This article engages questions about translation, phonological iconicity, and seductive ideophony. I begin by discussing the work of Paul Friedrich as it relates to questions of linguistic relativity and poetics and the qualities of music and myth that constitute poetry. I then present a poem written in Navajo by Rex Lee Jim and four translations of the poem. Three are from Navajo consultants and one of those translations will be, from a certain perspective, rather surprising. Namely, why does one consultant translate this poem as if it is composed of ideophones? The fourth translation is mine. I then work through the morphology of the poem in Navajo, saying something more about the translators and the process of translation. I then provide a transcript of a conversation I had with Blackhorse Mitchell about this poem. I use this to take up questions of phonological iconicity (punning) and the seductive quality of ideophony (the pole of music). I also place this poem within a context of the stick game in Navajo philosophy (the pole of myth). This leads, in the conclusion, to reflections about linguistic relativity, misunderstandings, sound, and poetics.

In Navajo Nation v. U.S. Forest Service, 535 F.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2008), cert. denied, 129 S. Ct. 2763 (2009), the Ninth Circuit seated en banc found that federal approval of a plan by a ski resort to make artificial snow with treated sewage effluent on Arizona's San Francisco Peaks, a mountain massif held sacred by the Navajo, Hopi, and four other claimant tribes, did not violate their religious liberty under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The court accepted numerous factual findings about sincere religious exercise, but found federal approval of the scheme did not constitute a “substantial burden” on religion; rather, it only “decreased spiritual fulfillment” of tribal members. Despite a spirited dissent, the Ninth Circuit narrowly interpreted RFRA's language of “substantial burden” by making reference to the Supreme Court's 1988 holding in Lyng v. Northwest Cemetery Protective Association, 485 U.S. 439 (1988). This article shows how conventional wisdom about individualistic, subjective, and protean “spirituality” and in particular about “Native American spirituality” equips the court to denature highly specific and collective religious claims about the mountain by plaintiff tribes, and in turn to naturalize those claims as merely spiritual. Misrecognition of Native religions as Native spirituality then troubles the substantial burden analysis. While Navajo Nation suggests courts may never fully understand Native claims to sacred sites, the Supreme Court's 2014 holding in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2751, 2759 (2014), opens the door to revisiting the interpretive posture spelled out in Navajo Nation, and the Ninth Circuit's interpretive approach to “substantial burden” bears revisiting.

This article is concerned with understanding and analyzing the role of the individual in Navajo poetry performances, in particular, three performances of putatively the same poem by the Navajo poet Laura Tohe. One performance is the written orthographic poem, and the other two are oral performances that have been recorded and analyzed. It is argued that a focus on the individual performer and on multiple performances can provide insight into the relationship between social constructions of self and identity within the constraints and opportunities particular media and contexts provide. It also reveals the importance of studying individual creativity in language and culture research.I would like to thank Andy Hofling, Barbara Johnstone, David Samuels, and Laura Tohe for comments on various versions of this article. Jonathan Hill, as usual, has been a sounding board for many of the ideas that finally found their way into this article. Thanks also to Jane Adams for some useful advice at a critical moment. I also want to thank Elizabeth Keating, Scott Rushforth, Joel Sherzer, Pauline Turner Strong, and Anthony Woodbury for comments on a much earlier draft. The research for this study was made possible by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the University of Texas at Austin. I want to thank the Navajo Nation for granting me a permit to do research on the emergence of poetry on the Navajo Nation. Thanks also to Leighton Peterson for his help during fieldwork. I also want to thank all the Navajo poets who allowed me to record and interview them. I further want to thank the various people of the Navajo Nation who in one way or another aided in my research. Views expressed in this article are my responsibility, as are any mistakes that remain.

This article argues that certain aspects of language use may be more resistant to change than is language code. In communities undergoing language shift, researchers have noted ways in which indigenous patterns of interaction may be retained after the language used has shifted to English. It is argued that aspects of a speech community's interaction that are most tacit are also the most resistant to change, and are maintained through mundane routines and forms of everyday interaction. Such contexts for language use typically are the focus in studies of language socialization, which bring the theoretical perspectives of both practice theory and Bakhtinian dialogicality to bear on the question of how interactional and linguistic routines are maintained and transmitted across generations. Analysis here focuses on one particular interactional routine: the giving of directives involving a triadic participation structure, between caregivers and children in a Navajo community.