IPCC’s Family Story Time: Chester Nez and the Unbreakable Code: A Navajo Code Talker’s Story

On Saturday, May 25th our Storyteller will be Ed Lewis (Acoma) and book title will be Chester Nez and the Unbreakable Code: A Navajo Code Talker’s Story by Joseph Bruchac (Available in the Indian Pueblo Store here).

As a young Navajo boy, Chester Nez had to leave the reservation and attend boarding school, where he was taught that his native language and culture were useless, but Chester refused to give up his heritage.

Years later, during World War II, Chester and other Navajo men like him were recruited by the US Marines to use the Navajo language to create an unbreakable military code. Suddenly, the language he had been told to forget was needed to fight a war.

This powerful picture book biography contains back matter including a timeline and a portion of the Navajo code, and also depicts the life of an original Navajo code talker while capturing the importance of heritage.

Location: Children’s Area of Museum