"Some Kind of Power": Navajo Children's Skinwalker Narratives

The stories presented here by Meg Brady, collected with delicacy and care from her own students, speak to us in a rarely available, open, and trusting way. The reader will find that this is no mere 'kids' stuff,' but rather that it provides a rich - perhaps even astounding - insight into the ways in which children's oral narratives encapsulate their culture's ongoing emotional concerns. Brady's work also amply demonstrates the capacity of children to develop highly articulated and formulaic modes of narrative expression, and shows how these narratives relate the children to the cultural worlds around them . . . . It is apparent from Brady's conclusion to this fascinating study that an analysis of skinwalker stories demonstrates the ways in which traditional Navajo symbols persist in an area of the reservation which is becoming more culturally heterogeneous. Contact with others actually accentuates Navajo values rather than eroding them. The symbol system associated with the skinwalker figure is flourishing, and in the storytelling events of the Navajo children there is dramatically enacted the process by which a culture as vibrant as that of the Navajo perpetuates and continually recreates its most meaningful symbols.