The Concept
by Anne O'Brien
in association with The Heard Museum
This book is for the kind of travelers who venture out to investigate worlds beyond their own. Whether visiting a place for the first or the hundredth time, true travelers approach experience quietly, knowing that something new and fascinating will develop if they are open to seeing and hearing it, smelling or tasting it. There is an art to creating the kind of experience the intrepid traveler seeks, and this book is meant to assist in preparing to make more than a superficial acquaintance with our native Indian communities.
Visitors to Indian lands expect a cultural heritage that is foreign in some respects to their own everyday life. This is true even if the visitor is Native American, since tribes are quite individual. Hopi ways vary significantly from Navajo, and the customs and history of one branch of the Apache or Yavapai people may have as many differences as similarities.
On the other hand, people around the world are touched by common factors and information that allows them to share much in contemporary life. Computers, television, work, education, and transportation have inevitably blended traditions and perceptions. Still, history provides context for current issues relating to the lands and their people. Both need to be considered as part of the travel experience.
The dry climate and the work of assiduous archeologists in the southwestern United States make it easy for the traveler to find the ancient next to the modern. Unexpected combinations—whether of food, design, or dress—show the seasoned observer of peoples and places that acculturation is taking place in all directions: tribe to tribe, nation to nation, person to person. People of European, Mexican, and North American Indian backgrounds have adopted and adapted what originally belonged only to one group. Hybrid cultures, the traveler observes, have taken on lives of their own, richer for their combinations.