ABSTRACT
Some pilots from NASA were practicing moonwalking maneuvers on the similarly contoured landscape of the Navajo reservation. A Navajo elder told a bilingual boy to ask what they were up to. “We are training for a trip to the moon,” one astronaut replied. The elder nodded at the boy’s translation, and then told him to ask if he could send a message up with them to the moon. The astronauts, seeing a PR opportunity in such a collaboration, agreed to do so. The old man wrote a note in Navajo and gave it to them, but neither the elder nor any other Navajos would tell the pilots what the note said. Anxious to know, the astronauts paid someone to interpret the message. It read: “Be careful. These guys have come to take away your land, your freedom and your children.”
