DISCOVERY ’70

[Music] raymond jello is a 15 year old navajo indian boy from a remote corner of the painted desert in northern arizona he has never been out of his home state david paladin is a painter who this year will be known all over the globe the man david paladin and the boy raymond yellow have a world in common we'll find out why today as discovery visits an american artist whose eyes are turned to all the world's children [Music] discovery the award-winning program for young people with bill owen and virginia gibson i appreciate it [Music] is [Applause] these are american youngsters in their first few weeks in an american school in an american state their language is navajo because for the moment they don't know any english at least not enough to go to school they've come from areas of the navajo reservation too far away to be reached by the school buses [Music] their very names give us a clue where they come from or what work their fathers do here you'll find pretty many goats bart big horse larry fur cap and clyde grey mountain they've come from places with names like coal mine canyon the gap and cedar ridge some of them live on the very edge of grand canyon if a public school bus came within even a mile and a half of their homes they would have to go to one or another public school but because these youngsters would have to walk more than that mile and a half they're here at the tuba city boarding school tuba city arizona pretty soon these little ones will be speaking english and going to school in their new language though for the time being their new surroundings are as strange to them as brazil or bulgaria would be to you or me but for these older youngsters things are very different these are sixth graders they've been here most of them for that many years they know soccer and basketball and football and sadie hawkins day and acid rock and they know another world as well [Music] this is indian country specifically the portion of the navajo reservation which is on the painted desert it's country where one mountain is sacred and where another is not for the spirits of some animals are revered and those of others are feared it's a world largely unknown to us and yet it's contained within the borders of our own country if the indian world is closed and locked to us it is becoming much less so through the work of a man who lives just a couple of hundred miles from here david paladin is a painter known through the american southwest this year because of one painting he will become known throughout the world his work nativity has been selected by unicef the united nations children's fund for inclusion in their collection of greeting cards painted by artists from all over the world this is the cree indian legend of the nativity many years ago a great star appeared over america and then disappeared the chiefs of many indian tribes wondering what this meant gathered together to ponder over the matter while they were gathered at one camp they heard a child crying out in the forest upon investigation they found the madonna and child seated in the woods why does the little chief cry they asked the mother told the indians that in his land the child was recognized as a chief and three kings brought gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh the child knew these gifts had caused greed among his people and that was why he cried the indian chiefs then went into the forest and village and brought the child new gifts of nature melons flowers birds and small animals when they had done this the child laughed with joy and as he did the great star appeared over the land once more and there it remains the painting is signed in the lower right hand corner with the word chet lahay which means little turtle in the navajo language and is david paladin's middle name david chetlahey paladin was born on the navajo reservation in arizona the son of a navajo woman and a white christian missionary as a boy he knew the life of the desert and the legends of a desert people the children in the beginner's classes at tuba city boarding school know stories and tales before they know english and so did david paladin today 40 years later the legends and stories he knew in his boyhood have become the core of his work as an adult although most of my paintings are legendary in nature this painting that i'm working on is inspired by an old pictograph that i found on a cave wall in the four corners area of the navajo reservation the central figure is that of a man or a woman looking into one's self in an obvious search for truth and the meaning of religion there are two yay figures on either side of the painting these are symbolic of the spirit forces of the holy beings to the navajo people the sands that i'm using in this painting are all natural colored sands from many areas of the navajo reservation and the method i use to apply them is to use an acrylic binder that is carefully prepared to help the sand adhere to the painting and as i said before the sand is all natural colored so it's just basically a matter of applying the design with the acrylic binder sprinkling the sand on the navajos have always done sand painting as a part of ceremonies aimed at curing the sick and warding off evil spirits paladin has kept the form kept the substance and added something of his own the trips david paladin makes in search of just the right sands and minerals take him again and again to remote parts of his native state in addition to sand he uses mud and earth pigments [Music] this work is called standing cow [Music] this one is called kiva mural the kivas ceremonial centers for the hopi and pueblo peoples are coated on their interior walls with a mixture of adobe and water paladin used the same mixture to show a priest of the eagle clan holding a prayer stick in his hand symbolizing the trust of his people for those who study their content the paintings of david chetlahey paladin hold a succession of keys and insights into indian life they're the work of a man who has said of himself i am a member of one ethnic group trying to convey to others some of the indian ideas that are true and sacred [Music] as an artist who has contributed a painting to the united nations for use as a unicef card i feel that it's one way i can reach out and try to help other children of the world children very much like our own navajo children children all over the world are so much alike really [Music] today paladin lives with his family in a ranch-style house in a suburban setting in the small city of prescott arizona but surrounding him is the desert of the reservation on which he was born though it was four decades ago the life he knew then isn't so very different from the life of a navajo boy today we'll see how navajo youngsters live on the reservation and how they spend their time when they're not at school and we'll do that in just a minute [Music] the navajos call themselves dinette the people they came here about 1 000 years ago small groups of hunters and gatherers and they lived a nomadic life through their language they were linked to the athabascan-speaking tribes of northwestern canada david paladin's first home was at chin li in the eastern part of arizona near the new mexico border the day-to-day details of his life then were very much like those of the life of raymond yellow a 15 year old navajo boy today raymond lives at grey mountain arizona and is a student at the tuba city boarding school about 40 miles from his family's hogan raymond yellow comes from a people who've been sheep herders for over a hundred years their country is beautiful but next to useless for agricultural purposes and increasingly over grazed in terms of sheep herding [Music] [Applause] [Music] raymond jello's mother is preparing food for nine children who have a longer life expectancy than she herself had when she was their age but the dark side of that fact is that she's raising youngsters the reservation won't be able to support even in the mid 1940s a study of reservation resources indicated that not more than half the tribe could find a livelihood on the desert navajo lands for the moment the yellow family is intact mrs yellow has seen many of her husband's friends leave the reservation leaving their wives and children at home while they follow the harvest in order to make enough money to keep the family unit together for now however there is enough to eat the staple of the navajo diet is mutton together with a deep fried pastry the indians call fry bread even as she prepares their meals mrs yellow knows that there will probably come a day when she will see her children leave going off to find work in los angeles or phoenix or albuquerque at the moment raymond is moving a little uneasily back and forth across the borders of two worlds his world as a navajo and his essentially secondary world as an american teenager he seldom comes home because of the distance and because of the demands of his schoolwork but when he does he finds himself doing arithmetic in history while his little brothers and sisters play on the floor little ones who don't yet speak more than a word or two of the foreign language in which he's doing his work english traditionally navajos live alone one family to a hogan with each hogan quite distant from its nearest neighbor navajos don't gather together in villages as the hopi and the papago do in the past they lived exclusively in hogans which were originally rounded structures of logs and earth with earthen floors the hogan's single opening was a door which faced the east to catch the first rays of the morning sun to the casual observer it would appear that the yellow family has a neighbor but they don't they have two houses one for summer and one for the colder months the more conventional house the one that looks like the houses we see every day is for summer but with the first cold days the family moves into the hogan the traditional navajo hogan is circular making it easier to keep warm with one central fire in the winter [Music] the navajo boy or girl spends a great deal of time alone contact with their younger brothers and sisters is not so much in the nature of play but the sort of caring for one another which is so much a part of the navajo strong family structure one of the things the teachers at schools such as tuba city must do with a newly arrived youngster is show him how to play with other children that's an experience raymond's younger sister evelyn is having this very year we'll find out more about that in just a minute part of the navajo character is a certain attitude toward excellence they believe that if you're the best at something then everyone knows you're the best there's no point in showing up your neighbor by defeating and humiliating him it's an admirable attitude but hardly one calculated to win relay races or basketball games that's why teachers have to start from scratch in training young navajos to play games and sports after eight years at tuba competition is second nature to raymond jello but that's not the case with these beginners they've only been off the reservation and in the school room for four weeks now they still know very little english and have had very little contact with boys and girls who aren't their brothers and sisters what's this evelyn yellow is raymond's youngest sister at school she's a member of the beginner's class this year the teachers are trained to use games and stories to make these little ones feel at home and make them begin to deal with one another and with the english-speaking world around them it's a todd marianne point to kid this is an exercise in phonology the youngsters are introduced to the basic sounds of the english language through a series of whimsical words which are neither english nor navajo this way when they actually begin studying english they'll be familiar with the way it sounds [Applause] each of the primary teachers has a navajo teaching assistant attached to her classroom the teaching assistant must act as translator and interpreter everybody jump to ted everybody kid evelyn good good there we go now walk on out evan that's good very good talk to todd everybody jump to todd yeah this is a todd this is a dog yes now jumps his head last year every single boy and girl who finished the eighth grade and graduated from tuba city boarding school went on to high school whether boarding school or public high school it's only been two years since the navajo tribal council has emphasized conformance with arizona state law and made eight grades of primary education compulsory but each season the enrollment at tuba city boarding school has increased what tells you that this verb is transitive i know you know it there is a what after it no there is a noun phrase a noun is a noun phrase all right let's take another one because we're going to have a desk good he gave me a present class do we have any noun phrases here what is the first one good it is a noun phrase how do you know that what kind of noun phrase is it good it's a personal pronoun all right let's take number two please sarah main man the navajos have brought their youngsters in from the farthest corners of the reservation because they've begun to have a sense of the importance of education in their sons and daughters futures many of these boys and girls will have to face a greater change in the years ahead than the one they met when they left their hogans and came to school they'll have to find the life on the outside living with a language which is still to them a second language and in a culture which has had to be [Music] acquired if the world outside is to better understand the tradition and the point of view of the american indian it'll be through the efforts of interpretive artists like david chetlahey paladin and this year due in part to paladin and creativity unicef will be reaching out with food medicine education and above all hope to help children all over the world children like these [Music] they are the children of india and salon africa and the philippines they call to us from taiwan and thailand from ecuador and costa rica from korea and morocco from wherever there are children whose parents lack the means with which to care for them adequately the life of the navajos and the beliefs and traditions behind it are as secret and as foreign to most americans who cross the reservation on paved highways as the life of a bedouin camel driver or a seller of peruvian songbirds [Music] but unicef utilizing art and talent and the universal concern for the welfare of children is drawing those worlds a little closer all the time we'll be back in just a minute [Music] we hope you've enjoyed our visit with artist david paladin at the tuba city boarding school on the navajo reservation in arizona if you'd like to find out more about the navajos and more about the work of unicef the united nations children's fund and ask your librarian for these books laughing boy by oliver lafarge unicef in the world by gene spicer and the four unicef books of children's favorites around the world compiled in with photographs by william i kaufman be sure to be with us next week for another exciting program as discovery continues to discover the world bye bye bye to all the world's children was presented by 3m company [Music] [Applause] this has been a jewels power production in association with abc news