Klara Kelley and Harry Francis ably provide the reader with exactly what the title succinctly states. The book is strictly about the Diné people and their history. Why add to the massive archive of Navajo historical monographs? This monograph stands out in its purpose. The authors emphasize the Navajo archive and use it extensively to answer questions important to the Diné and to Diné history from a Diné point of view. This venture proves successful, as Kelley’s extensive knowledge of Navajo land and Francis’s deep knowledge of Navajo culture together create a history with an extensive timeline that challenges other Navajo histories.
The book makes a series of arguments, claims, and challenges. The main argument is that Diné history must use Diné sources. From there, the authors choose to replace the word “myth” with the phrase “empowering story.” Empowering stories serve as the bedrock of their analysis, whereas many other historians have ignored them or relegated them to their first chapters only. This analysis of pre-Columbian Diné history and the relationship between the Diné and Diné land takes up five of the eleven chapters, a decision that delivers its promise to take Diné sources seriously. Through these chapters, the authors strongly assert Diné identification with their homelands in the Southwest, not as a migratory people but as descendants of the Anaasázi. They bring this viewpoint into the present by demonstrating how elders inform young people of their identity with the same land as that claimed by anthropologists to be non-Diné land. This is such a profound scholarly challenge that they title the first chapter, “An Argument with Archaeologists.”
Chapters 6 through 11 offer the narratives that are well established in Diné history, outlining the effects of settler colonialism on the Diné people, including settler encroachment, relocation, the trading-post system, energy resource extraction, and climate change. The authors treat these more familiar aspects of Navajo history, but do so by relying most heavily on Navajo oral histories and other Navajo sources. Unlike earlier historians, they use government resources as little as possible, as they chart the damage done by settler colonialism to Diné land and to the people.
The authors of this book see themselves strongly rooted in the scholarship of American Indian Studies and seek to contribute the to current trends therein. They cite many authors in the body of the work, but place particular emphasis on Anishanaabe scholars Gerald Vizenor, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Audra Simpson, and Kim Tallbear to think through settler colonialism, genocide, survival/survivance, and sovereignty. With these particular authors, they aim to saturate their history with the survival of the Diné people, without exploiting their oral histories for any kind of gain. They reference Diné scholar Jennifer Denetdale extensively, noting her use of oral history to challenge dominant narratives about the Diné, as other scholars of the Navajo Nation who critique the dominant accounts favoring “colonizer” documents, viewpoints, and narratives. The only criticism I can offer, which is more of a question, is whether their decision not to focus on divisions within the Navajo Nation discourages or enhances Navajo nationalism. They did so to take aim at the divide-and-conquer strategy of the colonizer, but some scholars may find this a significant outtake.
Ultimately Kelley and Francis make a simple claim: oral history is about the history of the land and the people, and strengthening oral history strengthens those bonds to the land, which, in turn, support tribal sovereignty. They wish to strengthen oral history to perpetuate sovereignty. They are far less interested in challenging academic norms than in providing a tool for young Navajos to enliven the quest for sovereignty within the Navajo Nation. They conclude the book on just this note: “As oral tradition protects the People’s hold on the land, the hold on the land protects oral tradition.” Their goal is undoubtedly to protect the Navajo Nation by protecting Navajo land and oral tradition. Their goal is met entirely.
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[Review length: 652 words • Review posted on April 2, 2020]