The Flag of My Country. Shikéyah Bidah Naataí

The Flag of My Country.
Shikéyah Bidah
by Cecil S.
King

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Title: The Flag of My Country. Shikéyah Bidah Na'at'a'í Navajo New
World Readers 2
Author: Cecil S. King
Illustrator: Henry Bahe
Translator: Marian Nez
Release Date: November 9, 2007 [EBook #23424]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FLAG
OF MY COUNTRY. ***

Produced by David Starner, Jana Srna and the Online Distributed
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[Transcriber's Note:
This book contains a few characters not included in the Latin-1
character set. Those have been marked up in the following way:
[l-] is an l with stroke. [a,] is an a with ogonek. [i,] is an i with ogonek.
[á,] is an a with acute accent and ogonek. [í,] is an i with acute accent
and ogonek. [ó,] is an o with acute accent and ogonek.]

NAVAJO NEW WORLD READERS · 2
[Illustration]
The Flag of My Country
SHIKÉYAH BIDAH NA'AT'A'Í
KING -- NEZ -- BAHE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR BUREAU
OF INDIAN AFFAIRS ... DIVISION OF EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR Stewart L. Udall, Secretary
BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS Robert L. Bennett, Commissioner
DIVISION OF EDUCATION Charles N. Zellers, Assistant
Commissioner
* * * * *

This story was written by CECIL S. KING Leader, Special Navajo
Program
The Navajo was written by MARIAN NEZ Teacher-Interpreter
The illustrations were made by HENRY BAHE Fourth year Student
all of the Carson Indian School
* * * * *
Single Copy Price 30 cents
Second edition 5,000 copies--February 1956

INTERIOR. HASKELL PRESS. 5-58-100-3M

NAVAJO NEW WORLD READERS · 2
[Illustration]
The Flag of My Country
SHIKÉYAH BIDAH NA'AT'A'Í
KING -- NEZ -- BAHE

NAVAJO NEW WORLD READERS
At this writing (1951) there are approximately 26,000 children of
school age on the Navajo reservation. About 40 percent of these are
between the ages of 12 and 18. The great majority have never been
inside a school, and do not speak English. Recently the government has
provided space for more than 4,000 of these non-English-speaking
adolescents in ten of its off-reservation boarding schools. A five-year

intensive educational program is provided designed to teach these
children to speak, read, write, and think in English; to do simple
arithmetic, to know the facts of American history, world geography,
civics and health; and to provide the basic skills which will enable them
to obtain and hold a permanent job away from the reservation. The
reservation resources will support only about half the present
population.
We have learned how to teach these non-English-speaking Navajos to
speak and read English very rapidly. However, there isn't much
material for them to read. They are maturing adolescents with
adolescent interests. Primers and first readers prepared for use by
six-year-old school children don't have much interest for them. Because
most non-Indians learn to read when they are young, very few books
are published in which the ideas are mature, but the vocabularies
simple enough for beginning readers. The Bureau of Indian Affairs,
therefore, has undertaken the preparation and printing of booklets
written by the leaders who are working directly with these children.
Because the children are entering a new culture, and their success will
depend upon the degree to which they make the basic ideas of this
culture their own, these new books will rely on the material of this new
culture for their content. They will present to these young people a new
and different world from that through which they have grown during
their early years on the reservation.
Willard W. Beatty Chief, Branch of Education

[Illustration]
I am a Navajo boy.
Naabeehó 'ashkii nish[l-][í,].

[Illustration]

This is my home.
Díí shighan 'át'é.

[Illustration]
My home is in Arizona.
Arizona bii' shighan.

[Illustration]
Arizona is in the United States.
Arizona 'éí kéyah dízdiin dóó ba'aan tseebíí sinilígíí bii'.

[Illustration]
The United States is my country.
Kéyah dízdiin dóó ba'aan tseebíí sinilígíí shikéyah 'át'é.

This is the flag of the United States.
This is the flag of my country.
This is my flag.
Dii dah na'at'a'í Kéyah dízdiin dóó ba'aan tseebíí sinilígíí bá 'át'é.
Dii dah na'at'a'í shikéyah bá 'át'é.
Dii shi dah na'at'a'í.

[Illustration]
I look at my flag.
Shi dah na'at'a'í nísh'[í,].

[Illustration]
I think of my home.
I think of my mother.
I think of my baby brother.
Shighan baa nitséskees.
Shimá baa nitséskees.
'Awéé' sitsilí baa nitséskees.