Conversion

Nanobah Becker’s “Conversion” takes place on the Navajo Indian Reservation. The abrupt ill health of an elderly man is blamed on Christian missionaries, who urged the Navajo to throw away his traditional medicine bag in favor of genuflecting to the Man from Galilee. The old man’s adult daughter is livid at this, and she takes out her anger on her young niece, who received a card from the missionaries that bears Jesus’ picture and a Biblical text. The woman tears up the card, but the child recovers it and pieces it back together as word comes of the old man’s death.