The R.H. Johnson Library’s lecture for June, sponsored by the Friends of the Library, features speaker Laura Tohe who will cover “Talking Code with a Secret Weapon: Navajo Code Talkers Speak.”
This free-to-attend lecture will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday, June 25, in the Lecture Hall, 19803 N. R.H. Johnson Blvd. No tickets are required and the event is open to the public.
Tohe, the featured speaker for this lecture, is the second Navajo Nation Poet Laureate. She is Sleepy Rock People clan and born for the Bitter Water People clan and the daughter of a Navajo Code Talker. Her works include three books of poetry, an anthology of Native women’s writing, and an oral history on the Navajo Code Talkers. Among her awards are the 2024 Guest Editor for the Academy of American Poetry Poem a Day program, 2020 Academy of American Poetry Fellowship, and the 2019 American Indian Festival of Writers Award. She is Professor Emerita with Distinction from Arizona State University.
During WWII a group of young Navajo men enlisted in the Marines unaware that they would develop a secret code against the Japanese military. This select group of Code Talkers devised a Navajo language code that was accurate, quick, never broken, and saved many American lives. Tohe will provide excerpts from live interviews with Code Talkers who told their stories before, during, and after the war that reflect their resiliency and their service to the U.S., a country that once tried to erase Navajo identity and language in the schools.
To see upcoming library events and lectures, visit suncitywest.librarycalendar.com.
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