Summer of Johnson Holiday (1971)

reservation on every side. For him, [music] it is only summer, a time for freedom from school, a time to enjoy the beauty of his vast [music] land, and to savor the special closeness of family life shared by all Navajos. Johnson is glad [music] for this chance to be with his father. For during the summer months, his father works as a Navajo land guide and is gone [music] from home much of the time. But today, on one of his rare days off, he is building a new feed storage rack, and Johnson is helping [music] when he can. Though poverty-ridden by most standards, [music] Johnson's father is a modern, forward-looking Navajo who firmly believes a better day is ahead for his people. [music] Having spent much time working in a white man's world, he realizes education >> [music] >> is the key to a better life for the Navajo, and is determined Johnson will attend high school and, if possible, college. Johnson is growing up in a matriarchal society, where the mother is the head of the family >> [music] >> and generally owns everything except the horses. His mother spends her time taking [music] care of the Hogan, cooking, and caring for the new baby in the family, who demands much time and attention. [music] When not busy with the baby, she weaves fine Navajo rugs, which are an important source of income for the family, using wool from her own sheep, which she gathers, [music] cards, and spins into yarn. While Johnson likes to watch his mother's practiced [music] fingers weave the multicolored yarn into the Yei Bi Chai pattern of the rug, it is still woman's work, >> [music] >> and he doesn't understand it. However, the tourists [music] who come seem very interested in watching her work, and always want to take pictures of her at the loom. Johnson also enjoys spending as much time [music] as he can with his brother, Wilbur, and his little sister, Rosa, who is fond of tagging along after him. There is a strong bond which binds the Navajo family together, a closeness [music] many other peoples do not share. It is part of what the Navajo call their beauty way of [music] life. Even for a young boy, life is difficult on this remote reservation, an area [music] so isolated that there is no electricity, radio, television, telephone, not even running water, >> [music] >> or any of the other everyday conveniences most Americans enjoy. In order that family life may continue in an orderly manner, all members are required to help with the chores. One of Johnson's is gathering the wood for the cooking fire. Another is building the outdoor [music] cooking fire so his grandmother can make one of his favorite foods, fry bread. When the shortening is melted, she brings out the dough, which she shapes into thin, flat discs [music] the size of the skillet. Once in the hot grease, >> [music] >> the dough fries quickly to a golden brown, making a delicious bread which Johnson will enjoy at his noon time meal. But Johnson's main chore in the family is the responsibility for tending the flock, since his father [music] is working most of the summer and his brother is too young to help. Grassland is [music] sparse, and the animals must roam over a large area in their search for food and water. Tending the flock in the summer in Monument Valley is hot, tiring work, but Johnson is [music] sturdy, healthy, and well able to withstand the heat of the valley and the rigors [music] of the day. While resting, [music] he sometimes hears the sound of a jet airplane passing high overhead, and he wonders about that other world outside the reservation. Watching the flock is a lonely chore, with little to divert him from his task, nor much to occupy his mind. For during these days, [music] he has little or no company to help pass the long hours. Once in a while, he will get to use one of the family horses, >> [music] >> and this helps break the monotony. The horse is especially helpful when it is necessary to take the sheep a long distance in search [music] of suitable pasture. Also, with the help of the horse, it is much easier [music] to get the sheep back into their corral in the evening. Johnson [music] thinks tending the flock isn't so bad when he has a horse to keep him company. When he isn't needed to help tend the sheep and goats, he spends his time riding through an unfenced landscape which is unmarked [music] by the signs of the white man's civilization, free to go wherever he pleases, to savor the feeling of being [music] alone with only his horse. Johnson lives in a land of incredible vastness, a land where he is dwarfed and overwhelmed by the sheer size of the mesas and monuments which rise a thousand feet or more out of the valley floor, a land that tends to engulf and swallow him by its immensity. On the plain at the [music] foot of the mesa, Johnson and two of his friends think it is great fun to race their horses, riding as fast as they [music] can, often without a saddle and with only a rope for a bridle, imagining they are chasing wild mustangs [music] as their great-grandfathers did long ago. On these imaginary mustang chases, one of Johnson's favorite riding companions is 9-year-old Harry Cly, who lives nearby in the valley. Harry's life is much like Johnson's, [music] especially during the summer. He lives in a Hogan like that of Johnson, though his family is poorer because his father is dead [music] and none of his brothers are old enough to work in jobs off the reservation, even if they could find [music] them. Part of the family income is derived from rugs woven [music] by Mrs. Cly, which she sells to the trader, or perhaps to one of the tourists who come [music] daily to watch her weave. Posing for [music] tourists' photographs also earns dimes and quarters, which are much needed to help tide the family through the long, cold winter. For most Navajo families, [music] including Harry's, sheep are an important source of wool, food, and [music] cash. Harry, like Johnson and most other Navajo boys, spends most [music] of his summer involved with tending the family flock. Harry is luckier [music] than Johnson in that he sometimes has help with this chore from his sister, Marilyn. Harry's life in the winter is [music] quite different from Johnson's because Harry lives too far from a school bus route to attend [music] the day school in Kayenta. He must spend his school year at the Bureau of Indian [music] Affairs boarding school, getting to come home to his family only two or three times during the school [music] year. The boarding schools are not popular [music] with the Navajos because they tend to break down the family unit and to inject too much of the white man's culture [music] into the lives of Indian youths. An attempt is being made to provide more day schools [music] and more extensive bus routes for Indian children living in remote areas. But in spite of his problems, Harry is a happy young Navajo, enjoying the close companionship of his family and the beauty of his valley while he can [music] during the brief summer months. >> [music] >> Eventually, summer draws to a close. On the last day before school starts, >> [music] >> Johnson walks through the valley for one last time, remembering the summer now past. For with the coming of school, there will be little time for such pleasures. The days grow short, and winter will soon settle in over the valley. Bright and early the next morning, Johnson and a friend await the coming of the bus that will carry them to Kayenta and [music] school for the beginning of another year. Each day, [music] they must ride this bus 25 miles each way. But to Johnson, this is preferable to attending the Bureau [music] of Indian Affairs boarding school as Harry must do. When the bus finally [music] unloads, Johnson quickly finds many of his friends from the previous year and is soon engrossed in playground activities that resemble those of a school [music] anywhere in America. >> [music] >> As Johnson grows older, he will have to reconcile the two ways of life he is learning. The way of the Navajo taught him at home and the way of the white man >> [music] >> taught him at school. One, the peaceful, beauty way of his people. The other, the aggressive, materialistic way of modern society. Ahead is a fork in the trail for Johnson. Must he follow one of these two [music] ways? Or is there perhaps a middle [music] road which might give him the best of both worlds? >> [music]