The Diné Bahane: A Human Centered Myth
The Diné bahane' can be called a human-centered myth because of the human-centric attributes of all of the “peoples” in this story, and because of the conflicts that arise throughout the explanation of these five worlds.
For example, in the first world there were “bee people” and “wasp people”, these bees and wasps, although they were “mist people” and not how we think of bees and wasps today, were still called “people” in the story. Men, animals and insects were all formed from the mist people and I think this points more towards a long-carried down respect that the Navajo have for all life and less towards a literal comparison between these insects and human beings. The First Man was formed from something completely inanimate, corn, and the First Woman from turquoise. Again, an example of things I would consider not to possess life possessing human like qualities. Another example of something from Diné bahane' that we might consider to be very far separate from human life is a river. In the fourth “yellow world” the two rivers took on the human quality of genders, male and female, which I interpreted as being significant in terms of this myth being human centered because it suggests that these bodies of water are literally “bodies” and alive as you and I. The idea that small, insignificant or even …show more content…
One conflict that was faced is that the black world was too small so the beings fought so much that they had to leave and go to the blue world because it was so unpleasant, even though complete peace and happiness were possible in the black world. In reality, animals and insects may selectively prey and hunt one another to survive but exist relatively peacefully in nature otherwise. The idea of cramped spaces and arguing over it is a conflict that seems very humanlike to me in its selfishness and uncharacteristic of
For example, in the first world there were “bee people” and “wasp people”, these bees and wasps, although they were “mist people” and not how we think of bees and wasps today, were still called “people” in the story. Men, animals and insects were all formed from the mist people and I think this points more towards a long-carried down respect that the Navajo have for all life and less towards a literal comparison between these insects and human beings. The First Man was formed from something completely inanimate, corn, and the First Woman from turquoise. Again, an example of things I would consider not to possess life possessing human like qualities. Another example of something from Diné bahane' that we might consider to be very far separate from human life is a river. In the fourth “yellow world” the two rivers took on the human quality of genders, male and female, which I interpreted as being significant in terms of this myth being human centered because it suggests that these bodies of water are literally “bodies” and alive as you and I. The idea that small, insignificant or even …show more content…
One conflict that was faced is that the black world was too small so the beings fought so much that they had to leave and go to the blue world because it was so unpleasant, even though complete peace and happiness were possible in the black world. In reality, animals and insects may selectively prey and hunt one another to survive but exist relatively peacefully in nature otherwise. The idea of cramped spaces and arguing over it is a conflict that seems very humanlike to me in its selfishness and uncharacteristic of