ties with Navajo leaders, thereby recognizing Navajo sovereignty.9
Laying claims to territory
long before any Spaniard ever set foot in the Southwest, the peoples who would become the Diné emerged from the lower worlds in a region still known as Dinétah, or “among the People.” Dinétah is the place where earth people and Holy People interacted; their re- lationships form the foundation of practices and teachings that underlie Navajo life today. The Holy People set the Diné homeland’s boundaries with soil brought from the lower world, placing the soil as mountains in each of the four directions. Diné Bikéyah refers to the lands that lie within the four sacred moun- tains, which are named Sis Naajiní, or Blanca Peak, in the east; Tsoodził, or Mount Taylor, in the south; Dook’oosłííd, or the San Francisco Peaks, in the west; and Dibé Nitsaa, or Mount Hesperus, in the north. The soil brought from the world below also formed two other mountains: Dził Na’oodiłii, or Huerfano Mountain – east of the center, and Ch’ool’í’í, or Gobernador Knob – the center. These last two mountains are within Dinétah and central to events that occurred when the progenitors of the Diné emerged into the world we inhabit today, which is known as the Glittering World. Traditional Navajo philosophy names these six mountains as the leaders of the Diné. It is in this place that the philosophy sa’ah nagháí bik’eh hózhóón was established through ac- tions and words. Navajo leaders and citizens declare that traditional teachings form the foundation of the sovereignty that the United States recognized in the Treaty of 1868.
THE TREATY OF 1868
Treaties signed between the United States and tribal leaders on behalf of their people in the latter half of the 19th
In affixing their X-marks to paper, Diné century are often seen as
the beginning of Native dependency on the United States and an erosion of tribal autono- my and freedom. American negotiators clear- ly sought the conversion of Native Peoples and their cultures to something resembling Euro-American social, political and economic systems, and, for the Navajo people, the Treaty they signed in 1868 with the Americans was no different.10
The Navajo Nation, like many
other Native Nations, was established as a “domestic dependent” of the United States. As Native scholars Wallace Coffey and Rebecca Tsosie write, “In a world where tribal politi- cal sovereignty is dependent upon federal ac- knowledgement, Indian nations will always be vulnerable to restrictions on their sovereignty, and perhaps even to the total annihilation of their sovereignty.”11
leaders both affirmed Diné sovereignty and acknowledged the authority of the United States to limit tribal sovereignty. They did what they had to do in an impossible situa- tion to allow their people to have a future.12 This future, according to Native scholar Scott Lyons, meant “adopting new ways of living, thinking and being that do not necessarily emanate from a traditional cultural source (or, for that matter, ‘time immemorial’), and sometimes it means appropriating the new and changing it to feel like the old.”13
the document remains an important symbol of Navajo sovereignty and all the possibilities for living once again under Diné philosophy. Thus, the Navajo Treaty of 1868 reso-
nates as a document that has historical, legal and cultural meaning. For the Navajo people, the Treaty terms that allowed them
Further,
“ THE NAVAJO PEOPLE TRUST THAT THE UNITED STATES WILL FULFILL ITS LEGAL AND MORAL OBLIGATIONS UNDER THE TREATY. EVEN THOUGH THE TREATY AN- TICIPATED THE EVENTUAL ASSIMILATION OF THE NAVAJO, IT ALSO CREATED THE PHYSICAL SPACE AND OPPORTUNITY FOR THE NAVAJO TO DEFINE AND EXERCISE SOVEREIGNTY AND SELF-GOVERNMENT.”
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 27
Barboncito, 1868. Fort Sumner, N.M. Photo by Valentine Wolfenstein, National Museum of the American Indian P20816.
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