The Navajo Nation is the largest of over 560 federally recognized indigenous entities in the United States today. Navajo history and politics thus serve as a model for understanding American Indian issues across the board ranging from the tribal-federal relationship to contemporary land disputes, taxation policies, and Indian gaming challenges. This revised edition of a recent text includes new census data along with a new introduction and an updated timeline of Dine political history. The text's thoroughgoing analysis of Navajo political institutions and processes is amplified by a consideration of the distinctive Navajo culture. Presented in the context of indigenous societies everywhere, the book offers a way to explore the culture of politics and the politics of culture confronted by all native peoples.

The book offers a way to explore the culture of politics and the politics of culture confronted by all native peoples.

Native nations, like the Navajo nation, have proven to be remarkably adept at retaining and exercising ever-increasing amounts of self-determination even when faced with powerful external constraints and limited resources. Now in this fourth edition of David E. Wilkins' The Navajo Political Experience, political developments of the last decade are discussed and analyzed comprehensively, and with as much accessibility as thoroughness and detail.

A chronicle of the Navajo people describing the hardships and rewards of early band life, and how they dealt with the influences of Spanish, Mexican and American forces.

This account, authorized by the Rough Rock Demo. School community, documents the history of the school-the first controlled by a locally elected, all Navajo governing board, & to teach in & through the Native lang., innovations which have made it a leade

Examines land-use patterns and economic development on the Navajo Nation, telling a story about resource exploitation and tribal sovereignty.

In Landscapes of Power Dana E. Powell examines the rise and fall of the controversial Desert Rock Power Plant initiative in New Mexico to trace the political conflicts surrounding native sovereignty and contemporary energy development on Navajo (Diné) Nation land. Powell's historical and ethnographic account shows how the coal-fired power plant project's defeat provided the basis for redefining the legacies of colonialism, mineral extraction, and environmentalism. Examining the labor of activists, artists, politicians, elders, technicians, and others, Powell emphasizes the generative potential of Navajo resistance to articulate a vision of autonomy in the face of twenty-first-century colonial conditions. Ultimately, Powell situates local Navajo struggles over energy technology and infrastructure within broader sociocultural life, debates over global climate change, and tribal, federal, and global politics of extraction.

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.

What do traditional Indigenous institutions of governance offer to our understanding of the contemporary challenges faced by the Navajo Nation today and tomorrow? Guided by the Mountains looks at the tensions between Indigenous political philosophy and the challenges faced by Indigenous nations in building political institutions that address contemporary problems and enact "good governance." Specifically, it looks at Navajo, or Diné, political thought, focusing on traditional Diné institutions that offer "a new (old) understanding of contemporary governance challenges" facing the Navajo Nation. Arguing not only for the existence but also the persistence of traditional Navajo political thought and policy, Guided by the Mountains asserts that "traditional" Indigenous philosophy provides a model for creating effective governance institutions that address current issues faced by Indigenous nations. Incorporating both visual interpretations and narrative accounts of traditional and contemporary Diné institutions of government from Diné philosophers, the book is the first to represent Indigenous philosophy as the foundation behind traditional and contemporary governance. It also explains how Diné governance institutions operated during Pre-Contact and Post-Contact times. This path-breaking book stands as the first-time normative account of Diné philosophy.

Issues facing the Navajo reservation from 1920-1980.