It’s a clever “turning the tables” joke, with the Navajo outsmarting government interlopers on their land by nearly sneaking a subversive message onto a moon mission and, in some versions, extracting a payment from the NASA men to provide them with a translation of the cryptic quote that only they can understand. Finally, with cash in hand someone translated the message: “Watch out for these guys, they come to take your land.” Later, they tried a few more people on the reservation to translate, and every person they asked would chuckle and then refuse to translate. After the man gave them his message they asked his son to translate. The NASA personnel thought this was a great idea so they rustled up a tape recorder. The man became very excited and asked if he could send a message to the moon with the astronauts. Since the man did not know English, his son asked for him what the strange creatures were and the NASA people told them that they are just men that are getting ready to go to the moon. The two Navajo people were noticed and approached by the NASA personnel. Near by a Navajo sheep herder and his son where watching the strange creatures walk about, occasionally being tended by personnel.
WATCH MAN IN THE MOON FULL
With all the trucks and large vehicles there were two large figures that were dressed in full Lunar spacesuits. Permanently reserving tracts of lands to various tribes was included in a 1987 Western Folklore article about “Native American Views of the Space Program” and has been a frequent entry in Internet joke lists since 1995:Ībout 1966 or so, a NASA team doing work for the Apollo moon mission took the astronauts near Tuba City where the terrain of the Navajo Reservation looks very much like the Lunar surface. government’s abrogation of numerous treaties This bit of humor referencing the displacement of Native Americans by European settlers and the U.S.