by Sophie Sorenson
Daily Lobo
Long black hair waved, soft shoes pattered and thick turquoise jewelry jingled at the Hibben Center on Wednesday night.
Dineh Tah Navajo Dancers entertained an audience of about 100 people Wednesday night for the 35th anniversary of Navajo language instruction at UNM.
Two traditional Navajo dances were performed: the basket dance and the ribbon dance. The ribbon dance is one of the oldest Navajo dances, said Nancy Montoya, event coordinator.
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For the dance, two men and two women wore headpieces with black, blue, yellow and red ribbons hanging over their eyes while dancing to drums and singing.
Graduate student Natalya Stukova said the highlight of the event was experiencing Navajo culture.
"The presence of the Native American community, Code Talkers, dancers, the historical note - all this gave a small glance into what the language and the culture is like," Stukova said.
Montoya said she was impressed with how many Code Talkers were there.
"The amount of Code Talkers was phenomenal," Montoya said.
Eight Navajo Code Talkers attended the event.
Albert Smith, president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association, said there are 10 members in the organization.
Code Talkers were used in World War II by the U.S. military. Their language was used as a secret code to throw off the Japanese.
Smith said he was consulted for the film "Windtalkers." He said many of the Code Talkers were recruited out of high school because they were accustomed to studying, and they had to learn military code quickly.
"It took us two months to master it," he said.
Montoya said the planning of the event started last spring, and she was amazed how the event turned into such a large production. It was originally supposed to be smaller, she said.
Robert Young, who is the author of a Navajo dictionary, told the audience he didn't expect many people to attend the event.
"I thought it would just be a small gathering from the Department of Linguistics," he said.
The event also included speeches from UNM President Louis Caldera and Navajo professor Roseann Willink.
Stukova said she hoped the event would make the outside community aware that the Navajo language needs to be preserved.
"Officially, the Navajo language is not listed as an endangered language just because of the number of native speakers that we have right now," she said. "But if you consider the intergenerational transmission between languages, that's where the problem comes in."
According the U.S. Census Bureau, 178,014 people speak Navajo in the United States.
Stukova said despite the large number of native speakers, parents aren't teaching their children the language. In that respect, the language is becoming endangered, she said.
"There is a huge breakdown between generations," she said.
Priscilla Thomas, a Navajo tribal member, said she has always envied people who can speak Navajo well.
"I've always wanted to get into a program where I can speak it eloquently and also learn how to read and write it," Thomas said.
