Navajo Arch

Navajo Arch is located in the Navajo Canyon waterway of Lake Powell, in Arizona.
Navajo Bridge crosses the Colorado River's Marble Canyon near Lee's Ferry in the U.S. state of Arizona. Apart from the Glen Canyon Bridge a few miles upstream at Page, Arizona, it is the only roadway crossing of the river and the Grand Canyon for nearly 1000 km (600 mi). Spanning Marble Canyon, the bridge carries northbound travelers to southern Utah and to the otherwise inaccessible portions of Arizona north of the Colorado River, such as the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park.

Prior to the construction of the first Navajo Bridge, the only river crossing from Arizona to Utah was at nearby Lee's Ferry, where the canyon walls are low and getting vehicles onto the water is relatively convenient. The ferry offered only unreliable service, however, as adverse weather and flooding regularly prevented its operation.

The Navajo Twins in Bluff

Bluff was settled on April 6, 1880 in Bluff Valley, a narrow, cliff-lined valley cut through the deserts of south-east Utah by the San Juan River. While scrawny-looking desert vegetation dominates the scenery for miles in every direction, an abundance of cottonwood trees held the promise of well water. The San Juan River passes along the cliffs lining the south edge of the valley, while Bluff is nestled against cliffs on the northern edge. The Cottonwood Wash emerges from a canyon to the north and passes through the middle of Bluff, being dry except following heavy rain storms. The cliffs sport fantastic rock formations including the Navajo Twins and Sunbonnet Rock.

Navajo woman and child in traditional costume

Navajo woman and child in traditional costume

Monument Valley Navajo National Park

Totem Calgary & Vancouver

Stanley Park is a 404.9 hectare (1,000 acre) urban park bordering downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.It is the largest city-owned park in Canada and the third largest in North America.The park attracts an estimated eight million visitors every year, including locals and tourists, who come for its recreational facilities and its natural attributes. An 8.8 kilometre (5.47 mile) seawall path circles the park, which is used by 2.5 million pedestrians, cyclists, and inline skaters every year. Much of the park remains forested with an estimated half million trees that can be as tall as 76 metres (250 feet) and hundreds of years old.There are approximately 200 km (125 miles) of trails and roads in the park, which are patrolled by the Vancouver Police Department's mounted squad.The Project for Public Spaces has ranked Stanley Park as the sixteenth best park in the world and sixth best in North America.

pictures of native americans

pictures of native americans

Navajo Code Talkers.

Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima: the Navajo code talkers took part in every assault the U.S. Marines conducted in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945. They served in all six Marine divisions, Marine Raider battalions and Marine parachute units, transmitting messages by telephone and radio in their native language -- a code that the Japanese never broke.
The idea to use Navajo for secure communications came from Philip Johnston, the son of a missionary to the Navajos and one of the few non-Navajos who spoke their language fluently. Johnston, reared on the Navajo reservation, was a World War I veteran who knew of the military's search for a code that would withstand all attempts to decipher it. He also knew that Native American languages--notably Choctaw--had been used in World War I to encode messages.
Johnston believed Navajo answered the military requirement for an undecipherable code because Navajo is an unwritten language of extreme complexity. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, make it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training. It has no alphabet or symbols, and is spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. One estimate indicates that less than 30 non-Navajos, none of them Japanese, could understand the language at the outbreak of World War II........http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq61-2.htm

and American Indian Medal of Honor Winners:
In the 20th century, five American Indians have been among those soldiers to be distinguished by receiving the United States' highest military honor: the Medal of Honor. Given for military heroism "above and beyond the call of duty," these warriors exhibited extraordinary bravery in the face of the enemy and, in two cases, made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

Jack C. Montgomery. A Cherokee from Oklahoma, and a First Lieutenant with the 45th Infantry Division Thunderbirds. On 22 February 1944, near Padiglione, Italy, Montgomery's rifle platoon was under fire by three echelons of enemy forces, when he single-handedly attacked all three positions, taking prisoners in the process. As a result of his courage, Montgomery's actions demoralized the enemy and inspired his men to defeat the Axis troops.

Ernest Childers. A Creek from Oklahoma, and a First Lieutenant with the 45th Infantry Division. Childers received the Medal of Honor for heroic action in 1943 when, up against machine gun fire, he and eight men charged the enemy. Although suffering a broken foot in the assault, Childers ordered covering fire and advanced up the hill, single-handedly killing two snipers, silencing two machine gun nests, and capturing an enemy mortar observer.....http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq61-3.htm