Grandma Elsie

Abstract

By all appearances, Grandma Elsie is the prototypical traditional Navajo matriarch. She is a monolingual Navajo speaker. She has lived in the same house for over 50 years without basic amenities such as electricity, running water, or telephone. She has woven rugs since she was a child, and the proceeds from the occasional sale supplements her monthly social security checks as her only sources of income. Indeed, her way of life does not markedly differ from the way all Navajos subsisted a century earlier. This chapter introduces Grandma Elsie.