The Dine are Southern Athabaskan speakers whose ancestors reached the Southwest centuries before European contact, settling the canyon country they call Dinetah in present northwestern New Mexico. From Pueblo neighbors they absorbed farming and weaving, and from Spanish herds they built a pastoral life of sheep and horses; Navajo weaving and, later, silverwork became arts of world reputation. Klara Kelley and Harris Francis have documented how deeply this history is written into place, a sacred geography of mountains, springs, trails and story running far beyond any reservation boundary.
In 1863 and 1864 the United States Army under Kit Carson burned crops and herds and force-marched some eight thousand Dine three hundred miles to internment at Bosque Redondo, the Long Walk that remains the central trauma of Navajo history. The treaty of 1868 allowed the survivors to return to a portion of their homeland, an unusual outcome in American Indian history, and the reservation has since grown into the largest in the United States, spanning Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
The Navajo Nation today governs itself with an elected president and council from Window Rock. The Dine language, made famous by the code talkers of the Second World War, remains among the most spoken Native languages north of Mexico, taught now in immersion schools. Traditional ceremony continues alongside the Native American Church and Christian congregations, and the Nation continues to defend its sacred places in federal court.