Navajo Tainted Beliefs by George Pintar is culmination of a yearlong project to learn the similarities and differences between the Bible and Navajo stories regarding the creation of the earth and mankind. Pintar’s fictional characters Chile Charlie and Dolly Sweet Thompson interview both Navajo Shamans and clergymen to obtain the facts about the written and oral stories. These are enticing and creative side-by-side comparisons. They are well-written and easy to understand. Here is a description of a shaman: “Blue Rope wore an authentic Kachina outfit. His face was covered with a mask, and his eyes hid behind the darkness of the mask. Under his right feather-winged hand, he carried a small gourd bucket.” Another is “Next, he created man from dust and woman from man’s rib. God did not think man should live alone. But in Navajo stories, the sun had the sole power to communicate, which was a big difference in the creation stories. One of the most striking is that a woman is made with a man in the Navajo version. They were made under the same buckskin simultaneously.
You may laugh, you may cry, and you may wonder why as you read Navajo Tainted Beliefs. Now available on Amazon Books.…
