Growing Up Sexually

NAVAHO, NAVAJO, DINÉ  (North-American Natives)

Index→ Americas → North America → North American Natives → Navaho

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See also: North-America Non-Natives

Leighton and Kluckhohn (1948:p35, 54-5, 87, 88)^[1][61] provide specific impressions on children’s sexual excursions. Masturbation is “accepted as a normal part of the young child’s life”, and “the mother may stroke the naked genitals of a nursing child with her hand. Some observations indicate that she does this more often with boys than with girls. This practice and the differing structure of the external sex organs may cause boys to react more strongly than girls to the cessation of nursing”. Girls are taught to keep their skirts down to prevent someone seeing up their dress “go blind” (p101). Unlike “infantile masturbation”, “children who are approaching the age when they might indulge in heterosexual activities are frequently and strongly warned against them. “We tell even little children that boys and girls must not touch each other. They can play together but they must not touch each other. We say to the girl that a boy may bite her ear off, or the boy may get mad and break her head with a stone”. Small boys are sometimes told that the girl’s vagina will bite off or injure the penis [...]. All such warnings, which might be motivated only by the practical consideration of protecting immature children from too much sexual experimentation and preventing pregnancy in adolescent girls, stress the danger of sex and are couched in terms that might implant a lasting uneasiness about the sex act”.

Kluckhohn (1947:p68, 77; 1948)^[2][62] observed that mothers tickle the genitals of nursed infants. The erotic freedom of infancy is linked to the rarity of adult impotence and frigidity (p60). Little is said about older children. An autobiographical account (Dyk, 1938)^[3][63] reveals that seven or eight-year-old boys may be told girls will bite their genitals off, or have vaginae dentatae (p44-5). Before this, boys and girls play together freely, and may imitate the copulation of goats “every day” (p10-1).

Proskauer (1980:p46-7)^[4][64] relates:

“The discipline and sexual instruction of Navajo children is primarily the task of the maternal uncle and aunt. Father and mother are usually seen more as benign providers of care and gifts. Sex education begins early, around toddler age, when the child’s first striving toward autonomous mobility makes him eligible for the sexual joking and teasing that go on openly in Navajo social gatherings. A two-year-old boy’s uncle will begin to make remarks about the size of his nephews’s penis and tease him about the various girls he has had. He might call his niece “little mother” and ask her to take care of him, by giving him some milk. The aunt might tease her nephew by saying, “I want to sleep with you” or “I know you’ve been seeing someone else while I was away”. She might instruct her niece how to catch boys at the Squaw dance. In addition to this frank teasing, children are exposed to the sight and sound of sexual intercourse from birth in the one-room hogan. […] Children have ample opportunities for sexual play and exploration while out herding the sheep or off by themselves at ceremonial gatherings. Girls and women are generally the more sexually aggressive throughout life”.

“When I reached puberty, my mother advised me that I could no longer play with my brothers as I had as a girl child. I was a young woman and expected to behave as such. My brothers were advised that I was to be treated with appropriate behavior”^[5][65].

Girls’ puberty celebration is called Kinaaldá (Frisbie, 1993[6]; Dickinson, 1998[7]; Markstrom & Iborra, 2002)[8].

“A Navajo girl, upon reaching the age of 13 and experiencing her first menstrual period becomes initiated into womanhood by a beautiful 4-day ritual entitled the Kinaalda, which is part of the Navajo Blessing Way Ceremony. The Kinaalda literally translates "puberty ceremony," and this term is interchangeable with both the girl and the ceremony.”[9]

Additional refs:

§         Bailey (1950:p13-15)[10][66

§         Wyman, Leland Clifton (1943) Navaho girl's puberty rite. By Leland Clifton Wyman and Flora L. Bailey, New Mexico Anthropologist, 6/7:3-12

§         Markstrom, C.A. (2002, October). The empowerment of Navajo and Apache pubescent girls through ritual. Invited presentation, Department of Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry Grand Rounds, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV.

§         Markstrom, C.A., & Iborra, A. (2002, April). The Kinaalda pubertal rite of passage and identity formation among Navajo girls. Paper presented in symposium "Alternative Conceptions of Identity Among First Nations and American Indian Adolescents" at the 2002 Biennial Meetings of the Society for Research on Adolescence, New Orleans, LA.

§         Thomas, Wesley (2004) Side-Lining 'Changing Woman': Dismissal of Traditional Puberty Ceremonies by Navajo Girls. 103rd Annual Conference of the American Anthropological Association, November 21, 2004

§         Roessel, Monty (1967 [1993]) Kinaalda: a Navajo Girl Grows Up. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications

§         Kinaalda. A film by Lena Carr, 2000 http://www.wmm.com/Catalog/pages/c556.htm

§         Schwarz, Maureen Trudelle (1997) Molded in the Image of Changing Woman: Navajo Views on the Human Body and Personhood. University of Arizona Press

Janssen, D. F., Growing Up Sexually. Volume I. World Reference Atlas. 0.2 ed. 2004. Berlin: Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology

Last revised: Jul 2005