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What Does Rocks With Wings Mean

Decent Essays

1. The film Rocks with Wings opens with an image of Shiprock on the Navajo Nation Reservation. This geographical formation holds a huge importance in the culture of the Navajo, as it is told that the first Navajo people were carried on a large bird that landed on that site, with the people jumping off and the bird’s wings forming the rock (Rocks with Wings). The site has two different names, with Shiprock being the name that Anglos gave it, while the Navajo called it Tsé Bitʼaʼí, literally translated to Rock with Wings (Rocks with Wings). This difference between the naming of a sacred site for the Navajo people is a signal of a different struggle that they face, the one between preserving their native Navajo culture and accepting more of the white American culture. This battle plays itself out when it comes to basketball being played on the Reservation. 2. …show more content…

The Navajo concept of time, where it is in a circular fashion compared to a linear one, is important when it comes to the telling and understanding of the story. In the film, it is described that the Navajo people regard time is more like a circle, with events happening hundreds of years in the past effecting them in the present day (Rocks with Wings). While they are taught by the white American culture is leave the past in the past, they cannot based off their tradition, because their past influences their present (Rocks with Wings). This is important for the telling of this story because it gives the viewer an insight to the culture of the Navajo and how they review events in the past in relation with events in the present. Also for the Navajo, they cannot simply forget the past, as the interactions between them and white American society hundreds of years ago is still reflected at Shiprock, especially when it comes to the living conditions of the Navajo

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