The Navajo, who refer to themselves as Diné, are the largest federally recognized Native American tribal nation in the United States by both enrolled population and reservation land area, with the Navajo Nation spanning parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Navajo society is traditionally matrilineal and matrilocal, organized into clans traced through the mother's line, and the community is widely known for a documented tradition of silversmithing, weaving and, during the Second World War, the deployment of Navajo speakers as 'code talkers' whose unwritten language was used by the United States military as an unbroken transmission code in the Pacific theater. The 1868 Treaty of Bosque Redondo, ending the U.S. government's forced removal and internment of the Navajo (the Long Walk), remains a central and extensively documented event in Navajo historical memory.
Facts
Group TypeSourced to the subject's own accountIndigenous nation/ethnic group 1 Typical RegionSourced to the subject's own accountNorth America (southwestern United States: the Navajo Nation spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah) 1 Population EstimateSourced to the subject's own accountapproximately 400,000 enrolled tribal members 1 Primary LanguageSourced to the subject's own account Subsistence ModeSourced to the subject's own accountHistorically sheepherding pastoralism (introduced via Spanish contact) combined with agriculture (notably corn) and, distinctively, extensive silversmithing and textile (rug) production as both craft and trade goods. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The peyote-centered Native American Church has drawn substantial Navajo membership since the early twentieth century; ethnographic estimates have placed Navajo peyotist participation as high as half of the Navajo Nation.
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