Miss Navajo 2006
Distributed by Cinema Guild, 115 West 30th Street, Suite 800, New York, NY 10001; 212-685-6242
Produced by Billy Luther
Directed by Billy Luther
DVD, color, 60 min.
Jr. High - Adult
American Studies, Native American Studies, Multicultural Studies, Women's Studies
Date Entered: 09/29/2008
ALA Notable: ALA.gif
Reviewed by Caron Knauer, La Guardia Community College, Long Island City, New York
This evocative and beautifully shot and edited documentary opens with an intriguing juxtaposition: a Days Inn is fore-grounded, and we hear an unidentifiable language in voice over. Cut to a table of Native American women grilling a young woman in a chair. She looks up and says, “Can you repeat that question in Navajo, I mean, in English?”
The girl is Crystal Frazier, the first runner up in the vividly chronicled 2005 Miss Navajo contest. The contest, which began in 1952, honors women who preserve and practice Navajo culture, is more than a beauty contest. To qualify, a young woman must speak the Navajo language fluently, know Navajo history; possess a skill and a talent, including being able to butcher a sheep.
Crystal, a pretty and personable young woman who lives on the Table Mesa, New Mexico reservation, in a nice home without running water, helps her family take care of livestock animals. We meet her close-knit family, and get a glimpse into their remote, rural lifestyle. Entering and going through the paces of the contest will be a challenging rite of passage for her, one in which she’ll forge lifetime friendships. The documentary also includes many interviews with former Miss Navajo winners, including the gracious and articulate the 1966-1967 winner, Sarah Johnson Luther, who recounts meeting Robert Kennedy in Washington, D.C., where she observed him in a Senate hearing pledge his commitment to “Indian education.” Another former Miss Navajo talks about practicing walking in high heels for the first time. When her great-grandmother saw the “holes” the shoes left in the ground and didn’t know what they were, she urged her family to call the medicine man. They all convey that the contest was a defining moment in their otherwise quite circumscribed lives.
The insight into the matriarchal Navajo, made up of about 250,000 people in this country, making it the largest tribe, is fascinating. Inter-titles explain the various parts of the judging process. In a sitting-on-the-bed hotel bonding scene, one young woman talks about butchering a sheep for the first time, and then posting pictures of it on her web page. Her friends were horrified, she says, and they called her a sheep killer. We see the young ladies of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Sheep Killers telling stories, and see them during the contest graphically butchering sheep; and struggling haltingly to speak the Navajo language.
The music by David Benjamin Steinberg is melodic - guitar and percussive stirrings are crisp and clear, like the expansive Southwest sky. The images of vistas and Native American faces, very young and very old, are striking and dynamic. The requisite nail-biting suspense of the announcement of the contest's winner is palpable. I rooted for all of the contestants, and wanted all of them to get first place. While they all couldn't, of course, "Miss Navajo" definitely emerges a winner.
Awards
- Special Founders Prize, Michael Moore’s Traverse City Film Festival
- Honorable Mention, Best Documentary, Imaginenative Film Festival
- Best Indigenous Film, Santa Fe Film Festival