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AMERICAN
No people hove ever suffered more from the
impad of Culture Shock.
Text and Photography by Jerry Gentry
T
ALES OF
the American Wild
West have been exported
around the world. Six-gun
slinging cowboys and feathered In–
dians waving tomahawks or bran–
dishing bows and arrows - bloody
confticts between white settlers and
native Indians - these are all his–
tory now.
But another part of the story still
haunts both Indian and Anglo–
Saxon: memoríes of broken treaties,
lies, hypocrisy, robbery, inhumanity
and bloodshed. Both whites and In–
dians wrote this part of American
history, not in textbooks, but
in
human suffering, heartache, fear,
blood and death.
Severa! million l ndians once
roamed the length and breadth of
the North American continent.
Today, their descendants eke out an
existence,.often huddled together on
reservations which have been called
places for the storage of undesirable
human ftesh. Life, today, for many
of these First Americans is one of
poverty and squalor. Their attitudes
reftect the gamut of human emo–
tions - joys, hopes, dreams, usually
mixed with futility, frustration, re-
THE AMERICAN INDIAN
-
Navajo
mother Julia Yazzie and her daughter
Carmen drive their small flock of sheep
and goats toward home. They live in
the scenic but arid Monument Valley,
sentment, bitterness and even de–
spair, in the face of seemingly
insurmountable problems.
Few Americans traveling abroad
and personally witnessing the teem–
ing masses of poor existing in cities
such as Calcutta, Río de Janeiro, or
Bangkok- cities ofthe Third World
- ever stop to think there is also a
Third World at home in their own
affiuent U.S.A. This sub-economic
world is not the widely known Har–
lem or Watts or even Newark, New
Jersey. This "depressed area" is the
modern Indüm reservation.
The World of Stan Hatch
To understand what life here is
like, put yourself
in
the place of a
breadwinner of an "average" family
on the Navajo Indian Reservation
of the American Southwest. We will
call him Stan Hatch (not
his
real
name) to protect his anonymity. He
is a Navajo, living in a small ludian
village of 800 inhabitants in north–
ern Arizona. Stan lives with his wife
Martha, and their two children, ages
three and one.
They are neither an exceptionally
poor nor an exceptionally rich fam–
ily. Their standard of living is aver–
age for present-day Navajos. Their
small, two-room house has a cement
ftoor, a wood cook stove and a few
odd pieces of furniture, including a
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