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  • A Diné History of Navajoland by Klara Kelley and Harris Francis
  • Farina King (bio)
A Diné History of Navajoland. By Klara Kelley and Harris Francis. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2019. Pp. 312. $35.00 paper; $35.00 ebook)

In this work, Klara Kelley and Harris Francis assemble and present a series of their research and scholarship that pertains to Navajo histories. They look at the relationship between the people and lands, emphasizing and relying on Diné sources and oral traditions and oral histories. The book uses an interdisciplinary approach, emphasizing anthropology, archaeology, oral history, documented history, ethnohistory, and language to name a few; but, most importantly, the authors uphold Diné epistemologies, frameworks, and perspectives of their history as Indigenous peoples of Diné Bikéyah (Navajo land). This book is a timely resource, as the Navajo Nation, its citizens, and people who affiliate with Diné as kin or otherwise, continue to face challenges to their existence and ways of life. This book does not leave the reader pessimistic by solely forecasting gloom and devastation for Navajos—rather, it seeks to educate Navajos and those who support and value Diné people and ways of life.

This book offers hope by teaching Diné “empowering stories” from oral tradition and the distant and recent past while turning away from terms such as “mythology.” As Kelley and Francis explain: “These stories are empowering because they tell about physical and cultural survival, about a people finding a new relationship to the world around them, often through a victory, however short of partial” (p. 6). Empowering stories are the anchor and major contribution of this work, which Kelley and Francis direct to Navajo youth as a guide and strength for them moving forward. These empowering stories center on, derive from, and are embedded in the relationships between Navajos and their homelands. Each chapter of the book explores a series of Diné historical developments since ancient time (also considered “pre-European contact”) and continues until recent decades. These developments all address Diné landscapes and terrains and include natural land features or spaces such as trading posts and mines that Navajos enter and navigate.

Kelley and Francis interweave the empowering stories that they have gathered and shared from decades of collaborative and community-based Diné research to “tell about the Diné bonds with the land and struggles for sovereignty in various times and places during the span of Diné history” (p. 11). Diné peoplehood and sovereignty stem from and [End Page 295] depend on these bonds. Kelley and Harris refer to Diné teachings in order to establish their terminology. They relate, for example, the Diné principle of “T’áá hó ájít’į́”—translated roughly as “do it yourself”―in order to show how Navajos conceptualize the European-American idea of sovereignty (p. 9). Kelley and Harris expand on this term, revealing that an English translation does not fully represent the deep meanings of this principle. They recognize that Diné not only seek to “just do it yourself” but also to “do it the Diné way,” which undergirds and reinforces “political sovereignty” and “cultural sovereignty” (p. 268).

This book illuminates and shares precious and valuable teachings of Diné ways of life and history, which can only be connected to Diné Bikéyah, homelands within the Diné four sacred mountains. The authors reinforce that Navajos have created a bond between themselves and with their lands and have done so through many generations. K’é is the Diné sense of kinship and relations and is established when elders pass on Diné oral traditions, histories, and journeys to the youth by their telling of empowering stories.

Kelley and Harris organize their book by case studies, which often-times will refer to such relations and connections. But their case studies can sometimes seem scattered or disconnected without transitions, a direct narrative framework, or a flow to follow. The tone of the book, although straightforward, sometimes comes across as tangential or scattered. It is easy to become lost in the details of the presented cases. The authors also insert rich oral histories, and they simply drop them in parts of the book without introducing the block quotes from their impressive and insightful sources...

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