Navajo Sovereignty: Understandings and Visions of the Diné People (Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies)
Description
The last few decades have given rise to an electrifying movement of Native American activism, scholarship, and creative work challenging five hundred years of U.S. colonization of Native lands. Indigenous communities are envisioning and building their nations and are making decolonial strides toward regaining power from colonial forces.
The Navajo Nation is among the many Native nations in the United States pushing back. In this new book, Diné author Lloyd L. Lee asks fellow Navajo scholars, writers, and community members to envision sovereignty for the Navajo Nation. He asks, (1) what is Navajo sovereignty, (2) how do various Navajo institutions exercise sovereignty, (3) what challenges does Navajo sovereignty face in the coming generations, and (4) how did individual Diné envision sovereignty?
Contributors expand from the questions Lee lays before them to touch on how Navajo sovereignty is understood in Western law, how various institutions of the Navajo Nation exercise sovereignty, what challenges it faces in coming generations, and how individual Diné envision power, authority, and autonomy for the people.
A companion to Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought, each chapter offers the contributors’ individual perspectives. The book, which is organized into four parts, discusses Western law’s view of Diné sovereignty, research, activism, creativity, and community, and Navajo sovereignty in traditional education. Above all, Lee and the contributing scholars and community members call for the rethinking of Navajo sovereignty in a way more rooted in Navajo beliefs, culture, and values.
Contributors:
Raymond D. Austin
Bidtah N. Becker
Manley A. Begay, Jr.
Avery Denny
Larry W. Emerson
Colleen Gorman
Michelle L. Hale
Michael Lerma
Leola Tsinnajinnie
Praise for Navajo Sovereignty: Understandings and Visions of the Diné People (Critical Issues in Indigenous Studies)
“Given that the Navajos, along with other Indian nations, live under the political domination of the United States and that the tenets of decolonization call for Indians to return to traditional forms of governance, this collection of essays will remain relevant for years to come."—James Riding In, co-editor of Native Historians Write Back: Decolonizing American Indian History
“Navajo Sovereignty: Understandings and Visions of the Diné People tackles Indigenous sovereignty from a specifically Navajo perspective. The essays vary in tone and depth, but they all hit on or near the bulls-eye.”—Indian Country Today
