Monument Valley In John Ford's Western Films

Walsh’s quote implies that Monument Valley holds two different meanings, one for the Navajos and one for John Ford’s films. It is “a living link” (43) to the Navajos’ culture, but in the Western films, it only serves as a visual spectacle. The Valley’s significance to the Navajos is completely absent from Ford’s Westerns, which is why Walsh states that it’s “quite separate” (43) from them. He literally means that the cultural link is not present in the films, because the Valley is strictly the setting, the beautiful location where the stories take place. To the audience, Monument Valley’s significance is that it’s a staple of Western cinema. They see it more as a famous landmark than a cultural one, unlike the Navajos, who define it as a spiritual monument. After all, tourists tend to visit the place because they’re “drawn by the landscapes they know from the movies” (Walsh 43). Learning more about the Navajos and their culture is a bonus, but it doesn’t appear to be the tourists’ primary reason for visiting the Valley (there are exceptions, of course).

For example, they made the Navajos violate some of their long-established rules, including one that prohibits them from pretending to die. The Navajos believed that the spirits punish “those who did not follow or respect tribal ceremonies” (41), and John Holiday’s observation reinforces this belief. He points out that a lot of the Navajo actors who died were those who played a role in a death scene, and he writes that that they died “at a young age, because they had done what our people are forbidden to do” (41). The Navajos were surely uncomfortable with breaking these traditions, but they couldn’t really object to it because they needed the