There are Navajo rugs, Navajo jewelry and Navajo tacos. There's even a Navajo four-wheel-drive sport utility vehicle.
But the Navajo Tribe may very well soon cease to exist . . . at least by that name. The Navajo Nation is holding a series of public meetings across the sprawling reservation in southern Utah, Arizona and New Mexico on whether or not to change the name of the tribe to "Dine" (pronounced "deh-NAY")."As our children learn more about Navajo culture, language and history, they will ask who named us Navajo and why," says Peterson Zah, tribal president. "The name change is inevitable."
The name "Navajo" is not a Navajo word at all but rather a Tewa name applied to them by Spanish priests in New Mexico to refer to "Apaches who cultivated fields" or "Apaches who farmed at the mouths of canyons." The Navajo always referred to themselves as "Dine," which means "people of the Earth."
"The word Navajo was a label given us," Zah said. "This name has been ours for hundreds of years, and, in the meanwhile, we think of ourselves differently. When we pray to the Great Spirit, we don't call ourselves Navajo. In our tradition, we call ourselves Dine."
Navajos debated the name change during public hearings last Thursday and Friday, and two more are scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 16, at the Navajo Preparatory School in Farmington, N.M., and Friday, Dec. 17, at the Navajo Community College in Tsaile, Ariz.
The name change comes during a turbulent time for the Navajo Nation. The Navajos suffer from chronic economic depression and inadequate housing, and the ongoing land dispute with the U.S. government and the Hopi tribe has drained much of the tribe's resources, a spokesman said.
Additionally, the national news media coverage of the hantavirus "mystery illness" outbreak during mid-1993 damaged the tourism economy of the tribe and revived "stereotypical and even racist perceptions of Navajos."
"I believe that many of the social problems we are now facing are caused by the fact we are losing the concept of family, which is embodied in the word Dine," Zah said.
The Navajo are Athabaskan-speaking people who had arrived in the Southwest by 1500 A.D. from ancient homelands in northwestern Canada. They are linguistically related to the Apache.