Carving Navajo National Boundaries: Patriotism, Tradition, and the Diné Marriage Act of 2005

Like many other Americans, I became aware of the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 via the national news, which broadcast the scenes of airplanes diving into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Many Americans took these events as a signal that they were no longer safe and they thus supported President Bush and his administration's preparations to begin invasions in the Middle East, first Afghanistan and then Iraq. Like other Americans, many Navajos have embraced their American citizenship, and this has been manifested in myriad ways, including military enlistments and cultural events meant to inspire loyalty to the United States. Indeed, to express antiwar sentiments is almost impossible in Navajo country given the heightened displays of U.S. patriotism. After September 11, Diné and American nationalism merged in ways that have conflated American and Navajo values so that Navajos' historical experiences of injustice and oppression under American colonialism are erased.

This conflation of values can be examined by considering how Diné patriotism is linked to traditional concepts of the warrior and how Navajo leaders have passed legislation such as the Diné Marriage Act of 2005, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. While the law claims to draw upon tradition, it actually serves to affirm Western gender ideals and American values as normative for Navajos. The conflation of Navajo traditional values with mainstream American values gives credence to the multicultural narrative that America has created about itself and renders invisible the links between the past and the present, wherein Native peoples still live with the consequences of dispossession and disenfranchisement. Critically examining the connections constructed between the traditional roles of Navajo warriors and present-day Navajo soldiering for the United States, as well as the connections made between family values and recent legislation like the Diné Marriage Act, are critical to our decolonization as Native peoples.

In the months following the September 11 attacks, Navajo Nation leaders issued a proclamation expressing solidarity with the United States; October 15, 2001, was named "Navajo Nation Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Terrorist Attacks on America." Recalling Navajo people's historic involvement in American wars, President Kelsey Begay's proclamation expressed appreciation for first responders, and support for President Bush, the U.S. Armed Forces, and all American citizens making contributions and donations to aid survivors of the attacks.

Numerous scholars have written about Native peoples' long history of U.S. military service, stretching from the American Revolutionary War, to the First World War, to the present war in Iraq. Perhaps not surprisingly, many studies of Native peoples' involvement in American wars have been filtered through a multicultural framework that insists upon seeing Native soldiering as evidence of successful integration into the American landscape. While Native patriotism has mostly been understood as part of the American assimilation process, Native scholars such as Lisa Poupart, seeking to understand the roots of Native peoples' ongoing marginalization in the United States, explain why Native peoples have often failed to recognize the contradictions of a supposedly successful integration into American society. Poupart declares, "Through formal Western education, conversion to Christianity, and assimilation into Euro-American culture and the capitalist economy, tribal people learned to speak the language and to interpret and reproduce the meanings of our oppressions." ¹ Although Poupart does not note Native peoples' patriotism to the United States as another facet of assimilation to American values, it can be said that boarding schools strongly encouraged Native children to embrace loyalty to the United States through American-centric curriculums, observances of American national holidays, and cultural events that highlighted Americanism.

Indian military enlistments formed in the American imagination both colorful images of "real Americans" fighting against European tyranny and discourse about Indians' predisposition for war and combat. Alongside the fascination with images of the Native warrior unleashing his wartime prowess on behalf of the American nation, observers, including Indian Service officials, argued that military service moved Native Americans toward integration into American society by directing them away from tribal relations and toward white civilization. According to historian Lawrence...