Nature is My Religion, The Earth is My Church Diné, means “The People” in Navajo, and is often preferred throughout the Navajo Nation. Located in the Four Corners area of the Southwestern United States, the Navajo Nation occupies 26,649 square miles on the Colorado Plateau in portions of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. My great, great, great grandfather was a trading post owner in the Upper Sioux region and anyway this post will seem random to the uninitiated. The Navajo population was less than 7.000 in 1868 after the people barely survived removal from ancestral lands during the US Governments' campaigns against the Indian tribes of the American West following the Civil War. However, the Navajo proved remarkably resilient and the Navajo reservation is now home to over 200,000 people and nearly as many sheep. The Navajo are renowned for their belief in the integration of physical, mental and spiritual functioning, which we have fallen in love with as well. In January 2020, we bought two winter muskrat pelts for our friend, Chief, to make us a couple of medicine pouches. Chief says he is happy to do so, as we also bought a couple of pelts for him, as his children took the last medicine pouch he made after we saw him buying a pelt last year. Maybe we can get him to make a coyote arrow quiver some day as well. Anyway, it’s all good medicine, as they say. There are some other First American crafts, that our daughter is up to these days, after just returning from Santa Fe, Taos, and the Navajo Nation, which somehow I identify more with these days. Perhaps because we have several Dine’ friends. The Pipe
