A History Of The Navajos

The most complete and current history of the largest American Indian nation in the U.S., based on extensive new archival research, traditional histories, interviews, and personal observation.

A History of the Navajos examines these circumstances over the century and more that the tribe has lived on the reservation. In 1868, the year that the United States government released the Navajos from four years of imprisonment at Bosque Redondo and created the Navajo reservation, their very survival was in doubt. In spite of conflicts over land and administrative control, by the 1890s they had achieved a greater level of prosperity than at any previous time in their history.

In this groundbreaking book, the first Navajo to earn a doctorate in history seeks to rewrite Navajo history. Reared on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico and Arizona, Jennifer Nez Denetdale is the great-great-great-granddaughter of a well-known Navajo chief, Manuelito (1816Ð1894), and his nearly unknown wife, Juanita (1845Ð1910). Stimulated in part by seeing photographs of these ancestors, she began to explore her family history as a way of examining broader issues in Navajo historiography. Here she presents a thought-provoking examination of the construction of the history of the Navajo people (DinŽ, in the Navajo language) that underlines the dichotomy between Navajo and non-Navajo perspectives on the DinŽ past. Reclaiming DinŽ History has two primary objectives. First, Denetdale interrogates histories that privilege Manuelito and marginalize Juanita in order to demonstrate some of the ways that writing about the DinŽ has been biased by non-Navajo views of assimilation and gender. Second, she reveals how Navajo narratives, including oral histories and stories kept by matrilineal clans, serve as vehicles to convey Navajo beliefs and values. By scrutinizing stories about Juanita, she both underscores the centrality of womenÕs roles in Navajo society and illustrates how oral tradition has been used to organize social units, connect Navajos to the land, and interpret the past. She argues that these same stories, read with an awareness of Navajo creation narratives, reveal previously unrecognized Navajo perspectives on the past. And she contends that a similarly culture-sensitive re-viewing of the DinŽ can lead to the production of a Navajo-centered history.

A History of Navajo Nation Education: Disentangling Our Sovereign Body unravels the tangle of federal and state education programs that have been imposed on Navajo people and illuminates the ongoing efforts by tribal communities to transfer state authority over Diné education to the Navajo Nation. On the heels of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Department of Diné Education, this important education history explains how the current Navajo educational system is a complex terrain of power relationships, competing agendas, and jurisdictional battles influenced by colonial pressures and tribal resistance. An iron grip of colonial domination over Navajo education remains, thus inhibiting a unified path toward educational sovereignty. In providing the historical roots to today’s challenges, Wendy Shelly Greyeyes clears the path and provides a go-to reference to move discussions forward.

Examines the history, culture, changing fortunes, and current situation of the Navajo Indians.

A history of the Navajos from their mythological and prehistoric beginnings to the present, written by and for the Navajo people.

The most complete and current history of the largest American Indian nation in the U.S., based on extensive new archival research, traditional histories, interviews, and personal observation.