미스 나바호 네이션을 통해서 바라본 아메리카 인디언 여성성 연구

Abstract

The Navajo Nation has held Miss Navajo Nation pageant “to exemplify the essence of White Shell Woman” and to select those who will become “the Goodwill Ambassador.” The contestants show their capacities: making fire, cooking traditional food, telling Navajo stories, and performing ceremonies. The highlights of the contest are to display the sheep butchering and the fluency of the Navajo language. It is Navajo woman’s indigenous rights to handle the sheep so that the sheep butchering is indispensable for examining Navajo womanhood. The Navajo language test is also important since the Navajo people have been forced to speak English only at Indian boarding schools. In spite of a Navajo feminist historian Jennifer Denetdale’s criticism that the pageant will limit Navajo women within the arena of “Victorian ideals of purity, chastity, and domesticity,” Navajo people expect the contest will contribute to overcoming colonialism and sexism and connecting reservations with outer worlds.