Documentary Recommendation: 'Miss Navaho'.....

[mdehners]

I enjoyed this Indie documentary following an introverted young Dineh woman who decides to run in the Miss Navaho Nation pageant. What made watching this more interesting is that I discovered it three days after the Miss America pageant had been on the TV;>!
This isn't your usual beauty pageant. Applicants are disqualified if they don't at least have a conversational level in Dineh/Navaho. Requirements IN the pageant include a traditional craft, firestarting(without matches or lighter) and killing,dressing and butchering a sheep! The no-nonsense way MOST of the contestants made "booties" of grocery bags to prevent blood, feces and other body fluids damaging their bleached white boots and leggings was great. I tried to imagine a Miss America contestant forced to speak their Ancestral language, practice an Ancestral craft and butcher, let alone kill and dress an animal and couldn't;>....
Personally, I though the young lady about the contest was the most Attractive but she lost because she wasn't fluent enough in Dineh. Still, she made 1st Runner Up....
Cheers,
Pat

Comments

[ngakmafaery]

...you might like Black Fire, a Dineh punk group consisting of three gorgeous brothers and sister whom I knew quite well years back...you can probably find their website easily enough, although the oldest cutest dude Klee has gotten too political to tour with the others anymore, so I am unsure what the musical status of them is right now...I might visit youtube to see if they have anything there...good protest punk stuff...

[mdehners]

I'll have to look them up, though I'm not a big fan of Punk after the Ramones. I've always had a "thing" abouth the Dineh since I was friends with a young girl in highschool. Unfortunately, she was one of so many taken from her parents and given to good Mormon or Christain families and I can remember that she would have red eyes from crying Mondays when she didn't wake up "White and Delightsome"....
Cheers,
Pat