Navajo Culture

The Navajo tribe is the commonly referred to name that describes The People, Diné. The Diné homeland (Diné bikéyah) borders the four corners region of the southwest United States – and borders the states of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico. It is important to remember that Diné bikéyah existed before the formation of the United States. It is also important to remember that the Navajo reservation is a political territory designated to the Diné by the United States government after the Diné were released from a prison camp called Bosque Redondo. The 1868 Treaty at Fort Summer established an official Navajo reservation, which encompassed a small portion of our ancestral homeland. Land was added through piecemeal legislation until 1934 which reflects its present size of 27,413 sq miles. The Navajo reservation is a federally-recognized land base held in-trust by the United States government. The creation of the reservation system included limited sovereignty powers for tribes. Chief Justice John Marshall founded tribal sovereignty by defining tribes as “domestic dependent nations” in 1831.

When foreigners immigrated to this continent, they made presumptions about the inhabitants of the land (indigenous peoples). The original inhabitants were often referred to as uncivilized and savage. The foreigners’ presumptions were based on their own worldviews. Those labels are problematic because they justify a platform for division. Most foreigners did not take the time to assess or learn about the indigenous peoples’ language or worldviews, and thus, those presumptions often times led to prejudice and injustice toward the indigenous peoples. The effects of that prejudice and injustice are evident today. Those effects are commonly referred as Historic Trauma or Intergenerational Trauma.

Even though there are over 500 tribal nations acknowledged by the United States government, the population of Native Americans today represent only about 2% of the total of people in the United States. Most experts agree that disease carried over by foreigners killed off about 90% of the original Native Americans. For example, if a tribe had 5,000 members, then it was common for 4,500 people to die from disease in a less than year. Watching everyone close and dear to you suffer and die is traumatic. Those stories retold and relived are traumatic. Aside from disease, it was typical for foreign countries (including the United States) to wage war against Native Americans – mostly because the foreigners wanted the land the Native Americans considered their homeland. Watching your homeland diminish from manipulation and injustice is traumatic. Those stories retold and relived are traumatic.

The Diné have the largest reservation today equivalent in size to the state of West Virginia. Navajoland is situated on the southwestern Colorado Plateau with elevations varying from 5,000 to 11,000 feet in altitude, and lies between the four boundary mountains: Blanca Peak to the east (Colorado), Mount Taylor to the south (New Mexico), San Francisco Peak to the west (Arizona), and Mount Hesperus to the north (Colorado). This area is a region of mostly flat-lying sedimentary rock formations, colorful sandstone and shale pinnacles, arches, and canyons. The land is also rich in natural resources: coal, oil, and uranium. The land is big and beautiful, spacious and vast. It is easy to find pictures on the internet of my reservation.

The Diné are one of the largest tribes with a population over 300,000; about half of the people live off-reservation in urban areas such as Phoenix, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, and numerous other cities. Surprisingly, Los Angeles has the highest population of Native Americans living outside of any reservation. The Native Americans living in Los Angeles are from many different tribes. Growing up in LA, many people mistook me for Filipino, Hawaiian or Mexican. Most times, I did not mind, but I did get used to being invisible, unknown, insignificant.

It is acceptable to ask a Native American person what tribe s/he is from. Usually Native American people identify first with their clan, (a Diné person has four clans), then tribe (for me, it is Diné), then with their ethnic group (I use the words Native American, American Indian, Indian, urban Indian, and indigenous to describe my ethnic group. The word I use depends on who I am talking with), and lastly as a United States citizens. Even though tribal people have been occupying this land long before foreigners came, they were not acknowledged as citizens of the United States until 1924.

The language The People speak is called Diné bizaad. Linguistics have classified Diné bizaad as part of the Athabaskan branch of the Na-Dené language family. On the reservation, it is common to hear Diné bizaad spoken. Even though Diné bizaad speakers exist, the language is endangered. For example, if you are a Diné bizaad speaker who lives and works in Los Angeles, you would have a very hard time if you tried to speak Diné bizaad to others. In addition, because there are many states with Official English Laws, learning/speaking other languages is not encouraged. The bordering reservation states of Arizona and Utah have Official English Laws. Diné bizaad does not have a unique syllabary (like Cherokee, Arabic or Chinese) so the written form of Diné bizaad is phonetic and uses the Latin alphabet.

The culture of The People is founded on simple principles referred to as Sa’ah Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhoon – which describes a process of living a long life in harmony with one’s surroundings. This metaphor of harmony functions as a noun and a verb; it is a tangible entity and it is also an action one lives out. The main way the Diné achieve this harmony is to believe that an individual’s actions have potential to create chaos or beauty – and the Diné ideal is to always choose beauty. Beauty in this sense is not related to westernized values of beauty; it does not mean a physically attractive man or woman. Rather the Diné believe that beauty is achieved when the land, people, animals, other surroundings are in order – that each element/entity’s true purpose/intention is manifested. The Diné philosophy of beauty is a way of life and it holds a central place in the Diné worldview – so important that the primary ceremony the Diné use is called the Beautyway which is conducted to ensure harmony, peace, beauty (hózho).

Navajo people have adapted to a modern lifestyle. Most Navajos do not live a subsistence lifestyle as generations past. However, life on the reservation is comparable to that of Third World nations. While there are numerous causes to the underdeveloped state of the reservation, a huge obstacle is the ever-changing relationship with the federal government by means of the Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Navajo people exercise limited sovereignty under the approval of the BIA. The intention of the BIA is to ensure fiduciary duty over the rights guaranteed to tribal nations. However, Congress and other entities often have a dominant voice in determining how tribes are able to exercise power because when Chief Justice John Marshal determined tribes to be "domestic dependent nations," tribes were positioned into a "ward" status, thus the limited sovereignty.

From this place is where most of my writing and art emerges.