Glossary of Translations

Translations from Dineh thinking system into Common English

At this time, I am called to publicly share Indigenous wisdom and knowledge to educate about how humanity can heal itself. This is a challenging task, because it involves more than a translation from one language to another.

I use specific words and phrases that accurately distinguish and describe to convey the holistic integrity of the Dineh language thinking system.

However, to fully comprehend the Dineh thinking system, you must experience yourself as being within hozho (natural order). Such a correction in thinking leads to curing—rather than coping.

A single word in Dineh is an interconnected hieroglyph. To understand this interconnectedness requires a thought reversal process—a reframing from one thinking system to a completely different one.

Comparison of English and Dineh as thinking systems

English*(see definition below)	Dineh
Reductive, dualistic thinking system	affirmative, holistic thinking system
language developed for commerce	a sacred language of wholeness
used to sustain hierarchy and patriarchy	used within the natural order context
concepts are considered to stand alone	everything is interconnected
powerover	powerwith
win/lose	win/win
dualistic thinking results in conflict, violence, pathology, and disease	co-creative solutions, peacemaking, and use of creative imagination for collective survival

Glossary of Translations

affirmative thinking system—hozho: see blessingway.

authentic—ehozin: holy thinking for balance and harmony within the natural order.

blessingway—hozhooji: ceremony to awaken one to natural order (hozho); choosing constructive and life-affirming choices; healing from intentions and decisions that destroy oneself and others. See living the loving way.

co-creative solution—hoozhooji k’e iina: manifestation of powerwithin, from creator, that radiates love for ourselves in order to have powerwith others for communication and relationship to live the loving way; eliminates the need for powerover.

conscienceness—ntsahakees (distinct from consciousness): spiritual clarity and awareness of the natural order as reality; the concept of holy thinking in the Dineh language.

consciousness—digiis (distinct from conscienceness): reality that depends on one’s perception and is thus subject to dualistic thinking.

coping—doo halyaa da (distinct from curing): one does not know how to take care of one’s self spiritually; a temporary fix that takes away the sacred self-identity and replaces it with a deficient self-image. Coping does not correct the root cause of out-of-balance conditions.

core issue—te’e’i: spiritual impoverishment perpetuates hunger, poverty, disease, and premature death; the root cause that maintains any out-of-balance condition.

curing—hozho nahasdlii’ (distinct from coping): using affirmative thinking within the natural order that corrects the root cause of any out-of-balance condition.

*english— referring to Common English, the language of Commerce and Finance, not the lyrical english of poetry

healing—biiji: ceremony and singing that reverses one’s way of thinking to shift from giving the body wrong information to knowing how to inform the body of correct information for wellness restoration by reawakening to holy thinking.

humane: choosing life-affirming choices for living the loving way

indigenous Science—a term coined by Pamela Colorado referring to a reverent way of knowing and living within the interrelatedness between people and the natural order of all creation.  See natural order, reverent revolution

inverse thinking system—hocho: a thinking system in which reality depends on one’s perception and is thus subject to dualistic thinking. See consciousness.

living the loving way—hozhooji: literal translation of the blessingway ceremony as translated by my paternal aunt. It is a way of living in reverent revolution, of making decisions that are constructive and life affirming. See blessingway, reverent revolution.

medicine person—diiyiin dinee’ bii yazhi: a sacred and precious child of creator; everyone is a medicine person when using holy thinking to make decisions for constructive and live-affirming choices, by living the loving way, as a way of life.

natural order—hozho: an all-encompassing concept of holiness and wholeness in harmony with the movement of cycles such as seasons, cardinal directions, and moon phases. For collective survival, we must remember and reawaken to hozho—to harmonious living on Mother Earth.

people—dineh: people, as in earth-surface people and five-fingers people.

powerwith: in accordance with the natural order.

powerwithin: see sacred self-identity.

powerwithin to have powerwith—K’e: communication and relationship, knowing one’s sacred place in the natural order.

powerover—ba hol chiih: trans-generational unresolved and displaced anger.

precious child of creator—shil baa hozhoonii: knowing that the I am a precious child of creator eternally exists within me. In this context, creator is not capitalized, to differentiate the English meaning of a patriarchal God from the Dineh meaning of the creator’s holy breath that gives life and voice.

reverent revolution—a sha bii  k’ego: moving clockwise in time and cardinal direction; cycle of resources being passed from the elders to the next generation of youth, ensuring equity in resource distribution

sacred self-identity—diiyiin dine’e’: a child of the holy people, who are the ancestors who lived the loving way, as a way of life.

Song of no words: from the Metaphysical literature the “Voice of the Silence” is where the “raincloud of knowable things” reveals spiritual wisdom and knowledge to each soul in what is now known publically as the Gold Star meditation.  From the Navajo/Dineh spiritual language lens, it is the air that makes the sound of the perfect love and peace of creator that radiates to the physical sun, to the holy plant people and we exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide – the miracle of Photosynthesis.  We call this “air” the holy creator’s breath.  We are alive with it and we speak with it.

Synchronistic: A “front” word for spirituality where the concept of A, B, C, D manifests as E representing what the Swiss Psychologist called a “meaningful co-occurrence.”   This holographic and holistic term is different from causality where A causes B resulting in dualism that results in people polarizing in “for” and “against” someone or something.  Adversary, conflict and war are the consequences of dualistic -thinking.

Synergistic: A “front” word for the effectiveness of loving intention and energy for the increased effect of all the groups intending, visualizing, affirming and manifesting together is more than the sum of each participant. People using their collective conscience and creative imagination to manifest the unifying principles of win-win decision making is the appropriate function of our thinking.

thought reversal: a reframing from one thinking system to an entirely different one. In this context, the reversal is from the English-based closed, Eurocentric thinking system to the Dineh-based manifestation of an open natural order system.

truth—dineh be iina bendii’a’: holy thinking arrived at by reasoning to the exactness of the natural order

wisdom keepers: in conventional English language means people who use conscience with knowledge (not perception), but may not necessarily be a diagnostician and practitioner.

Note: in Dineh language a traditional healer is a singer—hatali. However, there are diagnosticians and practitioners who are not singers in the strict sense of that definition.

All my work is translated from the Navajo/Dineh language and those italicized  words notate that.  The meaning and vibration is my way of keeping track of information in English while I exist, speak and write in the Dineh Affirmative thinking system.  For an explanation of the terms above, please visit the glossary

©Patricia Anne Davis, MA and the Navajo Nation Justice Department