In traditional Navajo society nadles sometimes engaged only
in pursuits normally deemed appropriate to the gender opposite to
the one assigned them at birth, and sometimes they mixed these activities
with those considered the proper province of both men and women. One’s
biological sex and sexual behavior were less important in determining
one’s gender than one’s social behavior and the forms of
production in which one engaged. Occupation, demeanor, and dress were
more important determinants of gender than sexual preference. Nadles
figure prominently in Navajo Creation and Emergence Myths. Such characters
are possessed of both male and female qualities and fluctuating, indeterminate
gender. Begochídíín, the pansexual trickster
of Navajo mythology, was the first nadle. Variously interpreted
as either simultaneously combining or alternating between male and
female, Begochídíín embodies an ideal
of self-sufficient, autonomous being. Klah was particularly interested
in the role of Begochídíín in the Navajo
creation myth as savior of his/her people.
In Klah’s presentation of this mythological figure, traits with
which varying traditional Navajo sources endowed him/her were combined,
effecting a synthesis. In the character of Begochídíín,
Klah elaborated and clarified the role played by those who fall outside
of a male-female binary in the Navajo cosmic order.
Klah’s gender status was the result of a social system that
accommodated and, in fact, revered and rewarded members who did not
occupy fixed gendered positions. This social flexibility, rooted in
beliefs and practices that perpetuated traditional culture, allowed
adaptation to drastic social change. Lack of rigid gender-based constraints
on behavior (due to the fluidity of gender categories) resulted in
the emergence of a new cultural form of enormous benefit to the community
in both economic and cultural terms.
Like the nadles of Navajo myth, Klah facilitated his peoples’
safe transitionto a new world. Klah aided his people in adaptation
to reservation life. He sought and perpetuated continuity across the
diversity of Navajo ritual and belief, yielding a unified front against
influences that threatenedtraditional culture. Klah's work and his
life may be seen as examples of how innovation and creative adaptation
to change can, ironically, serve to preserve traditional culture.
