When you're in Navajo Country they're at pains to advise that the Navajo consider eye-contact to be rude. Listen to the tourist info on AM radio and they'll warn that a Navajo will look away or at the ground whilst paying full attention.
Good to know but even so, it's hard, having grown up in a society that equates staring with attention to overcome that prejudice. Thus, when we stopped at a tourist trap inside Monument Valley to buy some Indian Fry Bread (delicious I might add) we were talking with one of the traders. It was disconcerting to hold a conversation with someone who wasn't looking at me! Try it sometime. As an experiment I tried exactly that at work today; it was amusing to see the efforts they made to gain my attention; not realising they already had it.
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