1908, GRAND CANYON NATIONAL MONUMENT IS CREATED

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Grand Canyon, a beautiful place in Arizona that was declarated National Monument on a day like today in 1908.

Grand Canyon National Park, located in northwestern Arizona, is the 15th site in the United States to have been named as a national park.

The park's central feature is the Grand Canyon, a gorge of the Colorado River, which is often considered one of the Wonders of the World.

The park, which covers 4,926.08 km2 of unincorporated area in Coconino and Mohave counties, received more than six million recreational visitors in 2017, which is the second highest count of all American national parks after Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Grand Canyon was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979. The park celebrated its 100th anniversary on February 26, 2019.

The Grand Canyon became well known to Americans in the 1880s after railroads were built and pioneers developed infrastructure and early tourism.

The first bill to establish Grand Canyon National Park was introduced in 1882 by then-Senator Benjamin Harrison, which would have established Grand Canyon as the third national park in the United States, after Yellowstone and Mackinac. Harrison unsuccessfully reintroduced his bill in 1883 and 1886; after his election to the presidency, he established the Grand Canyon Forest Reserve in 1893.

Theodore Roosevelt created the Grand Canyon Game Preserve by proclamation on 28 November 1906, and the Grand Canyon National Monument on January 11, 1908. Further Senate bills to establish the site as a national park were introduced and defeated in 1910 and 1911, before the Grand Canyon National Park Act was finally signed by President Woodrow Wilson on February 26, 1919.

The National Park Service, established in 1916, assumed administration of the park.

The creation of the park was an early success of the conservation movement. Its national park status may have helped thwart proposals to dam the Colorado River within its boundaries. Later, the Glen Canyon Dam would be built upriver. A second Grand Canyon National Monument to the west was proclaimed in 1932.

More information: National Park Service

In 1975, that monument and Marble Canyon National Monument, which was established in 1969 and followed the Colorado River northeast from the Grand Canyon to Lees Ferry, were made part of Grand Canyon National Park.

In 1979, UNESCO declared the park a World Heritage Site. The 1987 the National Parks Overflights Act found that Noise associated with aircraft overflights at the Grand Canyon National Park is causing a significant adverse effect on the natural quiet and experience of the park and current aircraft operations at the Grand Canyon National Park have raised serious concerns regarding public safety, including concerns regarding the safety of park users.

In 2010, Grand Canyon National Park was honored with its own coin under the America the Beautiful Quarters program.

On February 26, 2019, the Grand Canyon National Park commemorated 100 years since its designation as a national park.

The Grand Canyon, including its extensive system of tributary canyons, is valued for its combination of size, depth, and exposed layers of colorful rocks dating back to Precambrian times. The canyon itself was created by the incision of the Colorado River and its tributaries after the Colorado Plateau was uplifted, causing the Colorado River system to develop along its present path.

The primary public areas of the park are the South and North Rims, and adjacent areas of the canyon itself. The rest of the park is extremely rugged and remote, although many places are accessible by pack trail and backcountry roads. The South Rim is more accessible than the North Rim and accounts for 90% of park visitation.

The park headquarters are at Grand Canyon Village, not far from the South Entrance to the park, near one of the most popular viewpoints.

More information: Grand Canyon Trust

 The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be
adequately represented in symbols of speech,
nor by speech itself.
The resources of the graphic art are taxed
beyond their powers in attempting
to portray its features.
Language and illustration combined must fail.

John Wesley Powell

THE NAVAJO CODE TALKERS IN THE WWII: HE SAID THAT...

Tania Bean

Today, The Beans have visited the Navajo Nation in New Mexico. The family has been invited to participate of one of the most important Navajo cerimonies: The Blessing Way.  

Cristina Bean has been chosen to participate in this cerimony where you put your soul in contact with the universe and become stronger to confront difficult situations. 

After the cerimony, the family has been revising some English grammar with the Reported Speech and they have started the last chapter of Christmas Carol.
 

Tania Bean and Estefanía Bean have participated in a difficult password that they have won demonstrating that there isn't anything more important that the teamwork.

More information: Reported Speech

A member of the Navajo Community has explained them the importance of his community during the WWII where they worked as code talkers using his own language and The Grandma has been talking about the importance of money in all our daily activities where a coin becomes more important than a person, a vision totally opposed to the point of view of the Native American cultures. 

 More information: Reported Speech

Estefanía Bean

The Grandma has also talked about the importance of being a member of a community and working together to keep good services of all for all as a way to live better; and about the evaluation of happiness like a social indicator. 

The Earth is inhabited for differents cultures and we can take example of the best things that everyone of them can offer to us to improve our lives, our communities and our environment. 

It's a very difficult goal but we must do it, if we think in the next generations and we want to leave them a good legacy.

There are about 175,000 speakers of the Navajo language Díne Bizaad. While English is the language that all Navajo speak, they also keep alive their own language, culture and customs so that future generations will be aware of their heritage. 

Download Navajo Alphabet & Numbers

For Americans who grew up on old TV westerns, they may have heard the language without realizing it. As most westerns were centered on the southwestern United States, the most depicted tribes in these westerns were Apache or Navajo. The Navajo greetings Yah’eh-teh’, meaning how do you do?, and Ah-hah-lah’nih, which is an affectionate greeting, were often used.

Anton Bean & Navajo Code Talker Monument

Probably the most famous use of the Navajo language outside of the Navajo Nation was during World War II. 420 young Navajo men were recruited and became Marines codetalkers during the war in the Pacific. 

They were picked because they spoke both English and their native language fluently, so they could receive orders and relay them to other codetalkers to give to their superiors. The Navajo language had not been studied by the enemy, so orders could be issued without fear of interception.

Code talkers are people in the 20th century who used obscure languages as a means of secret communication during wartime. The term is now usually associated with the United States service members during the world wars who used their knowledge of Native American languages as a basis to transmit coded messages. In particular, there were approximately 400–500 Native Americans in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was the transmission of secret tactical messages. 

More information: Navajo Nation Museum

The Beans flying over the Horseshoe Bend

Code talkers transmitted these messages over military telephone or radio communications nets using formal or informally developed codes built upon their native languages. Their service improved the speed of encryption of communications at both ends in front line operations during World War II.

The name code talkers is strongly associated with bilingual Navajo speakers specially recruited during World War II by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater. Code talking, however, was pioneered by the Cherokee and Choctaw peoples during World War I.

More information: CNN

Other Native American code talkers were deployed by the United States Army during World War II, including Lakota, Meskwaki, and Comanche soldiers. Soldiers of Basque ancestry were also used for code talking by the U.S. Marines during World War II in areas where other Basque speakers were not expected to be operating. 

Finally, The Beans have visited Navajo Nation in Arizona and Utah by the air. It has been an unforgettable experience before traveling to Lisbon where tomorrow night they are going to participate in the Eurovision Song Festival. 

More information: HistoryNet

  

Naa'óí naalzhoodí / Moving the beans around.

Navajo Proverb

THE NAVAJO NATION, NIZHÓNÍGO AŁHÉÉHOSIILZĮĮD

The Grandma driving across Navajo Nation

The Beans are in New Mexico. They're visiting the Navajo Nation and they're going to visit Arizona and Utah, too. 

They arrived last night after they had flown from San Diego. The family is excited because they're going to discover on of the most ancient and incredible cultures: the Native American. They arrived to Alburquerque with a lot of luggage because they had bought lots of souvenirs in San Diego. The Grandma was a little sad because she had said goodbye to Maverick, her handsome friend and the family decided to go to the hotel quickly because they had had a tired flight and they wanted to rest a little and review some English grammar, especially, the Past Simple Passive and the Past Perfect. 

The Grandma was also talking about earthquakes and volcanoes, two things that she adores and admires like incredible natural forces. She has also talked about classic films which she also loves.

More information: Passive Voice (Past Simple)

Today, The Beans are travelling to the Navajo Nation across the Route 40 by their Harley-Davidson, the last presents that The Grandma has bought for her lovely family. They are going to sleep in Navajo tents because the Navajo Community has invited them to share and know its incredible culture. 

More information: Past Perfect

Tomorrow, the family is going to discover the importance of this community during the WWII and one of their most amazing ceremonies: The Blessing Way.

More information: Past Perfect vs. Past Simple

We must not forget the Navajo customs and traditions which are unwritten.  Long before the Europeans arrived as newcomers, the Navajo people were living according to the laws, the rules, and the prayers taught to them by the Holy People, laws that brought order, beauty, peace, and harmony to the People and their world.

Nelson Gorman, Jr., Preface of the Navajo Code

The Blessing Way or hozhooji is a ceremony to awaken one to natural order, hozho; choosing constructive and life-affirming choices; healing from intentions and decisions that destroy oneself and others. 

Cristina Bean arriving to a Navajo home

To explain the blessing way, spiritual-cultural concepts are translated from the Dineh language into appropriate English descriptions to convey universal health and healing concepts from Dineh oral tradition.  

Navajo ceremonies do not require a conversion process of taking away the precious child within the natural order, and replacing this spiritual SELF-identity with a deficient self-image that has to be re-mediated to some desired end state of progress. Once awakened to the natural order, we begin living the loving way, hozhooji: literal translation of the blessing way ceremony as translated by my paternal aunt. It is a way of living in reverent revolution, of making decisions that are constructive and life affirming.

The four phases of the blessing way ceremony is a healing process that leads to curing. These two main ceremonies offer protection from contaminants like the maladaptive emotions of hate, jealousy, anger, guilt, fear and toxins from the environment.

More information:  Navajo Nation Government

Five major ceremonies: As five-fingered people, this corresponds to five major ceremonies that every child in the world could benefit by.

-Blessing Way: the blessing way honors the divine feminine as a nurturer.

-Protection Way: divine masculine as a protector-provider.

-Purification and cleansing: numerous with specific names for specific purposes.
 

-Spiritual renewal: a nine-day ceremony for spiritual renewal.

-Journey to spirit world: the ceremony for a person on their journey to the spirit world.

The Beans visiting the Navajo Nation

A blessings way Ceremonial Change Process teaches why and how to make life-affirming choices, rather than death-producing choices.   

We can understand a Dineh ceremonial change process within the context of Indigenous Science.  The strategy is to set up the optimal conditions for remembering and awakening to the oneness of creator. In healing ceremonies we affirm our holiness and wholeness. Dineh spirituality is the science of light-love-life-nature in one integrated concept.  The will-to-love, peace, beauty and joy within our Affirmative thinking system and within the universe is called hozho.

More information: Discover Navajo

The Navajo creation story speaks about the people traveling through four worlds into the current world from the place of emergence within the four sacred mountains.  This represents the concept that there is one mother of us all because our body is composed of earth.

The word for mountain is the same word for spiritual strength.  Every child is born through the water and through the birth canal.  The element of fire is our temperature and we inhale and exhale with the creator’s holy breath.  This air originates from the physical sun and radiates to the trees where we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide.

The miracle of life that we call photosynthesis is what Navajos call the creator’s holy breath.  We are instructed to use this holy breath for speaking living words that heal.  This is why our medicine people are called singers.  They sing a person back to balance, harmony with creator, themselves and others within the natural order.

The journey through the four worlds was required to restore balance and harmony from misusing life energy for destructive and death-producing choices.  There is a consequence in violating the natural order.  This is not punishment, condemnation or judgment, just consequence and a message to correct the out-of-balance life condition.

More information: History

I grew up knowing it's wrong 

to have more than you need. 
It means you're not taking 

care of your people.

Native American Navajo Proverb