Navajo Nation - Definition and Overview

Navajo Nation (Navajo Naabeehó Dine'é) is the name of a sovereign Native American nation established by the Diné. The Navajo Nation Reservation includes about 27,000 square miles of land (about 70,000 km², slightly smaller than Maine or South Carolina) over part of three states, and is the largest land area assigned primarily to a Native American jurisdiction within the United States of America. The 2000 census reported 253,000 Navajo members, of whom 131,166 resided in Arizona. 17,512 of these lived in Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix.

Geography

The Nation's boundaries abut the Ute Nation at the Four Corners Monument landmark and stretch across the Colorado Plateau into Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. Located within the Navajo Nation are Canyon De Chelly National Monument, Monument Valley, Rainbow Bridge National Monument, the Hopi Indian Reservation and the Shiprock landmark. The seat of government is located at the town of Window Rock, Arizona.

Members of the nation are often known as Navajo, also spelled Navaho. Navajo call themselves Diné, a term from the Navajo language that means people. The Navajo are closely related to the Apache, and the Navajo language along with other Apache languages make up the Apachean language family. Both groups are of Athabaskan origin and are believed to have migrated from northwestern Canada to their current locations sometime between 700 and 1000 years ago. Navajo oral traditions retain mention of this migration.

Congress established a Hopi (Navajo Oozéí or Ayahkinii 'underground-house-people') reservation within the Navajo Nation's reservation at a historic homeland where Hopi history predates that of Diné in the area.

A conflict over shared lands emerged in the 1980s when the Department of the Interior attempted to relocate Diné living in the Navajo/Hopi Joint Use Area. The conflict was resolved, or at least forestalled, by the award of a 75-year lease to Diné who refused to leave the former shared lands. Another Diné and Hopi group lives on the Colorado River Indian Tribes reservation along the Colorado River in western Arizona.

Economy

Until 2004, the Navajo Nation had declined to join other indigenous nations within the United States who have opened casinos. That year, the nation signed a compact with the state of New Mexico to operate a casino at To'hajiilee, near Albuquerque. Navajo leaders also negotiated with Arizona state officials in talks that could lead to casinos near Flagstaff and Lake Powell.

Culture and Education

The Navajo Nation runs Diné College, a two-year community college which has its main campus in Tsaile, as well as seven other campuses on the reservation. Current enrollment is 1,830 students, of which 210 are degree-seeking transfer students for four-year institutions. The college includes the Center for Diné Studies, whose goal is to apply Navajo Sa'ah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózhóón principles to advance quality student learning through Nitsáhákees (Thinking), Nahatá (Planning), Iiná (Living) and Sihasin (Assurance) in study of the Diné language, history and culture in preparation for further studies and employment in a multi-cultural and technological world.

Government

The Diné have three times refused to establish a new government under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Members twice rejected constitutional initiatives offered by the federal government in Washington, first in 1935 and again in 1953. A reservation-based initiative in 1963 failed after members found the process to be too cumbersome and a potential threat to their self-determination. A constitution was drafted and adopted by the governing council but never ratified by the members. The earlier efforts were rejected primarily because members did not find enough freedom in the proposed forms of government to develop their livestock industries, in 1935, and their mineral resources, in 1953.

Local and federal law enforcement agencies that routinely work within the Navajo Nation include the Navajo Division of Public Safety, often called the Navajo Police, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, often called the BIA, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation

The United States still asserts plenary power to require the Navajo Nation to submit all proposed laws to the United States Secretary of the Interior for Secretarial Review, through the BIA. Most conflicts and controversies between the federal government and the Nation are settled by negotiation and by political agreements. Laws of the Navajo Nation are currently codified in the Navajo Tribal Code.

The Navajo governing council continues a historical practice of prohibiting alcohol sales within reservation boundaries. Navajo residents who drink alcohol often obtain supplies in nearby cities, such as Gallup and Grants, New Mexico. For some visitors of the area — often attracted by the Indian jewelry trade, by tourist attractions or by the Interstate Highway that passes through the area — heavy traffic to off-reservation liqour stores, and the public drunkeness that often follows have created impressions that drunkenness seems to describe Indian culture. Leaders and some member groups actively oppose the sale of alcohol, and have taken several measures to find and offer treatment for those members who are suffering from alcoholism.

As part of their religion and for healing ceremonies, Navajos are known for their sandpainting.

See also

• Apachean languages
• Navajo language

Further reading

• Bailey, L. R. (1964). The long walk: A history of the Navaho Wars, 1846-1868.
• Downs, James F. (1972). The Navajo. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
• Gilpin, Laura. (1968). The enduring Navaho. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Iverson, Peter. (2002). Diné: A history of the Navahos. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0826327141
• Kluckholm, Clyde; & Leighton, Dorothea. (1946). The Navaho. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.
• McNitt, Frank. (1972). Navajo wars. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
• Terrell, J. U. (1970). The Navajos.
• Underhill, Ruth M. (1956). The Navahos. Norman: The University of Oklahoma Press.

• Tony Hillerman wrote a series of detective novels set on and near the Navajo reservation.

External links

• Navajo.org (http://www.navajo.org/)
• The Navaho (from History of Arizona) (http://southwest.library.arizona.edu/hav7/body.1_div.3.html)
• The Navaho, continued (from History of Arizona) (http://southwest.library.arizona.edu/hav7/body.1_div.4.html)