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New Deal Navajo Linguistics and Language Documentation Char Peery University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Anthropology ETDs Electronic Theses and Dissertations 5-1-2015 New Deal Navajo Linguistics and Language Documentation Char Peery Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/anth_etds Part of the Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Peery, Char. "New Deal Navajo Linguistics and Language Documentation." (2015). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/anth_etds/50 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Electronic Theses and Dissertations at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology ETDs by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Char Lane Peery Candidate Anthropology Department This dissertation is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication: Approved by the Dissertation Committee: David Dinwoodie , Chairperson Erin Debenport Melissa Axelrod Margaret Connell-Szasz i Char Peery NEW DEAL NAVAJO LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE DOCUMENTATION by CHAR LANE PEERY B.A., English, University of Utah, 1999 M.A., Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 2003 DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Anthropology The University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico May, 2015 ii Char Peery Acknowledgements I would like to offer special thanks to my committee chair David Dinwoodie who has generously shared with me this topic and has freely and abundantly given of his time and support throughout this project and for several years before I began working on this project. This dissertation exists because of David’s generous spirit, patient help and unfailing support. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee: Erin Debenport, who helped with a journal article that was an early publication from this project; Melissa Axelrod, who I enjoyed many wonderful classes with; and Margaret Connell-Szasz, who offered her enthusiasm, her support and her kind, encouraging words when they were needed most. In addition, support for this project came from a variety of fellowships from the New Mexico Office of the State Historian and the Center for Southwest Research. I would also particularly like to thank Ann Massmann and the rest of the faculty and staff at the Center for Southwest Research for their wonderful support, assistance and friendship throughout the research and writing process. I would also like to thank my friends who have offered iii Char Peery constant encouragement and a lot of great advice! Kari Schleher, Melanie Armstrong, Sue Taylor, Emily Mah, Amy Sorbello, Annie Maxfield, Jordan Biro and the many, many anthropology grad students who I have had the pleasure to work with. And finally, I’d like to thank my parents who have always supported all of my dreams, goals and plans. And last, but not least my husband, Chester Ogborn for his support, patience and love! iv Char Peery New Deal Navajo Linguistics and Language Documentation by CHAR PEERY B.A., English, University of Utah, 1999 M.A., Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 2003 Ph.D., Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 2015 Abstract This dissertation explores how with the New Deal, the US government committed itself to the construction of a Navajo ethnonation or a democratic polity that could interface with the US federal government. For my research methodology I used archival research and examined the papers of linguist Robert Young, a linguist and BIA employee who throughout his decades of work with the Navajo Tribe compiled some of the most extensive documentary material on the Navajo language, as well as his published works. I examined documents including correspondence between linguists Robert W Young and J.P. Harrington, dictionaries and other linguistic materials for evidence of the US government’s efforts. In looking at Young’s work with the Navajo I show how he endeavored to create a standard register of Navajo for use in political and educational institutions, helped to v Char Peery develop democratic political institutions on the reservation and worked to model a modern ethnic Navajo who was integrated into the United State’s wage labor and market economy. In this dissertation I look at some of the early ethnographic work that has been done on the Navajo tribe. I then discuss language documentation projects and some of the critiques that have been made as well as strides that have been made to improve such projects and consider what a change from an ethnolinguistic paradigm to a historical dialectic paradigm could offer. I then give a little background discussion about the New Deal to provide some historical background for my discussion of Young’s linguistic work with the Navajo. I then reflect a little more on the two paradigms, exploring their intellectual roots. I then conclude by looking at the ethnonational paradigm in larger, historic nation building projects in Europe and how these ideologies have been mapped onto new nations. vi Char Peery Table of Contents Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................... iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................................ v Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 - Navajo Ethnography .................................................................................................... 15 Washington Matthews .............................................................................................................. 24 Clyde Kluckhohn ......................................................................................................................... 34 Gladys Reichard ......................................................................................................................... 45 Evon Vogt ................................................................................................................................... 50 The Handbook of North American Indians ................................................................................ 56 Bibliographies ............................................................................................................................ 63 Linguists: Sapir, Haile & Hoijer ................................................................................................... 64 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 66 Chapter 2 - Language Documentation and Archiving .................................................................... 71 Critiques of Language Documentation ...................................................................................... 74 Calls for an Ethnographic Approach to Language Documentation ............................................ 85 The Historical Dialectic Paradigm .............................................................................................. 87 Language Archiving .................................................................................................................... 92 Chapter 3 - The New Deal ............................................................................................................ 106 The New Deal ........................................................................................................................... 107 John Collier ............................................................................................................................... 108 The Indian New Deal ................................................................................................................ 112 Opinions on Collier and his work ............................................................................................. 117 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 130 vii Char Peery Chapter 4 - New Deal Navajo Linguistics ..................................................................................... 134 Background .............................................................................................................................. 140 Young’s Documentation Project and the Creation of a Standard ........................................... 151 Spreading Standard Navajo ..................................................................................................... 157 Spreading the Standard and the BIA’s Ideal Modern Navajo .................................................. 164 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 175 Chapter 5 – Language Documentation Paradigms ...................................................................... 177 The Ethnolinguistic Paradigm .................................................................................................. 182 The Navajo Case ....................................................................................................................... 192 A historical dialectic Paradigm ................................................................................................. 195 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................
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