Navajo/Diné Community

The Diné people's traditional homeland (Diné Bikéyah) lies in the desert Southwest of what is now the United States, with lands now encompassing parts of the states of Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico.  The red rock canyonlands locate the Diné in timeless stories and in modern life. This landscape has also drawn filmmakers to the area since the beginning of the moving image. Numerous Hollywood and international Western movies and commercial advertisements have been filmed in Navajoland over the years. The films in this collection were made for the educational audience, to be shown in mainstream K-12 classrooms in the middle years of the 20th century. Like Hollywood directors, independent educational filmmakers were drawn to Diné Bikéyah by its distinctive landscape and open skies and by the perception of exoticism in the Diné culture.

Alternate narratives curated and recorded by Rhiannon Sorrell, Diné College, Tsaile, Arizona.

Navajo/Diné community managing partners:

Diné Bizaad/Navajo dictionary words were intially drawn from the following sources:

Conversational Navajo Dictionary (Garth A. Wilson), Navajo WOTD, https://glosbe.com, Omniglot, http://www.native-languages.org/navajo.htm, Navajo-English Dictionary (C. Leon Wall, William Morgan, United States. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Branch of Education, 1958). The Navaho Language (Robert W. Young and William Morgan, United States Department of the Interior. Office of Indian Affairs. Education Division, 1972).

Contributed by Melissa Dollman, a non-Diné speaker. Reviewed by Rhiannon Sorrell. We very much welcome community vetting of these vocabulary words, and recommendations for additional resources.