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ABSTRACT
Drawing on the oral histories intrinsic to tours with six Diné (Navajo) guides in Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, this article illustrates the role the guides play in complementing the writing of Diné academics engaged in transformative scholarship aimed at re-righting falsehoods of colonial narratives and reviving holistic well-being among the people. The article explores how and why the guides re-right history through storytelling practices grounded in place, memory, values, and ideals of self-representation and self-determination. They craft their Diné-centered histories by prioritizing place and theme over chronological time, incorporating cross-generational meaning-making and relationship-building into their practices and story content, and engaging in decolonizing projects that include honoring Diné women. The guides’ processes of re-righting history reflect the core reasons why their stories are such powerful tools of decolonizing. Among the Diné, stories heal individuals and empower collective identity. Among outsiders the stories serve as an introduction to the canyon and to Indigenous epistemologies of place-world-making, whereby the past is present and re-presented within the relationships binding people and place.
Acknowledgements
I extend my gratitude to all the guides and staff of the tour operations for sharing their time, their wisdom, and their stories. I also wish to thank the editors of The Oral History Review for their careful review and attention to detail through the process of revising and editing this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. On the history of authorized guides, see David M. Brugge and Raymond Wilson, “Sonic Booms and People Problems, 1966–1974,” chap. 10 in Administrative History: Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona (Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior—National Park Service, 1976), https://www.nps.gov/cach/learn/historyculture/upload/cach_adhi.pdf.
2. Jarvin Yazzie, tour with author, May 26, 2022.
3. Jarvin Yazzie, tour with author, May 26, 2022.
4. Adam Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
5. Jace Weaver, “Splitting the Earth: First Utterances and Pluralist Separatism,” in American Indian Literary Nationalism, eds. Jace Weaver, Craig S. Womack, and Robert Warrior (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005), 44. For more on peoplehood, see Billy J. Stratton and Frances Washburn, “The Peoplehood Matrix: A New Theory for American Indian Literature,” Wicazo Sa Review 23, no. 1 (2008): 51–72.
6. Jennifer Nez Denetdale, “The Value of Oral History on the Path to Diné/Navajo Sovereignty,” in Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought, ed. Lloyd L. Lee (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014), 68–83; Gwendolyn W. Saul, “Tséhootsooídi Baa Hané: Emergent Oral Histories from a Navajo Community Based Oral History Project in Ft. Defiance, Arizona” (PhD. diss., University of New Mexico, 2013), 88–90.
7. Lloyd L. Lee, “Navajo Transformative Scholarship in the Twenty-First Century,” Wicazo Sa Review 25, no. 1 (2010): 34; Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007), 7.
8. Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London, UK: Zed Books, 1999), 28. For additional international explorations of oral history and oral traditions from Indigenous perspectives, see Benjamin Dangl, “The Andean Oral History Workshop: Reweaving Narratives of Indigenous Resistance in Bolivia, Part 2,” Oral History Review (blog), November 3, 2021, https://oralhistoryreview.org/interview/oh-bolivia-part-two/; Marcia Stephenson, “Forging an Indigenous Counterpublic Sphere: The Taller de Historia Oral Andina in Bolivia,” Latin American Research Review 37, no. 2 (2002): 99–118; Nēpia Mahuika, Rethinking Oral History and Tradition: An Indigenous Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
9. On the sacred place among the Diné, see Laurence D. Linford, Navajo Places: History, Legend, Landscape (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000), 22; Berard Haile et al., Beautyway: A Navaho Ceremonial, ed. Leland C. Wyman (New York: Pantheon Books, 1957), 36.
10. Bryan Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022.
11. Denetdale, “The Value of Oral History,” 71.
12. See Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2014), 1–14; James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson, “Postcolonial Ghost Dancing: Diagnosing European Colonialism,” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. Marie Battiste (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000), 60–62.
13. Denetdale, “The Value of Oral History,” 82n18, 69.
14. Gerald Vizenor, Fugitive Poses: Native American Indian Scenes of Absence and Presence (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 15. Among Native American studies scholars, Vizenor’s concept of survivance provides an important and flexible means of exploring enduring presence as resistance. See Selma Hedlund, “Medicines at Standing Rock: Stories of Native Healing through Survivance,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 44, no. 2 (2020): 59–78. Globally, engagements with “survivance” include the following: Laurie Meijer Drees, “The Nanaimo and Charles Camsell Indian Hospitals: First Nations’ Narratives of Health Care, 1945 to 1965,” Histoire Sociale 43, no. 85 (2010): 165–91; Elizabeth “Biz” Nijdam, “Recentering Indigenous Epistemologies through Digital Games: Sámi Perspectives on Nature in Rievssat (2018),” Games and Culture 28, no. 1 (2022): 27–41.
15. Larry W. Emerson, “Diné Culture, Decolonization, and the Politics of Hózhó,” in Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought, ed. Lloyd L. Lee (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014), 55. On intergenerational differences in historical trauma healing and the concept of “community resilience,” see Jessica R. Goodkind et al., “ ‘We’re Still in a Struggle’: Diné Resilience, Historical Trauma, and Healing,” Qualitative Health Research 22, no. 8 (2012): 1019–36.
16. On countering the idea that oral histories are myths or legends and revitalizing self-representation, see AnCita Benally and Peter Iverson, “Finding History,” Western Historical Quarterly 36, no. 3 (2005): 353–58.
17. Northern Arizona University, 2011 Navajo Nation Visitor Survey, February 2012, https://in.nau.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/212/Navajo-Nation-2011-Visitor-Report-Final.pdf. This survey indexed visitors from forty-two countries on six continents.
18. Denetdale wrote, “Oral history becomes a vehicle that affirms our humanity and illuminates central Diné beliefs and values”; it is “the foundation for finding our way back to the ways in which our ancestors envisioned the past and the future.” Denetdale, “The Value of Oral History,” 75, 71. Her vivid statements illustrate oral history’s importance to survivance and to reframing the psychological consequences of colonization discussed by Emerson in “Diné Culture.”
19. Keith H. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 6. Since oral histories also include Traditional Ecological Knowledge (also known as Indigenous Knowledge), they also pass down specialized information on sustainable agriculture and broader ecological information and lessons. See Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence (Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers, 2000).
20. Lee, “Navajo Transformative Scholarship,” 34. The guides quoted above represent three of the eleven authorized companies: Antelope House Tours, Canyon de Chelly Tours, and Beauty Way Jeep Tours. “Canyon de Chelly Tour Operators,” Navajo Nation Parks and Recreation, updated February 14, 2022, https://navajonationparks.org/guided-tour-operators/canyon-de-chelly-tour-operators/. Additional studies of re-righting and survival/survivance include: Leo Killsback, “The Legacy of Little Wolf: Rewriting and Re-righting Our Leaders Back into History,” Wicazo Sa Review 26, no. 1 (2011): 85–111; Waziyatawin Angela Wilson, Remember This! Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005); Laurie Meijer Drees, Healing Histories: Stories from Canada’s Indian Hospitals (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2013); Jacky Moore, “Women Tell Their Stories: Learning to Listen to First Nation Voices,” Oral History 46, no. 1 (2018): 102–10; Roza Laptander, “Collective and Individual Memories: Narrations about the Transformations in the Nenets Society,” Arctic Anthropology 54, no. 1 (2017): 22–31. Beyond the scope of this study, the guides also re-right stories and stereotypes of the Diné as newcomers to the Southwest—stereotypes that devalue their traditions and justify settler-colonialism. Denetdale, Reclaiming Diné History, 7.
21. Examples include Hampton Sides, Blood and Thunder: The Epic Story of Kit Carson and the Conquest of the American West (New York: Anchor Books, 2006); Matt Jaffe, “He Knows What He’s Talking About,” Arizona Highways (October 2017): 45–51.
22. Adam Teller, email message to author, October 21, 2022. His comment followed his reading of the manuscript.
23. Lee, “Navajo Transformative Scholarship,” 44; Jennifer Nez Denetdale, “Native Feminisms II: Navajo Women’s Leadership Past and Present” (lecture, 69th Annual Museum of Northern Arizona Navajo Festival of Arts and Culture, Flagstaff, AZ, August 5, 2018). My efforts to foreground Diné scholars corresponds to current definitions of “theoretical rigor” as explained in Rhonda Povey, Susan Page, and Michelle Trudgett, “Getting It Right: Safeguarding a Respected Space for Indigenous Oral Histories and Truth Telling,” Oral History Review 50, no. 2 (2023): 223–41, https://doi.org/10.1080/00940798.2023.2234419.
24. Arlyssa Becenti, “Treaty Signings Recall, Celebrate People’s Victory over ‘Sad’ Time,” Navajo Times, June 8, 2017, https://navajotimes.com/ae/culture/treaty-signings-recall-celebrate-peoples-victory-sad-time/.
25. Wilson, Remember This!, 36.
26. AnCita Benally, “Hané’Béé’ééhanííh: With Stories It Is Remembered” (master’s thesis, Arizona State University, 1993), 4. On the relation between oral history and oral traditions, see Denetdale, “The Value of Oral History,” 71.
27. Benally, “Hané’Béé’ééhanííh,” 2.
28. As explained by Zolbrod, the story is part of the Diné creation story, which was not “a single story anymore than the Bible is.” Paul G. Zolbrod, Diné Bahane’: The Navajo Creation Story (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984), 19. Moreover, “From telling to telling it could change depending upon the singer, the audience, the particular storytelling event, and a very complicated set of ceremonial conditions.” Kelley and Francis include the Monster-slayer stories in their examination of empowering stories. The localized versions enhance and personalize this sense of empowerment. Klara Bonsack Kelley and Harris Francis, Navajo Sacred Places (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 65–71, 106.
29. Bryan Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022. Jarvin Yazzie and Adam Teller recounted similar versions.
30. Donald Fixico, “American Indian Oral Traditions: Reflections on a Time-Honored Custom” (People and Places Lecture Series, University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research, August 31, 2017, https://libmedia.unm.edu/node/869).
31. Bryan Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022.
32. Bryan Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022.
33. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, 6.
34. Bryan Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022.
35. Tiana Bighorse, Bighorse the Warrior, ed. Noël Bennett (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990), 22.
36. Peter Iverson, Diné: A History of the Navajos (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002), 28; William S. Kiser, Borderlands of Slavery: The Struggle over Captivity and Peonage in the American Southwest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 59, 72; Edward H. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533–1960 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1981), 213.
37. Delvonnia Yazzie, tour with author, October 30, 2022.
38. Campbell Grant, Canyon de Chelly: Its People and Rock Art (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1978), 83–84; Frank McNitt, Navajo Wars: Military Campaigns, Slave Raids and Reprisals (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972), 40–44.
39. Antonio Narbona, report of recent battle with the Navajos at Canyon de Chelly, January 24, 1805, trans. David M. Brugge and Fray Angelico Chavez, serial #10749, collection 1972-003, file 1092, SANM2 #1792, Albert H. Schroder Papers, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives.
40. Narbona, report of recent battle with the Navajos at Canyon de Chelly, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives. Narbona reported that ninety of his victims were warriors. See also Motoring Guide South and North Rims: Canyon de Chelly National Monument (Western National Parks Association, 2011), 16. This guide was purchased by the author at the Canyon de Chelly National Monument bookstore.
41. James H. Simpson, “Journal of a Military Reconnaissance from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Navajo Country in 1849,” in Report of the Secretary of War, S. Doc. No. 31-64 at 98, 104, 103.
42. Denetdale, Reclaiming Diné History, 71–75. Between 1863 and 1866, more than ten thousand Diné were marched to Fort Sumner. Many died on the Long Walk, and an estimated 2,500 perished of disease and starvation while imprisoned.
43. The Tellers, who have lived in Canyon del Muerto since 1868, talk about Barboncito with great pride and share their ancestry on Antelope House Tours website. “Antelope House—4x4 Tours,” Antelope House Tours, accessed March 31, 2022, www.canyondechelly.net/tours_4wd.html; Gregory McNamee, “Canyon de Chelly: The Future of a Sacred Past,” DesertUSA, accessed March 31, 2022, https://www.desertusa.com/desert-arizona/canyon-de-chelly.html.
44. Lloyd L. Lee, Diné Identity in a 21st-Century World (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2020), 84 (translation of Hwéeldi); Bighorse, Bighorse the Warrior, 34–35. On the diseases, starvation, and vulnerability to attack by enemies and predators at Fort Sumner, see Iverson, Diné, 57–59; Jennifer Nez Denetdale, “Discontinuities, Remembrances, and Cultural Survival: History, Diné/Navajo, Memory, and the Bosque Redondo Memorial,” New Mexico Historical Review 82, no. 3 (2007): 299.
45. Jennifer Nez Denetdale, “Naal Tsoos Saní: The Navajo Treaty of 1868, Nation Building, and Self-Determination,” in Nation to Nation: Treaties between the United States and American Indian Nations, ed. Suzan Shown Harjo (Washington, DC: National Museum of the American Indian, 2014), 125–26; Donavan Quintero, “Sherman vs. Barboncito,” Navajo Times, July 27, 2017, A1, A7.
46. “Traditional Navajo Country—1,” in Navajo Historical Selections, eds. and trans. Robert W. Young and William Morgan (Phoenix, AZ: Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1954), 13. The four sacred mountains are Mount Hesperus (Dibe Nitsaa), Blanca Peak (Sis Naajiní), Mount Taylor (Tsoodził), and the San Francisco Peaks (Dook´o´oosłííd). Iverson, Diné, 8–11.
47. Denetdale, “Naal Tsoos Saní,” 126–27.
48. Denetdale, “Discontinuities, Remembrances, and Cultural Survival,” 296. In the Navajo Nation Museum, exhibits encourage and enable conversations across time and space. Visitors can place color-coded pushpins on a map to identify where their maternal clans lived before the Long Walk and fill out notecards to display details. Together, the map and the notecards join contemporaries with each other and with their ancestors.
49. Bighorse, Bighorse the Warrior, xxiv; Martin Link, ed., The Navajo Treaty—1868: Treaty between the United States of America and the Navajo Tribe of Indians; hat a Record of the Discussions hat Led to Its Signing (Las Vegas, NV: KC Publications, 1968), 9.
50. Ben Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021. Evoking or paraphrasing Barboncito is common in storytelling. To Sherman’s efforts to remove his people to Indian Territory, Barboncito responded, “I hope to God you will not ask me to go to any other country except my own.” Denetdale, “Naal Tsoos Saní,” 125. Two generations later, Charlie Mitchell included the following paraphrase within his people’s history: “Release me to my own country, please!” Charlie Mitchell, “A Navaho’s Historical Reminiscences,” in Navaho Texts, eds. Edward Sapir and Harry Hoijer (Iowa City, IA: Linguistic Society of America, 1942), 365.
51. Ben Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
52. Bighorse, Bighorse the Warrior, 81.
53. On storying violence and trauma, see Sara Cobb, Speaking of Violence: The Politics and Poetics of Narrative in Conflict Resolution (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013). On the important function of storying the Native American and the Diné experience, in particular, see Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, xiii; Denetdale, “Discontinuities,” 298–99.
54. Leah Dilworth, Imagining Indians in the Southwest: Persistent Visions of a Primitive Past (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 2–15; Teresa J. Wilkins, Patterns of Exchange: Navajo Weavers and Traders (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 22–23.
55. Dilworth, Imagining Indians in the Southwest, 13–17. As Dilworth detailed, in the late nineteenth century, professionals known as “salvage ethnographers” strove to document Indigenous lifeways before they, allegedly, would disappear. On contemporary assimilationist policies, see Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 609–715. For an international comparison of the role outsiders assigned to Indigenous peoples, particularly in park lands, see Joshua L. Reid, “Replacing Rights with Indigenous Relationality to Reclaim Homelands,” in Bridging Cultural Concepts of Nature: Indigenous People and Protected Spaces of Nature, eds. Rani-Henrik Andersson, Boyd Cothrand, and Saara Kekki (Helsinki, FI: Helsinki University Press, 2021), 261–306.
56. Wilkins, Patterns of Exchange, 53.
57. Dilworth, Imagining Indians in the Southwest, 95.
58. Dilworth, Imagining Indians in the Southwest, 48.
59. Saul, “Tséhootsooídi Baa Hané,” 89; Devon A. Mihesuah, “American Indians, Anthropologists, Pothunters, and Repatriation: Ethical, Religious, and Political Difference,” American Indian Quarterly 20, no. 2 (1996): 234; Brugge and Wilson, Administrative History, chap. 1, chap. 3. For a more detailed account of the establishment of the National Monument and the conflicts that followed, see Robert H. Keller and Michael F. Turek, American Indians and National Parks (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998), 205–12.
60. Brugge and Wilson, Administrative History, chap. 2, app. 2, 7, 8; National Park Service, NPS Stats, Recreation Visitation by State and by Park, accessed April 7, 2022, https://irma.nps.gov/Stats/Reports/National.
61. Ben Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022. For the metaphor, see Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1995).
62. Jarvin Yazzie, tour with author, May 26, 2022.
63. Referencing Narbona’s report (see note 39 above), the following NPS publications include ninety warriors among the dead: Zorro A. Bradley, Canyon de Chelly: The Story of Its Ruins and People (Washington, DC: National Park Service Office of Publications, 1973), 30; and two trifold posters titled “Canyon de Chelly National Monument—Arizona” (US Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1965; 1970), found in ephemera file “Canyons-Arizona-Canyon de Chelly,” Arizona Historical Society, Library and Archives, Tucson, AZ.
64. Stephen C. Jett, “Place-Naming, Environment, and Perception among the Canyon de Chelly Navajo of Arizona,” Professional Geographer 49, no. 4 (1997): 485; Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places, 45; Benally, “Hané’Béé’ééhanííh,” 50–51.
65. Adam Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
66. Adam Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
67. Vincent Werito, “Understanding Hózhó to Achieve Critical Consciousness: A Contemporary Diné Interpretation of the Philosophical Principles of Hózhó,” in Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought, ed. Lloyd L. Lee (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014), 26. On the characteristics of oral literature, especially the use of parallel words and phrases, see Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (New York: Routledge, 1982), 38–39.
68. Denetdale, “The Value of Oral History,” 73.
69. Benjamin Anagal and Ben Teller, for instance, call the site Kokopelli Cave, while Grant refers to it as Petroglyph Rock. Grant, Canyon de Chelly, 242.
70. Adam Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
71. Benjamin Anagal, tour with author, May 24, 2022.
72. Adam Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
73. Ben Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022.
74. Ben Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
75. Donald L. Fixico, “That’s What They Used to Say”: Reflections on American Indian Oral Traditions (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), 203.
76. Ben Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021. See also Linford, Navajo Places, 58.
77. Denetdale, “Discontinuities,” 299 (italics added).
78. Ben Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022. Lambskin Hat is known by various names. Benjamin Anagal and Jarvin Yazzie called him by the name Little Sheep or Dibé Yázhí. See also Ann Axtel Morris, Rock Paintings and Petroglyphs of the American Indian (New York: The American Museum of Natural History, 1930), 7–8.
79. Marie Battiste, “Maintaining Aboriginal Identity, Language, and Culture in Modern Society,” in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision, ed. Marie Battiste (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2000), 198. For discussions of healing and liberation from self-blame, see also Emerson, “Diné Culture,” 54–59.
80. Ben Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022.
81. N. Scott Momaday, The Man Made of Words: Essays, Stories, Passages (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997), 114.
82. Narbona, report of recent battle with the Navajos at Canyon de Chelly, New Mexico State Records Center and Archives.
83. On Hispanic raiding among the Diné, see David M. Brugge, Navajos in the Catholic Church Records of New Mexico, 1694–1875, 3rd ed. (Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research Press, 2010).
84. Ben Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022.
85. Ben Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022.
86. Ben Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022. Lucy Moore, whose book Teller recommended, described additional conflicts with the Park Service, one involving his daughter Tanya’s selling of snacks at the Antelope House concession stand. Moore described mediating between an unnamed ranger, who objected to modernizations in commercial activities, and Tanya, who ultimately won the ranger’s acquiescence on the ground that the land belonged to Tanya’s family. For details, see Lucy Moore, Into the Canyon: Seven Years in Navajo Country (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004), 218–19.
87. Jarvin Yazzie, tour with author, May 26, 2022.
88. “Antelope House—4x4 Tours,” Antelope House Tours. Sides acknowledged Adam Teller in Blood and Thunder, and in an article covering his experiences touring the canyon, he wrote, “One of the interesting challenges about learning history from a Navajo guide is that you’re often forced to consider the age-old question, ‘How do we know what we know?’ ” Sides, Blood and Thunder, 549; Hampton Sides, “The Place Where Two Fell Off,” Outside, October 2, 2006, updated February 24, 2022, https://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/destinations/north-america/place-where-two-fell/.
89. See Bradley, Canyon de Chelly, 30. This publication attributes Canyon del Muerto’s name to Narbona’s attack. Others attribute the name to the site called Mummy Cave (ca. 300–1300 CE): Motoring Guide, 16. See also McNitt, Navajo Wars, 43–44.
90. Jarvin Yazzie, tour with author, May 26, 2022. See Ruth Roessel, Navajo Stories of the Long Walk Period, ed. Broderick H. Johnson (Tsaile, AZ: Navajo Community College Press, 1973), 189.
91. Jarvin Yazzie, tour with author, May 26, 2022.
92. Younger guides explain being inspired to learn more of the Diné bizaad (Navajo language) as they hear stories from bilingual elders. On the importance of language revitalization to enduring peoplehood, see Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 147–48; Tiffany S. Lee, “ ‘If I Could Speak Navajo, I’d Definitely Speak It 24/7’: Diné Youth Language Consciousness, Activism, and Reclamation of Diné Identity,” in Diné Perspectives: Revitalizing and Reclaiming Navajo Thought, ed. Lloyd L. Lee (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014), 158–69. Younger generations of Indigenous peoples have embraced technology and social media as tools of language revitalization. The younger guides utilize language apps to assist their learning. See also Coppélie Cocq and Thomas A. DuBois, Sámi Media and Indigenous Agency in the Arctic North (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020), 15–22.
93. Werito, “Understanding Hózhó,” 26–30.
94. Motoring Guide, 16. The Western National Parks Association is a nonprofit partner of the NPS.
95. Iverson, Diné, 303; Gary Witherspoon, “Navajo Social Organization,” in Handbook of the North American Indians, vol. 10, Southwest, ed. Alfonso Ortiz (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1983), 525–26. As Denetdale wrote, “we cannot decolonize without addressing sexism, and attempting to do so ignores the fact that it has been precisely through gender violence that we have lost our lands in the first place” since land-use areas and valuable sheep herds traditionally were organized under family matriarchs. Jennifer Nez Denetdale, “Securing Navajo National Boundaries: War, Patriotism, and the Diné Marriage Act of 2005,” Wicazo Sa Review 24, no. 2 (2009): 136–37.
96. Adam Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
97. Adam Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021. Sources vilifying the alleged woman taunting the soldiers and/or repeating Narbona’s claim to have killed ninety warriors on the ledge are numerous and include “Canyon de Chelly National Monument—Arizona” (1965); Richard F. Van Valkenburgh, Diné Bikéyah, eds. Lucy Wilcox Adams and John C. McPhee (Window Rock, AZ: US Department of the Interior, Office of Indian Affairs, Navajo Service, 1941), 25; Bradley, Canyon de Chelly, 30; McNitt, Navajo Wars, 43; Ruth M. Underhill, The Navajos (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), 72.
98. Adam Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
99. Adam Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
100. Adam Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
101. Vizenor, Fugitive Poses, 94.
102. Delvonnia Yazzie, tour with author, October 30, 2022.
103. Vizenor, Fugitive Poses, 15.
104. Bighorse, Bighorse the Warrior, 58.
105. Bighorse, Bighorse the Warrior, 81–82.
106. On THOA, see note 8 above and Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, “El potencial epistemológico y teórico de la historia oral: De la lógica instrumental a la descolonización de la historia,” Tema Sociales 11 (1989): 49–64. On ORHELIA, see “Oral History of Empires in the Arctic—ORHELIA,” Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland, accessed April 6, 2023, https://www.arcticcentre.org/EN/research/anthropology/ORHELIA.
107. Ben Teller, tour with author, October 31, 2021.
108. Bryan Teller, tour with author, May 25, 2022. On the Navajo Nation parks reopening, see Krista Allen, “Tribal Parks to Reopen July 12 at 50% Capacity,” Navajo Times, July 8, 2021, https://navajotimes.com/reznews/tribal-parks-to-reopen-july-12-at-50-capacity/.
109. Benjamin Anagal, tour with author, May 24, 2022.
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Jennifer Bess
Jennifer Bess is an associate professor in Peace Studies at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. Her more recent publications have focused on Indigenous agriculture and foodways in the American Southwest. She has authored articles in journals including The Western Historical Quarterly and Journal of the Southwest and the book, Where the Red-Winged Blackbirds Sing: The Akimel O’odham and Cycles of Agricultural Transformation in the Phoenix Basin.