné)

You have come to the right place if you are looking to connect to culture whether you are full, part or just have an affinity…

We started Navajo Traditional Teachings by accident one fine day…

It was just before the 2017 total eclipse…

I said “Dad what are the traditional beliefs about the eclipse?”

I recorded the video in my living room, started a facebook page and uploaded it…

It went VIRAL in a matter of hours we had tens of thousands of views…

The next day I saw that we had passed into the hundreds of thousands of views.

It was then that I realized there was a need…

My Father, Wally…

He knew there was a need many years before.

When he was a young boy he was taught and encouraged to learn the traditional ways…

Trained as a medicine man early on by his grandfather…

Wally says quite frequently when we are discussing times with his grandfather (Hastii Silao ha di jaa ii) “He was blind, and he must have thought I was older than I was…

Because of the things he told me”.

Wally learned in the sweat lodge many times just him and his grandfathers…

The sweat lodge is called the “Place of the grandfathers”...

It is where those who have gone to the next place are invited to come back and help their kindred that still walk the earth…

In the sweat lodge Wally learned things that the younger Diné do not know…

Some of the older ones do not know…

But Why?

Why do so many Diné not know their culture?

Starting in the 1940’s Diné children were taken from home and put into boarding school…

Their parents thought this would help them to succeed in a new world…

An Anglo world…

These boarding schools thought the best course of action was to remove the indian…

Some said “kill the indian, save the man”...

With 20/20 vision we can see this was without doubt the wrong approach.

Children were punished for speaking their language…

Their hair was cut short…

Even the girls had their hair cut short…

Taught that the traditional ways were bad…

Taught that the traditional ways were best forgotten…

And too many of those precious children believed it…

When they grew up they did not pass on the traditional ways to their children…

Remembering how much trouble they had gotten into for practicing the traditions.

In almost 1 generation an entire culture has nearly been wiped out…

Some other tribes are gone…

They did not fare so well.

We count ourselves fortunate and blessed by the Holy People...

That we have been able to retain part of our culture.
But the loss continues today…

Culture is not being taught as it was meant…

From the old ones.

Instead anthropologists (perhaps well meaning) fill the books with untruths and speculation…

Younger Diné have no reliable source for the true teachings