| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Colleen O'Neill. Working the Navajo Way: Labor and Culture in the Twentieth Century. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University. 2005. Pp. xvii, 235. $29.95.
Dependency theory and world systems theory have informed analyses of American Indian economic behavior for decades. Specialists have moved beyond these theoretical models to examine specific local conditions and Native peoples' strategies within the parameters set by the global market, but informed by their own cultural priorities. Colleen O'Neill's treatment of Navajo economic efforts falls squarely within this historiography.	1
She begins in the mid-nineteenth-century pre-reservation era, follows disparate bands on the horrific Long March to Bosque Redondo at the behest of Kit Carson, and then focuses on the pastoral shepherding economy spawned upon their return to Diné Bikéyah, their homeland bounded by the four sacred mountains. Shepherding became the heart and soul of Navajo culture and livelihood. In their matrilineal, matricentric society, the home, children, and sheep belonged to women. Men had responsibilities to their mothers, wives, and clans. Helping to plant and harvest crops, tend livestock, accumulate firewood and water, and fulfill ceremonial obligations mattered most.	2
In the 1930s experts forced stock reduction on Navajos to preserve their rangeland. This turning point affected families with smaller herds the most. Unable to make a living from their herds alone, family members, especially men, turned to agricultural, railroad, and mining wage work to supplement their meager resources. Some mined coal seasonally on small family-operated claims. Women wove rugs to exchange for groceries with local traders, serving as a critical hedge against starvation while receiving a pittance. Economic spheres overlapped as men earned wages to replace the centrality of sheep and women were ensconced in near debt peonage. Jewelry making yielded more household income than anything else, but O'Neill is silent about it. Yet all of this "agency" could not stave off grinding poverty.	. . .

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