The Navajo sacred stories tell us that the universe holds two kinds of people. There are the earth surface people—both living and dead—and the Holy People—those powerful, mysterious beings that belong to the sacred world. The Holy People travel on lightning, sunbeams, and rainbows. While they are very powerful, they are not all-knowing, not all-powerful, and not all-good. They make mistakes and have human emotions. They can be invoked, supplicated, propitiated, and coerced to help the people of the tribe, or to cease doing damage. The Holy People also serve as ideals of behavior for the Navajo people to follow or emulate.

The basic lessons taught by the sacred stories are these:

1.  The universe is a very dangerous place.

2.  To survive you must maintain order in those areas of life that you can control.

3.  Avoid quarreling, avoid excess, and stay in harmony with your community and      with nature.

4.  Be wary of non-relatives.

5.  When in a new and dangerous situation, do nothing.

6.  If the situation is really dangerous, escape.

According to our prehistory, squabbling and quarreling are the worst things that can happen to any society. At the earliest beginnings of the Navajo creation, while the First People were still mist-people without form—in the First World, the Black World, where there were colors but no light—the Insect Beings had already developed a way of life because they recognized the value of making and carrying out plans with the approval of one another.

Spiders, ants, wasp people, black ants, beetles, dragon flies and bats lived in the First World and were able to cooperate with their own kind, though they fought with one another.

I want to emphasize the importance of women in traditional Navajo belief.