Navajo Nation

Navajo Nation (Navajo: Naabeehó Dine'é) is the name of a sovereign Native American nation established by the Diné. The Navajo Indian Reservation covers about 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometres) of land, occupying all of northeastern Arizona, and extending into Utah and New Mexico, and is the largest land area assigned primarily to a Native American jurisdiction within the United States. The 2000 census reported 298,215 Navajos living throughout the United States, of which 173,987 were living within the Navajo Nation boundaries. 131,166 lived in Arizona. 17,512 of these lived in Maricopa County, which includes the city of Phoenix. Because the Navajo Nation encompasses land in three states, its Division of Economic Development has extracted census date for the Navajo Nation, as a whole, and sends a representative to the Census Board.

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.

Related Topics:
Ute Nation - Four Corners Monument - Colorado Plateau - Canyon De Chelly National Monument - Monument Valley - Rainbow Bridge National Monument - Hopi - Shiprock - Window Rock, Arizona

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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 Southern Athabaskan language family.

Related Topics:
Navajo - Navajo language - Apache - Southern Athabaskan

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

Related Topics:
Congress - Hopi

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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 seventy-five-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.

Related Topics:
1980s - Department of the Interior - Navajo/Hopi Joint Use Area - Colorado River Indian Tribes - Reservation - Colorado River

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