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Play, Role Reversal and Humor: Symbolic Elements of a Tewa Pueblo Navajo Dance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Jill Drayson Sweet
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Extract

The Tewa Indians of the San Ildefonso Pueblo perform the Navajo Dance which is a parody of their Navajo neighbors. This dance event involves ritual play, humor, and sex role reversals; it also dramatizes the Pueblo Indian's stereotype of the Navajo. In this paper, I will first describe the dance event as performed on April 28, 1974, and analyze some of the symbolic elements of the event. I will then argue that the Navajo Dance is one way that Pueblo Indians deal with their ambivalent and contradictory friend/enemy relationships with the Navajo.

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Fall/Winter 1979 , pp. 3 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1979

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