During the past Summer and early Fall I completed my sixth month of field work studying the legal system of the Navajo Nation, especially their restorative justice-based Peacemaking Program. This program is based on traditional Navajo concepts of justice, which include restoring victims and offenders to their pre-crime status through the use of ceremony and reparations to the aggrieved parties. Peacemaking is a fascinating program as I have learned through conducting interviews, observing peacemaking sessions, examining peacemaking case files, and doing general fieldwork.

My mother, having heard about my prior trips to the reservation, wanted to come along, so the two of us went together. While she conducted her own observations of sunsets and prairie dogs and rock formations, I interviewed 18 tribal legal personnel, including judges, district attorneys, probation officers, and peacemaking staff. I also attended events and meetings about Navajo common law. Together, my mother and I attended a traditional peacemaking session involving allegations of elder abuse, and we both found it fascinating to watch the peacemaker bring the family members back into accord so they could communicate about the issues involved and deal with the matter in a mature way.

This time, I worked in a trip to the Navajo Nation's college campus, Dine' College, to look at their special Navajo collection.  What a goldmine!   I found thousands of pages of interview transcriptions on ceremonies that deal with traditional ceremonies. Now, if only they weren't transcribed in old Navajo (old manual typewriters couldn't reproduce Navajo characters, so they made substitutions for many of the characters, making old Navajo nearly impossible to read)! One of my mentors felt they were a major find, however, because even the library staff had misplaced them possibly 30 years ago and most people feared they had been lost forever. I had heard rumors from my mentors that the interview transcriptions existed, so I opened drawer after drawer and poked around looking for them and there they were, resting comfortably in a dusty filing cabinet. I wasn't sure if they were the data I had heard about, so I took a page to the librarian, but she couldn't read old Navajo either, so I had to bring one of my mentors to the library and he confirmed that there was, indeed, gold in those drawers. He's now trying to get funds to translate them in English, and I want first dibs on them.

I also found a huge copy of a Navajo sacred "text" which details the journey of the sacred Twins from Navajo creation journey narratives to their father, the Sun (the Twins were born to Sun and a major female deity, Changing Woman, and are credited with doing a lot of good works during their lives to protect humans). This text was all the more exciting as one of the traditional sandpaintings (a type of ceremonial drawing made from sand) depicted one of the Twins progressing along the peace journey, which is the foundation for peacemaking. My mentor was so excited when I asked him to interpret what I had found, and explained to me the significance of the sandpainting as he passed his hands over the images of footprints along the journey. His explanation clarified for me the sacred nature of peacemaking and how it is based on more than "just" traditions and customs. Many of my interviewees had told me that peacemaking was a gift from the Holy People to the Navajo Nation to help them resolve conflicts that arise among people, but seeing the sandpainting drove that point home for me.

Of course, I also got to enjoy living Navajo style. During the first week, we went to Mutton Alley so I could get some traditional mutton stew. Mutton Alley is a bunch of food shacks operated mostly by female heads of household to support their families. My mother passed on the mutton and had steamed corn and squash instead. We rented a great little hogan outside Tsaile where Dine' College is located.

	The "log cabin" looking building is the hogan we rented, and you can see my mother watching over the cornbread she was cooking in the fire pit for our next meal. The water jugs on the log stump out front had been set in the sun so we could bathe with sun-heated water, not quite hot but warmer than the jugs left inside the hogan! We had to journey more than two miles to the natural spring to get the water, and we returned with jugs, jars, and glasses full every time we went. The pinecones in the foreground made excellent starter fuel for the wood stove that kept us warm at night. It was high livin' on the plateau, watched over every night by the stone monuments, the majestic trees, and an occasional coyote or bobcat.
	The picture on the left is of the Peacemaking program building. I have spent many hours in that building talking to staffers, reading over files, interviewing legal system personnel, and using the microwave oven since we didn't have electricity and welcomed a warm bowl of soup now and then.
	The fourth picture is our yard in Fort Defiance, complete with sheep. We stayed in Fort Defiance when we had to attend hearings and meetings in Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation, and didn't want to make the long trek from Tsaile.

Now, I'm gearing up for my online summer course, Criminal Justice and Technology. It looks like we might have some fun and learn a lot about how technology has affected and has been affected by the criminal justice system. I'm also looking forward to my Spring 2001 courses, Theories of Crime, Courts & Law, and the Criminal Justice Internship. If you are interested in doing an internship, swing by my office before December so I can explain the program to you and get your background check started to you can begin working as soon as the spring semester begins.

Hagoshe' (literally, "thusly, it is so," a common salutation in Navajo)

Azdna Nez Bah (literally, "tall warrior woman," the name given to me by the Navajos)