Officer Bernadette Manuelito: The Navajo Myth

Officer Bernadette Manuelito is a police officer for the Navajo Tribal Police Department. She is a rookie officer and female, which makes her job a little bit more difficult. She is called by the dispatch officer to go look at a truck that has been abandoned for a few weeks; according to a local airplane pilot who frequently travels in the area. When Bernadette approaches the truck, she is shocked at what she discovers, a dead man. Bernadette’s family is part of the original Navajo tribe; they frequently believe and practice the traditional beliefs. “Bernie was the daughter of a traditional Navajo family, taught to respect the dead and to fear death’s contamination the chindi spirit that would have lingered with the body. She wouldn’t have …show more content…
It was a Navajo Hogan habit, dying out now, he presumed, as fewer and fewer of the Dineh slept in their bedrolls on Hogan floors, went to bed early because of the lack of electric lighting, and rose with the sun not only for the pious custom of greeting Dawn Boy with a prayer, but hogans were crowded” (Hillerman p.46).
Hillerman explains that this was a myth of how mannerly the Navajo were to their peers. Due to the lack of electricity, or fire that they would put out before bed; the Navojo had no way of seeing around them. The hogans would go to bed early just as the sun was setting and would not wake up until the crack of dawn, the reason is simple; the hogans thought that “stepping over a sleeping form was very bad manners” (Hillerman p.46). It was a proper custom, because they were so crowded in the places that they slept, it made it difficult to walk around the many people sleeping. In today’s way of living, if someone was taking a nap, it would be considered rude to wake them up by walking over them or accidently nudging them. The Navajo had a very unique and smart way to prevent people from tripping over them, everyone got to sleep at the same time and everyone will wake up at the same …show more content…
When Bernie discovered the body she immediately backed away so that she wouldn’t get contaminated by the feeling of death. Bernie later came across another symbol that included death in the novel. “It was there she saw the owl. It was perched on the limb of a fire-damaged ponderosa that leaned over the canyon some fifty yards upstream. Bernie sucked in her breath and stared. No Navajo child in her generation grew up without being told that the owl is a symbol of death and disaster” (Hillerman p.75). When Bernie was in the canyon she approached the bird after trying to ignore it to find it staring at her again. The owl did not move a muscle and seemed like it was staring into her soul. Bernie was very confused to find the bird sitting on a tree branch that harvest cherries and other fruits. “Why put it there?” she stated. Bernie took this incident as a sign to give to her Navajo family. The sign was to have her family stay away from this area, because it was not a safe area for her or her family to be. The Navajo people take these signs very serious in their beliefs, the people believe that nature is the ruler of all, and doing what nature wants will turn out better for