How The Impact Of The Navajo Rosetta Stone And Its Impact On Society

In the past weeks, I have done research on Navajo Rosetta Stone and its impact on the society around me. I am from the Navajo Nation so I decided to research the language tool because I do see it in my community and I see how it helps families reconnect through the language that helped the United States with World War II. This report contains a brief history of the Navajo people being stripped away from the language at young ages and being asked to speak it again to win the war through Navajo Code Talkers. This report will also explain the benefits of the program within the reservation and some of the backlash that comes with it and also the impact it’s made on my home region. “Diné Bizaad” translates to “The People’s Language” and the Navajo

They were stripped away from their traditional and ordinary lives and introduced to the “oppressors’” way of life. If they stepped out of line and attempted to retain their previous lifestyle, they were physically abused through a system that wanted to spend as less money as possible to “kill the Indian, save the man.” It was this trauma that they went through as children that they reflect on their own children as they grew accustomed to it. It was this that many Navajo families of the reservation have a sense of fear to teach the younger generation the culture and language they were forced to grow apart from. The result and impact of the boarding school system can still be seen

When Chester grew up and was attending high school in 1941, news came in that the United States was attacked by the Japanese. It was that event that shocked the Navajo people because they felt that they had to defend their homeland and there the Navajo people decided to unite with the US and become involved in the war. Chester signed up with the marines in 1942 and out of hundreds of young Navajo men wanting to fight to defend, only 30 of them were selected for a secret military program. The program was set to use the complex language of the Navajo and be used to aid the military through Navajo-language based military codes to carry across the battlefield. The previous “Shackle” coding system utilized English words and took around an hour to be sent and received where the Navajo code only took forty seconds through the language that was unknown to the rest of the world. Chester, along with 29 other Navajo marines, became the original Navajo Code Talkers and were sent to numerous locations across the world and aided the Allies in World War II. They sent countless codes that included: requesting for ammunition, food, and supplies, as well as, reporting the locations of the enemy and their next plan of