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My God and my mother live in the west and I will not leave them. I was born there. I shall remain there. I have nothing to lose but my life, and that they can come and take whenever they please. But I will not move.
Manuelito, Navajo Leader, 1868
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Introduction
In 1864, over eight thousand Dine people were ordered to remove to Fort Sumner to be held prisoner in the desolate Bosque Redondo. For four months, Manuelito’s people would live in “sub-humane” conditions. Living standards were nonexistent within the camp while Dine captives would succumb to dehumanizing military policies. The period of The Long Walk and subsequent removal to a reservation in 1868 remains among one of the most formative times in Dine history. To select Americans, the Walk was considered successful ethnic cleansing that imposed their imperialistic “civilizing” missions upon the prisoners. For the Dine people, however, the Walk was a march of resilience, renewal, hope, and survival. The chief aims of the Dine Nation transitioned from cultural adaptation to an increasing American presence in the Southwest to rigid resistance to American assimilation by the preservation of Navajo culture. The popular American narrative that Navajo peoples were decimated and spiritually defeated would be vehemently challenged by leading Natives intent on promoting their traditional culture. The Dine way of life, belief system, and societal tradition would continue into modern times, now supporting over 300,000 people nationwide. The Dine story is not buried in historical archives waiting to be discovered, nor is it found in American history textbooks. Their history and culture ebbs and flows with the living descendants who call themselves the Dine today. Yet within the last three decades, how have Dine individuals maintained the standard practice of their ancestral culture despite continued harassment by exogenous and foreign interests? Despite modern challenges, many Dine defer to spiritual tradition, the reservation education system, changing tribal government, new forms of economic development, and the promotion of the Dine language in order to maintain their cultural identity as members of the Dine Nation.
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The Dine were sentenced to a reservation comparatively the size of West Virginia.
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Dine leaders such as the recent Vice President Nez do not run away from their history, but towards. Contemporary Dine people have long remembered the barbarous policies the captive populations at Bosque Redondo experienced. Nez and others effectively remember the historical legacy of their people by remembering the past as a way to interpret the present. The run features an all-consuming drive to learn more about protecting modern Navajo culture.
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Attempts at preserving their cultural heritage have not always been quiet. Contemporary Dine have an impassioned pledge to themselves and to their community to protect their cultural heritage.
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Spiritual Revitalization on the “Res”
The first aspect of a traditional Navajo identity stems from a celebration of ancestral tradition, but also features deep reverence for Dine indigenous religion. Despite the intentional American repression of their culture, many Navajo youth have turned to revitalistic movements in which to renew their cultural vows. “In the spring of 1996 supernaturals visited the Navajo homeland to deliver a prophetic message of potential import to all Navajo people. In response, thousands of Navajo made pilgrimages to the site, while others had ceremonies conducted in their home communities and ceremonial practitioners made pilgrimages to the Navajo sacred mountains. In national recognition of the event, the Navajo Nation Unity Day of Prayer was established.” Thousands of young Navajo converged upon ancient homelands that had deep significance to Dine religion. Youth felt disconnected from their cultural identity, and religion offered an outlet through which to explain their homeland and society. Young Dine experienced two contrasting cultural systems from American oppressors and Dine preservationists. Dichotomies within the two systems created grave dissonance for youth in which to examine appropriate gender roles, individualistic versus collectivist societal expectations, and allegiance to Navajo belief systems or American religions. Many youth attempted to revitalize a threatened way of life. Youth congregated on sacred sites to renew ties to their ancestral heritage. Dine religion became a way to revolt against American imperialism and operated as a source of comfort for inspired youth to return to Native ways.
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Lloyd Lee posits four methods through which modern Dine people across the United States can regain their cultural identity over dominant Western assimilationism. These factors involve the reservation education system, tribal council, economy, and the promotion of the Dine language.
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“The Navajo Nation is dominated by those under 18 years of age. The under-18 age population accounts for one third (33%) percent of all tribal members. The Utah portion of the Navajo Nation has the largest percentage of the population under age 18 (36%), followed by Arizona (34%) and New Mexico (32%). The fact that one-third of tribal members are younger than 18 years of age carries with it important policy implications. The large portion of younger tribal members influences the provision of health and educational services as well as poverty and workforce issues as well.”
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The First Factor: Education
In order for Navajo society to maintain a significant population of culturally-fluent youth, Dine educational curriculum must foster initiatives that teach the enormous population of youth the Dine language and history. For Lloyd Lee, “First, the Navajo people must change the way they think of the Navajo Nation and what it means to have self-determination…. For the past sixty-plus years, Western education has either acculturated or assimilated Navajo people...” Reservation curriculum must incorporate Navajo history and principles of Hozho, which philosophizes one’s connection to and within the natural world. Youth must be emboldened to critically examine their role as a racialized minority in American society through the models of Bosque Redondo, reservation boarding schools, and the colonial timeline of foreign powers that have attempted to repress Dine culture. Several critics have lamented disparities in cultural education among Navajo youth on the reservation, referring to the fact that most Navajo youth speak English as their only language. There must be a vital language intervention in Navajo schools to teach students their cultural language more than just an hour-a-day, four times a week in places such as Fort Defiance elementary school. Furthermore, students must be taught that the name of Fort Defiance came from the first boarding school on the reservation. Their educational institution is implicated in a long history of boarding schools that repressed generations of Native youth from speaking the Navajo language. Upon graduation, Navajo students would return to the reservation for lack of opportunities in American society due to their “race,” while being disconnected from their families they were torn apart from. Furthermore, school educators may utilize the Navajo Tribal Museum collections of various artifacts to illustrate the cultural dimensions of produced works and how they have adapted over time in response to various social forces. Lesson plans by educators must also refer to the Dinetah homeland in New Mexico, and to explain why the Navajo people today are spread out over three American states instead of their homeland. The spiritual revitalization movement of 1996 may be prevented by reconnecting Navajo youth with ancestral homelands, Dine history, and discussion on Navajo identity within the classroom. The Navajo Tribal Council has heeded some calls for reform, granting large powers to the newly created Navajo Department of Dine Education, and in initiating teacher-training programs for bilingual education in Navajo and English.
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The Navajo language should be taught to all youth. Yet, it is interesting to note that the Dine language utilizes the Phoenician letter system used in English. Cultural preservation has included contributions by colonial powers.
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Every Navajo student has the right to an education that empowers them to become whoever they want to be, whether they choose to stay on the reservation or find opportunities elsewhere.
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“To repeat, Navajo identity is maintained and strengthened through the knowledge of the origin stories. Without some connection to the past, Navajo culture and identity does not change or adapt to current issues-there is no origin point.”
Lloyd Lee
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The Second Factor for Preserving the Navajo Cultural Identity
Lloyd Lee’s second factor for the effective preservation of traditional Dine culture must be in the forms of educating Navajo leaders about pride in Navajo identity and to cultivate a sense of nationalism in the face of colonial powers such as the United States. The tribal council must not assume the characteristics of the American federal system, but should instead reflect traditional notions of naachid and aataanii.
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“Naachid means a process; this is what we are engaging in. It means the procedure of naachid in which the societal situation is recognized and confronted. It is also a noun—naachid is the person with the plan, the person who points. Naachid is the way human beings and creatures solved problems at a particular time in the pre-history of the Diné, in the early pre-language years of emergence, in the days of origin. Naachid is the relationship between the planner and the people for whom the plan is intended. The process of naachid is inclusive, important, deliberate, and invokes the Holy People. It governs the manner in which our reformers shall consider changes… The naachid council, in history, was formed of the exact number of 12 original clans. The 12 chiefs of the naachid council formed around a problem to address that problem either in a time of peace (peace chiefs) or war (war chiefs) to recognize and acknowledge the concern and to confront it, find methods and means for solutions according to the pressing need of the people.”
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