Working on the Railroad, Walking in Beauty

Download or read book Working on the Railroad, Walking in Beauty written by Jay Youngdahl and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2011-10-23 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over one hundred years, Navajos have gone to work in significant numbers on Southwestern railroads. As they took on the arduous work of laying and anchoring tracks, they turned to traditional religion to anchor their lives. Jay Youngdahl, an attorney who has represented Navajo workers in claims with their railroad employers since 1992 and who more recently earned a master's in divinity from Harvard, has used oral history and archival research to write a cultural history of Navajos' work on the railroad and the roles their religious traditions play in their lives of hard labor away from home.