ABSTRACT
This paper includes dialogues that have taken place at different times throughout the year 2000 between a visiting cross-cultural researcher and four Navajo educators whose lives and work foster the use of the Navajo language by children and adults from the To’Hajiilee Navajo community, a small, semi-autonomous region of the Navajo Nation, located approximately thirty-five miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico in the south-western United States. To situate our discussions and our various areas of work, we first introduce the To’Hajiilee Navajo community and its unique characteristics. To’Hajiilee, home to the Cañoncito Band of Navajos, 1 is a satellite community within the larger Navajo Nation. By “satellite” we mean that the reservation land base upon which the To’Hajiilee Navajo community is located is outside the perimeters of the larger Navajo Nation land area. The Navajo Nation, largest of the American Indigenous Nation within the United States, occupies a land area of approximately 25,000 square miles, situated primarily in the states of Arizona and New Mexico, with a smaller land area extending into the state of Utah. To’Hajiilee, which until 1999 was called Cañoncito, extends over approximately 66,000 acres of land, somewhat south-east of the eastern edge of the larger Navajo Nation. While the total Navajo population exceeds 260,000, the population of To’Hajiilee is close to 2,900.
