I am having some problems with the new interface of blogger...but Ill try this.
I have spent a lot of time in various cemeteries over the past yr and I have learned a lot about history from browsing the stones and going in search of the history behind the stones, the life lived...
I wish I had taken more time here at the Veterans Cemetery in Window Rock, AZ.
I did notice all the stones are facing the same direction....and there are lots of flags since it is a veterans cemetery...but the strange thing about this cemetery is that it is in a sovereign nation, the Nation of the Navajo, and all buried within are Navajo Soldiers of the US forces!!
The Navajo tribe has given a lot of its native men and women to the cause of wars of the United States of America, including the work they did in WWII as code talkers....their language was not understood by any of the enemy or any of the allies for that matter, so they were able to keep troop movements from being traced by speaking their native language over the 2 way radios. This memorial sits in Window Rock, the capital city of the Navajo Nation.
I was happy to be at the memorial just a few days prior to Memorial Day, the Navajo are very proud people and although back 1864 the Navajo people were forced to walk 300 miles to be incarcerated in a fort called Defiance, where they lived a harsh life as prisoners of Kit Carson who was ordered to make war on them... this is known as the LONG WALK...
They were eventually released (1868) and granted the land which is now the largest Native American Reservation in the USA. IT encompasses parts of 3 states and covers about 26,000 square miles. Its so amazing to me that a country that tried to eradicate its native population would later depend on those same people to help them defeat another enemy that threatened to eradicate all of us!!
PEACE
