Watching the Winds of Change While Walking With the Navajo People

Melvin F. Petersen traveled 30,000 miles a year visiting schools, families, and government offices while working as principal and teacher in the school system of the Navajo reservations in New Mexico and Arizona. The geography of the West has a lot to do with that mileage, and, as he reveals in Watching the Winds of Change While Walking with the Navajo People, it also affects most other aspects of life on the reservation.

Incisive assessments and lighthearted anecdotes combine to recount his forty years of travel and tutelage. He offers a true education in the nature of life on the reservation, leaving no stone unturned while examining issues of health, communication, housing, language barriers, economics, transportation, traditions, and culture. Through this firsthand knowledge, he shows that change is a way of life, and, despite the Western landscape’s isolation and wide open spaces, change is coming to the reservation.