Focusing on the economic history of the Navajo, known more correctly as the DinT people, this study explores how a combination of capitalism and traditional kinship economy have merged to change the lives of a people who are a part of, yet separated from, the surrounding US economy. Oral history is

I was born March 8, 1947 into a railroad family. I had two major passions in my early teens: the Democratic Party and John F. Kennedy. With his assassination and then the failure to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in the summer of 1964, I lost all mooring with Party politics. The following May 1965, I graduated from Pocatello High School; I was eighteen, registered for the draft, and the nation was at war. Mr. Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam, along with the sending of troops into the Dominican Republic, completed my crisis of faith; I was no longer a Democrat. My...

I was born March 8, 1947 into a railroad family. I had two major passions in my early teens: the Democratic Party and John F. Kennedy. With his assassination and then the failure to seat the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in the summer of 1964, I lost all mooring with Party politics. The following May 1965, I graduated from Pocatello High School; I was eighteen, registered for the draft, and the nation was at war. Mr. Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam, along with the sending of troops into the Dominican Republic, completed my crisis of faith; I was no longer a Democrat. My...