Jennifer Nez Denetdale’s book Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita is a groundbreaking study, relevant for anyone interested in indigenous studies. Denetdale’s objective is to bring a much-needed and long-overdue Navajo perspective to the academic study of Diné (Navajo Native American) history. As a historian, Denetdale seeks to critique existing published histories of the Navajo, particularly those that privilege influential Navajo Chief Manuelito over his wife Jaunita, and those that characterize Navajos as primarily cultural borrowers. By incorporating the oral historical narratives of the descendants of two of Juanita’s daughters (the author’s own maternal relatives), Denetdale provides an important alternative: a Navajo-centered history—one that privileges women’s roles and themes taken from the Navajo creation narrative. Denetdale’s feminist and Navajo-centered approach is a vital perspective for anyone interested in Navajo history, and this book is advisable reading for any researcher interested in working with the Diné.
Denetdale’s study is broken into four main sections, bookended with introduction and conclusion, and has several pages of relevant photographs at the center. In the first and second chapters, Denetdale provides a critical overview of Navajo studies, arguing that as long as non-Navajo scholars dominate research and publication, “Navajos will continue to be understood within Western categories of meaning that sustain colonialist discourses and serve to perpetuate ideas of dominance, hierarchy, and asymmetry” (6). She supports this assertion by demonstrating, from major studies in anthropology and history of the Diné from the nineteenth century to the present, the ways that Navajos have been portrayed as “cultural borrowers who were nomadic and aggressive” (20). More than providing a justly deserved criticism of extant works by non-Navajo researchers, Denetdale also aims to discuss the difference between Native and Western notions of the past to better explain how Navajos have experienced and make sense of history. She argues for a new approach to Navajo history, one that privileges oral histories in ways that benefit local communities. Denetdale concludes this section with an exploration of ways in which she used these insights to create a methodology for writing indigenous-centered history. The benefit of this sort of research, she argues, lies not only in allowing Native researchers to re-connect with their own communities and strengthen kin and language ties, but also in promoting community-based research sensitive to important local issues and beneficial to upholding Diné sovereignty.
In the third chapter, Denetdale provides an important overview of the historical events affecting the Diné for readers unfamiliar with Navajo history through examining the life of Navajo leader Manuelito (ca. 1818–1894). She introduces the “Mexican wars” and prominent slave raiding that would have colored his early life, and the increasing conflict with America as it expanded. She details the scorched earth campaign led by Kit Carson that paved the way for the 1863 American military removal of many Navajos to Bosque Redondo, New Mexico, and the attempts of Manuelito and others to re-establish normal life after the signing of a treaty with the Americans and the return of the Diné to their homeland in 1868. In analyzing the characterization of Manuelito in four biographical accounts written between 1960 and 2000, Denetdale argues that this historical figure has been “inserted” into a typical American History narrative “wherein indigenous leaders are presented along a continuum from noble savages to subjugated warriors who inevitably succumb to defeat by a superior civilization” (15). Furthermore, she is critical of previous non-Navajo writers who have portrayed the Bosque Redondo internment as beneficial to the Diné because it introduced new ways of dress, education, technologies, and handicrafts like metalwork. These perspectives, she argues, “reproduce colonial categories that justify conquest and dispossession and deny the horror, violence, and inhumane treatment of the Diné” (77). Denetdale re-evaluates Manuelito’s reported support for education upon the Diné return to their homeland, arguing that he saw it not as part of Western assimilation but as a tool for preserving Diné sovereignty.
Denetdale’s fourth chapter introduces the person of Juanita, known as Manuelito’s “favorite wife,” through an examination of photographs of her. To this collection of photos, Denetdale brings the lens of third-wave feminist analysis, criticizing both the gendered and racialized stereotypes communicated in the photos. In this chapter, Denetdale argues that, like many other photographic depictions of Native women at the time, photographs of Juanita convey Victorian notions of family life and proper gender roles that were foreign to Native communities, such as the subservience of a wife to her husband. However, Denetdale argues that, unlike standard portrayals of Native American women, non-Indians have found it difficult to categorize Navajo women as either “princesses” or “squaw-drudges” (90). Instead, she claims that depictions of Juanita reinforce the trope of Navajos as “primarily cultural adapters” (92), and of Navajo women as weavers. Several photographs depict Juanita as a weaver, foreshadowing the growing American market for Navajo women’s textiles, while at the same time devaluing the important sacred knowledge and economic contribution weaving actually represented.
In the final section of her book, Denetdale examines the oral history of Juanita and her daughters, demonstrating the ways in which taking seriously historical narratives provides not only a new perspective on historical knowledge, but also serves to re-affirm Navajo cultural values. Through her examination of narratives passed through Juanita’s maternal clan, she found that stories of Juanita “reflect the framework of the creation narratives” (134). Juanita’s journey home from Bosque Redondo, visiting the Zia pueblo (a possible namesake for her clan, the T?’ógi) and reestablishing a home with “order and harmony” (139), parallels the journeys of the “mythical beings [who] traveled through the five worlds and entered the Glittering World—the present one… [and] set about establishing order” (139). Juanita is also honored as a mothering figure, a parallel to the “the female deities who figure so prominently in the Navajo creation narratives” (128) in many stories. Some of these narratives recount the traditional foods she brought along for the homesick Navajo delegates on their journey to Washington D.C. to meet with President Grant. Other stories remember her as a loving grandmother maintaining the strength of her family. It is no coincidence, argues Denetdale, that these stories should parallel those of creation narratives, since for Navajos these stories serve “as guidelines for life” (129). Instead, states Denetdale, it is a testament both to the connection of the Navajo past to the Navajo present and to the continued cultural relevance of Navajo traditions.
Denetdale’s argument for the continued relevance of Diné oral tradition is continued in chapter 6, where Denetdale demonstrates how the stories of Juanita and her descendants reaffirm clan/kin ties that connect the family to the land and reinforce Navajo cultural values, particularly the continued centrality of maternal clans and of women in decisions about land, livestock, home, and children (159). Stories about the land, states Denetdale, work to claim places, convey cultural values (163), and also tie into the creation narratives, creating “culturally meaningful associations with the land” (164). She then focuses on the ways stories of the land are connected to Navajo daily life, illustrating how narratives about Juanita and her daughters contain a central theme of movement: constantly searching out good pastureland for the livestock and setting up households for the benefit of their children and grandchildren (168). Denetdale discovers through stories about her ancestors the way that, in spite of hardship, dislocation, and disease, her clan was constantly preserved by the work of not only her grandmothers but also her male maternal kin. These stories, she claims, paint a new picture of Navajo life after Bosque Redondo, not one of defeat and submission, but one of “survival and persistence” (175).
Denetdale’s study is important in many ways. Not only does she provide a critical re-reading of Navajo history and ethnography, but she also extends the argument that a new approach to history is needed, one that emphasizes traditional narratives as well as written records. Furthermore, she joins the call of Linda T. Smith and others who argue that research with indigenous peoples should embrace a methodology and theory that benefits indigenous objectives and goals, such as supporting sovereignty and land claims. Finally, though, Denetdale’s study is a stellar example of the excellent work, and personal journey, that can be undertaken when Native scholars engage in “writing our own history” (160).
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[Review length: 1378 words • Review posted on April 13, 2010]