Navajo Tribe Research Paper

The Navajo, was a Native American tribe that was located in the northern Southwest area. The Navajo’s are also known as the Diné, which means, “people of the surface of the earth.” This Native American group refer white people as bilagaána. They are a distinct group who later on intertwined with the Puebloan groups. By combining with the Puebloan groups they adopted different Spanish and other traits. Navajo was a term that meant “arroyo with the cultivated fields’, at this time the Navajo tribes were known for their farming. The reservation that these people own is called the Diné bikéyah and their traditional land in New Mexico is called Dinétah. In the United States, the Navajo have the largest amount of land and the second largest in population. …show more content…
The Colorado Plateau, is where their largest reservation is located and it contains valleys, mountains, canyons, and mesas. Monument Valley is located in the high elevation of the Colorado Plateau. This Plateau is mostly a desert that provides many different plants to the Navajo people. During the summer time it gets very warm in this region, and during the winter it has frigid temperatures. Every year this land gets around 10 inches of rain. The rainfall is even greater in the desert areas where it can get up to 20 inches in rain. There are many different types of animals in this area that the Navajo people will use for food and materials. The Navajo people speak their own language and their language is very similar to the Apachean groups. These two languages can be combined and called Athapaskan, and the people who speak this language are located in the Subarctic and Northwest …show more content…
About 332,129 people live in these reservations. In 1923, the Navajo’s established a government but was changed to only Navajo politics in 1945. In 1988, the chairman got rid of consequences of corruption. The Navajo reservation has been divided into 100 different voting regions, which are called chapters. The reservation also had 19 districts as well. Their capital is located in Window Rock, Arizona. Their nation includes, legal staff, environmental staff, doctors, police, schools, and a four year college. The Navajo people had to deal with outsiders trying to steal minerals from their reservations to make money. When the Hopi people took the land away from the Navajo people which caused a lot of families much stress when they had to find another place to live. The reservation is a big part of the Navajo people’s lives even if the people did not even live in the reservation. Although many Navajo’s don’t have a vehicle these days some use pickup trucks instead of horses and wagons. Horses are still used this day but for herding other animals. The people that are living on the reservation are poor and under the federal poverty level. They are so poor that they do not have or use utilities that we use today. The Navajo’s are the only native tribe that has struggled with gaming. In 1994, their tribal council approved of the concept, but their chairman declined it. It was sent to the

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