In and Against the Image of Our Ancestors: Language, Leadership, and Sovereignty in the 2014 Navajo Nation Presidential Election Controversy

In 2014, Joe Shirley, Jr. and Christopher L. Clark Deschene secured the first and second place positions, respectively, in the Navajo Nation presidential elections by defeating fifteen other candidates. Ten days into the general election race, Deschene's campaign was thwarted when two former candidates, Hank Whitethorne and Dale E. Tsosie, filed grievances with the Navajo Nation Office of Hearings and Appeals claiming that Deschene did not meet the language fluency requirement outlined in the election code. A critical moment in the controversy was the Supreme Court of the Navajo Nation's October 9 ruling that language fluency was a reasonable regulation of the candidate's right to political liberty. Months later, Deschene was eventually removed from the ballot. This article examines the critical discourse within and around the October 9, 2014 Supreme Court ruling to illustrate the ways language, identity, and leadership are discursively and legally constituted among Diné people. This study shows how the debates about leadership, language, and identity factor into Dinéness and the shared concern with enactments of sovereignty to secure a Diné future. This article demonstrates how tribal sovereignty is closely tied to the colonial mandate of eliminating Indigenous peoples, especially in the Supreme Court's deployment of tradition to create and enforce boundaries of inclusion and exclusion.