Navaho Star Wars is Available on DVD

I am so happy for the Navajo people!

Although it is still spoken, the language of the Navajo people, Dine' has been falling into disuse.
So what did the Navaho Native Mueum do about it?

They redubbed the orignal (1977) Star Wars movie (aka A New Hope) into Dine'!

I first read about it at Indian Country Today.

At the premier, one museum official said "the most important thing that happened tonight was...people....were...enganged without feeling they were, you know, in a lesson."




The voice actor for Han Solo told a reporter that the youth of the tribe would be speaking more Navajo/Dine' because of the film.


I cannot say enough about what the movie already means to the Navajo people, but I also feel I need to point out that this film - with English subtitles - was shown "off the rez" and the critics at Roger Ebert's Balder and Dash felt it was - in some ways - an improvement over the English language version. That is high praise.



What a wonderful, feel-good story!

And now "Navajo Star Wars" is available on DVD!!!

Read about it in the Navajo Times.

Announcing my book: Proud and Determined

As you may know, Algonkian Church History has been an advertising-free, not-for-profit blog for five full years (with more than 300 posts).

But changes may be coming. I'm working on getting a different kind of blog because I have something to sell: a book!

Click on the image to enlarge.

 

I'm the author of Proud and Determined: A History of the Stockbridge Mohicans, 1734-2014.

 

But the cover that you see above was a team effort. When you need help with something, you find out who your true friends are. So I'd like to publicly thank the people involved with "my" book cover: Bart Putzer, Vicki Bowman Stevens, Doug Rand, and John Martin.

 

John's father created the Many Trails symbol and he gave me permission to use a photo of it. The photographer is Doug Rand, a friend of John's. And Vicki, the "cover model," is John Martin's step-daughter (if you want to be technical about it, but I don't think John and Vicki use the "step" word).

 

Finally, Bart Putzer put it all together and designed the cover. Hard to believe he had never designed a book cover before!