Navajo Sacred Places.

"The authors succeed admirably in their goal to investigate Navajo oral traditions in relation to place...Their approach to the land as more than dissociated landmarks but rather as congeries of places related in 'landscapes' is a significant advance in rethinking the meanings of 'sacred places' in relation to the exigencies of modern land use." - Raymond J. DeMallie. The Navajo see even the most minute parts of their homelands and surrounding territory as infused with sacred significance. For them, "the whole land is sacred." Places of special power are the most alive, and stories usually go with them. Navajos have responded to curiosity about these places and landscapes by trying to keep the locations and stories behind them secret - to save the sites from destruction and to keep their power from being sapped by indiscriminate telling of stories. In the face of unbridled land development, however, protecting the landscapes may mean telling the stories, and it is in that spirit that Kelley and Francis discuss the Navajo's sacred landscapes and the stories that go with them.