Diné Corn Grinding: A Community Affair, Working and Caring for Each Other

you tried this back breaking hours grinding all the grinding your grandmother did here it was a time for them to work together being around each other singing to each other working together this is navajo grandma and grandma is going to go a little more in depth this time rather than what we did previously remember our wonderful stirring sticks okay and i taught you about that if you don't remember you can rewind and re-load the video and remember the teachings of the stirring sticks remember grandma held it like this and this is my weapon against poverty and starvation everything that's negative this is what we learned now instead of going straight into making the blue corn mush you need to understand something that's really important and the dna people i'm going to share with you what my ancestors did and what my grandparents did you know now we just throw our blue corn into grinding machines they did not have grinding machines we don't have electricity out there even now so you need to understand how manual labor was foremost in this and i'm going to show you i have this set out i'm going to let you see and you remember grandma on her her note and i'm going to show you and give you the names of my manual labor uh cultural items here when you grind corn the blue corn you have to have a grinding you know millstones and this basically and i'm going to show you the card this is called okay i said this cheat knee okay this is the flat rock the millstone that you grind with it's the one on top here down here is this heavy stone this is what you call said this j and this is what you use to grind the corn on okay so that i want you to see that and remember that okay so it's cheating and set us j okay that's one and this was used the this j right here was used for grinding corn and nuts and anything that made flour and that was palatable that then the dna people used okay so that's another one and this is if you remember everybody wants me to do this this is called beijou and this is not only for your hair but you also have one to stir something similar to the stirring sticks okay but it's not the same you you know and when you can make um real a lot more finer stirring you you know you use less uh than what the bunch i have here but this is the brush when you um do the corn grinding it's called ah off when you're ready and you ground the corn you use the brush and then you brush it into your basket so this is really important there was multiple uses of the beijour okay and it is seasonal so remember i will teach you about this and you can only get this during the later summer about october november sometimes in september so we have a long wait but you will learn okay that's grandma's promise to you and grandma loves you and she will do it and then here is the blue corn and this is called na da diese remember the our colors do blue corn and this is what that this is i don't have the corn on the the husks okay i've already done that and it's called blue corn and usually um you can grow these and then you husk them and this is the end result of it okay and it's called nada very good i can hear you say it wonderful then just for now i'm going to tell you the blue corn mush okay it is called okay we're not going to make it yet i just want you to see how the process of the our ancestors and our grandparents how they did this and it was manual labor that's what we're going to show you today and then i'm going to give you another treat with my voice again and a long time ago and i'm going to show you this uh there were corn grinder the corn grinders because it was so laborious i mean if you tried this back breaking okay you have to kneel down and you stay in this position for how long hours grinding grinding so guess what they hired corn grinding singers they hired them for a meal and then sometimes they gave them a little portion of the corn that was ground the flower the grinding was hard and the labor was very intense and so while you're grinding people saying to you mainly women and that helped to you know lessen the load you know they say seeing you whistle hot while you work you know that kind of a thing and it does it lightens the load so grandma is going to sing you a a corn grinding song in just a moment now listen to this this is what kept the music the time okay here we go singing you a song this is a corn grinding song hunga way away [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] away this is a beautiful song these are female singers that sang songs to each other to let to lighten the load and this song kind of refers to a child that would cry now and then and of course it's a female song and it was beautiful and it was you heard the beat of the basket i hope you enjoyed that it's not perfect but uh that's why we're so awesome because we're not perfect and this is how beautiful the baskets were they were used for music so anyways that is exactly what we're going to do now grandma is going to get up on her knees and her little seasoned knees to show you this back-breaking labor we will move this now remember this is called what ceres eat me and set us j so we'll put that to the side and we're going to put a handful a little bit of corn there well i think just too much we're not gonna we'll use a little bit and we're going to grind and you're going to listen to the music while you're grinding and this is what people were singing while you ground corn because it was hard labor and you'll kind of see why that has been [Music] i [Music] for all the grinding your grandmother did here can you imagine doing this and look how much flour i got you would i don't think none of you women would be brazen enough to have that much flour that you grind grind grind and and look this is the the flour you make you're not supposed to have it really super fine and this flower is what you make the twist jean the blue corn mesh with and this i wanted you to see how important this is and how precious it was to our ancestors and hard work we just didn't have grinders and and this is just the way it was and that appreciation i hope you have a little bit more appreciation for the corn grinding and how important it was to our ancestors and that's why the singing the singing was imperative because you're leaning over hours upon hours and you are grinding grinding and your back is almost back-breaking but that's what the dna people did for their sustenance and if you read about the archaeological aspects mostly the hopies have dug into rocks in the sandstone and they would have sometimes eight different places where they would all all the women would line up and they would all grind corn and the women be singing it's just the way it was and so i hope you appreciate this cultural aspect of my people the dna people and how they were able to get the flower and maybe one day we might have to do this instead of going to the store and buying pre-made flour this is my teachings i want to share with you and i know some of you are navajo and or danae and you didn't receive the teachings like this and i hope i can share this with you and help you to learn the different aspects of how incredible our culture is our dna culture this is i hope another notch in your belt of learning culture i love it and the singing and how beautiful it is grandma wanted to share a little bit more with you and the reason why because it's such labor to prepare this that the community came together and my grandfather being the navajo nation councilman was such a leader and people were drawn to him and whenever there was time to do the corn grinding everybody came together and it was a wonderful affair the men would go to the sweat lodge and or whatever they would do their sweats and uh you know the women on this hand you know it was a time for them to work together and they would come together and they would gather at my grandfather's house and it was those wonderful days that we shared uh being around each other singing to each other working together grinding the flower for with each other and then sharing remember i told you you don't hoard you you take what you need and the all-day affairs sometimes it could last four or five days and but it was wonderful you ate together and the joy that you see you see these women and their little baskets they bring their own basket and everybody gets a certain amount and their eyes just light up because there's such joy in that your sustenance and and it was so uh revered because corn to the navajo or the danae people it was sustenance so uh that was what was what we did or i watched this when i was a child and like i said they came to my grandfather's house and they gathered there anytime there was you know time to be spent to build houses or things my grandfather we would everybody go in the community and gather together and share these experiences and help one another and uh it's just beautiful so that's the sharing the community and working together singing feeding each other and building up the storage making flower together wonderful wonderful blessings of coming together and i hope you know when you gather as a family uh i know when you cook together isn't it fun i love that and everybody talks and they're laughing and they're singing and just the joy of association and the bonding that you get it's it's wonderful that's what family is about and so that's what my grandfather taught the community and that's why they were drawn to him and i told you he walked on water but see my father was there along the way too doing the same thing and my grandmother was a leader among the women teaching them very quiet but they knew her teachings and they came to her for wisdom and you know this is the kind of things that they did and gathered the brush together went got the deworgia you know i told you the dewoodja is we went down and gathered that together everybody did this together no one was left out how awesome is that [Music] and if you didn't have one of these stones you had the stone cutters everybody made sure everybody had that if you didn't have your moccasins there was somebody there to make sure that you had what you should you know what you needed so a community affair a loving family bonding uh community bonding we're all family and i wanted to share that with you and i hope you remember this so with that said we are done with this part i will come back and we're going to build a fire and i'm going to actually burn the gut if you can see around me there are juniper trees and i will thank sin assa and lady wood and and get some of the juniper burn it and prepare it and then use that and put with the cornmeal and grandma's going to be doing a lot of grinding i'm not going to do this all day with you but we will take the corn and then after you grind this you need to toast it it needs to be roasted and so that's what we'll do and add the juniper the the gut bates remember it got potatoes when you get the ash and you mix it with this then you boil it and prepare it and you'll have blue corn mesh so we have something fun to look forward to and i hope you learned something today to me it's precious i want you to see these things firsthand from grandma it's wonderful to know how people had sacred ways hard ways of being able to feed themselves and the hard work that went into it so i love you all keep your wonderful comments coming and i ayo no enjoy subscribe spread the word and learn with me enjoy watching and i love i love sharing all this information with you so ha gornet

Channel: Navajo Grandma

Views: 8,911

Rating: 4.9540229 out of 5

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Id: ntRDtmXhCXA

Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 14 2021