The Western Apache language is a Southern Athabaskan language spoken among the 14,000 Western Apaches in Mexico in the states of Sonora and Chihuahua and in east-central Arizona . There are approximately 6,000 speakers living on the San Carlos Reservation and 7,000 living on the Fort Apache Reservation . In Mexico, they mainly live in Hermosillo, Sonora , and other native communities in Chihuahua.
67-558: Cibecue ( Western Apache : Dishchiiʼ Bikoh "Horizontally Red Valley/Canyon") is a census-designated place (CDP) in Navajo County , Arizona , United States, on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation . The population was 1,713 in the 2010 United States Census . The current council leaders are Arnold Beach Sr. and Tony Alsenay.(Update needed) The Cibecue community has a high unemployment rate, which
134-449: A Super Bowl had been carried in a Native American language. In 2013, the 1977 film Star Wars was translated into Navajo. It was the first major motion picture translated into any Native American language. On October 5, 2018, an early beta of a Navajo course was released on Duolingo , a popular language learning app. After many Navajo schools were closed during World War II, a program aiming to provide education to Navajo children
201-503: A glottalic initiation . Navajo also has a simple glottal stop used after vowels, and every word that would otherwise begin with a vowel is pronounced with an initial glottal stop. Consonant clusters are uncommon, aside from frequent placing /d/ or /t/ before fricatives . The language has four vowel qualities: /a/ , /e/ , /i/ , and /o/ . Each exists in both oral and nasalized forms, and can be either short or long. Navajo also distinguishes for tone between high and low, with
268-541: A root to identify the action and the semblance of a suffix to convey mode and aspect ; however, this suffix is fused beyond separability. The stem is given somewhat more transparent prefixes to indicate, in this order, the following information: postpositional object, postposition, adverb-state, iterativity , number , direct object , deictic information, another adverb-state, mode and aspect, subject, classifier (see later on), mirativity and two-tier evidentiality . Some of these prefixes may be null; for example, there
335-449: A subject–object–verb language. However, some speakers order the subject and object based on "noun ranking". In this system, nouns are ranked in three categories—humans, animals, and inanimate objects—and within these categories, nouns are ranked by strength, size, and intelligence. Whichever of the subject and object has a higher rank comes first. As a result, the agent of an action may be syntactically ambiguous. The highest rank position
402-498: A "j" despite his personal objections. The Navajo refer to themselves as the Diné ('People'), with their language known as Diné bizaad ('People's language') or Naabeehó bizaad . Navajo is an Athabaskan language ; Navajo and Apache languages make up the southernmost branch of the family. Most of the other Athabaskan languages are located in Alaska, northwestern Canada, and along
469-498: A code based on Navajo. The language was considered ideal because of its grammar, which differs strongly from that of German and Japanese , and because no published Navajo dictionaries existed at the time. By the 1960s, Indigenous languages of the United States had been declining in use for some time. Native American language use began to decline more quickly in this decade as paved roads were built and English-language radio
536-484: A fairly high percentage overall but less than among other Americans speaking a different Native American language (85.4 percent). Navajo was the only Native American language afforded its own category in the survey; domestic Navajo speakers represented 46.4 percent of all domestic Native language speakers (only 195,407 Americans have a different home Native language). As of July 2014, Ethnologue classes Navajo as "6b" (In Trouble), signifying that few, but some, parents teach
603-488: A fairly large phonemic inventory, including several consonants that are not found in English. Its four basic vowel qualities are distinguished for nasality , length , and tone . Navajo has both agglutinative and fusional elements: it uses affixes to modify verbs, and nouns are typically created from multiple morphemes, but in both cases these morphemes are fused irregularly and beyond easy recognition. Basic word order
670-432: A fundamental aspect of Western Apache communication, allowing for what Basso describes as an appropriation of "mythic significance" for "specialized social ends" via the practice of "speaking with names." Place names can be descriptive or commemorative or a means of identifying clans. Social groups will often use place names as a way to communicate. For example, they use place names to explain what happened to them: If there
737-515: A healthy speaker base, although this problem has been alleviated to some extent by extensive education programs in the Navajo Nation. In World War II, speakers of the Navajo language joined the military and developed a code for sending secret messages. These code talkers ' messages are widely credited with saving many lives and winning some of the most decisive battles in the war. Navajo has
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#1732781027039804-403: A major language dictionary published that same year, and continued to work on studying and documenting the language in major works for the next few decades. Today an AM radio station, KTNN , broadcasts in Navajo and English, with programming including music and NFL games; AM station KNDN broadcasts only in Navajo. When Super Bowl XXX was broadcast in Navajo in 1996, it was the first time
871-531: A military word, code talkers used descriptive words. For example, the Navajo did not have a word for submarine , so they translated it as iron fish . These Navajo code talkers are widely recognized for their contributions to WWII. Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division Signal Officer stated, "Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima." Navajo lands were initially colonized by
938-428: A prominent Western Apache linguist, writes that the ancestors frequently traveled for food, and the need to remember specific places was "facilitated by the invention of hundreds of descriptive placenames that were intended to depict their referents in close and exact detail." Basso also writes that place names provide descriptions of specific locations and also "positions for viewing these locations." The place names are
1005-413: A trait of fusional languages. In general, Navajo verbs contain more morphemes than nouns do (on average, 11 for verbs compared to 4–5 for nouns), but noun morphology is less transparent. Depending on the source, Navajo is either classified as a fusional agglutinative or even polysynthetic language, as it shows mechanisms from all three. In terms of basic word order , Navajo has been classified as
1072-431: A word, a phrase, or one or more sentences. An interesting feature of this writing system is that it includes symbols for nonverbal actions as well as verbal speech. Symbols can either be "compound" or "non-compound". Compound symbols consist of two symbols being combined in order to form a new symbol. Non-compound symbols are symbols that are not combination of two separate symbols. The "names" of non-compound symbols are
1139-557: Is subject–object–verb , though it is highly flexible to pragmatic factors. Verbs are conjugated for aspect and mood , and given affixes for the person and number of both subjects and objects , as well as a host of other variables. The language's orthography , which was developed in the late 1930s, is based on the Latin script . Most Navajo vocabulary is Athabaskan in origin, as the language has been conservative with loanwords due to its highly complex noun morphology. The word Navajo
1206-746: Is a Southern Athabaskan language of the Na-Dené family (proposed only), as are other languages spoken across the western areas of North America . Navajo is spoken primarily in the Southwestern United States , especially in the Navajo Nation . It is one of the most widely spoken Native American languages and is the most widely spoken north of the Mexico–United States border , with almost 170,000 Americans speaking Navajo at home as of 2011. The language has struggled to keep
1273-519: Is a story linked to the location, they can relate to it or use it as a warning. This use of place names is known in the culture as "shooting with stories," as they shoot one another with stories like arrows of information. There are 31 consonants in Western Apache: Western Apache utilizes unaffricated stops. Willem de Reuse explains, "Unaffricated stop consonants are produced in three locations: bilabial, alveolar, velar. At
1340-418: Is a system of symbols created in 1904 by Silas John Edwards to record 62 prayers that he believed came to him from heaven. A Silas John prayer-text is a set of graphic symbols written on buckskin or paper. The symbols are arranged in horizontal lines which are read from left to right in descending order. Symbols are separated by a space, and each symbol corresponds to a single line of prayer, which may consist of
1407-526: Is an exonym : it comes from the Tewa word Navahu , which combines the roots nava ('field') and hu ('valley') to mean 'large field'. It was borrowed into Spanish to refer to an area of present-day northwestern New Mexico , and later into English for the Navajo tribe and their language. The alternative spelling Navaho is considered antiquated; even the anthropologist Berard Haile spelled it with
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#17327810270391474-406: Is held by humans and lightning. Other linguists such as Eloise Jelinek consider Navajo to be a discourse configurational language , in which word order is not fixed by syntactic rules, but determined by pragmatic factors in the communicative context. In Navajo, verbs are the main elements of their sentences, imparting a large amount of information. The verb is based on a stem , which is made of
1541-534: Is most closely related to Western Apache , with which it shares a similar tonal scheme and more than 92 percent of its vocabulary, and to Chiricahua-Mescalero Apache . It is estimated that the Apachean linguistic groups separated and became established as distinct societies, of which the Navajo were one, somewhere between 1300 and 1525. Navajo is generally considered mutually intelligible with all other Apachean languages. The Apachean languages, of which Navajo
1608-567: Is most closely related to other Southern Athabaskan languages like Navajo , Chiricahua Apache , Mescalero Apache , Lipan Apache , Plains Apache , and Jicarilla Apache . In 2011, the San Carlos Apache Tribe's Language Preservation Program in Peridot, Arizona , began its outreach to the "14,000 tribal members residing within the districts of Bylas , Gilson Wash , Peridot and Seven Mile Wash", only 20% of whom still speak
1675-533: Is one, are thought to have arrived in the American Southwest from the north by 1500, probably passing through Alberta and Wyoming. Archaeological finds considered to be proto-Navajo have been located in the far northern New Mexico around the La Plata, Animas and Pine rivers, dating to around 1500. In 1936, linguist Edward Sapir showed how the arrival of the Navajo people in the new arid climate among
1742-405: Is only a plural marker ( da/daa ) and no readily identifiable marker for the other grammatical numbers. Navajo does not distinguish strict tense per se; instead, an action's position in time is conveyed through mode, aspect, but also via time adverbials or context. Each verb has an inherent aspect and can be conjugated in up to seven modes. For any verb, the usitative and iterative modes share
1809-860: Is run by the Fort Apache Agency, a division of the Bureau of Indian Affairs . The school's superintendent is Juan Aragon. The school is subdivided into an elementary, middle, and high school, each with a separate principal. Cibecue is the focus of the seminal ethnography by Keith H. Basso entitled "Portraits of the 'Whiteman': Linguistic play and cultural symbols among the Western Apache" (1979). Western Apache language Goodwin (1938) claims that Western Apache can be divided into five dialect groupings: Other researchers do not find any linguistic evidence for five groups but rather three main varieties with several subgroupings: Western Apache
1876-554: Is the marker of the Continuative aspect (to play about). Navajo distinguishes between the first, second, third, and fourth persons in the singular, dual, and plural numbers. The fourth person is similar to the third person, but is generally used for indefinite, theoretical actors rather than defined ones. Despite the potential for extreme verb complexity, only the mode/aspect, subject, classifier, and stem are absolutely necessary. Furthermore, Navajo negates clauses by surrounding
1943-401: Is usually encoded directly in the verb through the use of various prefixes or aspects, though this is by no means mandatory. In the following example, the verb on the right is used with the plural prefix da- and switches to the distributive aspect. Some verbal roots encode number in their lexical definition (see classificatory verbs above). When available, the use of the correct verbal root
2010-501: Is voiceless, as indicated by the absence of any energy in the spectrograms during the closure phase." There are 16 vowels in Western Apache: An acute accent /á/ represents a vowel with a high tone. Low-toned vowels are not marked. Phonetic Semantic signs are divided into two sub-parts: a logographs (denoting only one word) and phraseographs (denoting one or more words). The only writing system native to Western Apache
2077-660: The Spanish in the early seventeenth century, shortly after this area was annexed as part of the Spanish viceroyalty of New Spain . When the United States annexed these territories in 1848 following the Mexican–American War , the English-speaking settlers allowed Navajo children to attend their schools. In some cases, the United States established separate schools for Navajo and other Native American children. In
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2144-830: The central business district of Cibecue. The White Mountain Apache Tribe operates the Fort Apache Connection Transit, which provides local bus service. The area is served by the Whiteriver Unified School District and the Dishchii' Bikoh Community School. Dishchii'bikoh Community School, also called the Cibecue Community School , is a small K-12, grant-funded day school in Cibecue, Arizona. It
2211-480: The CDP was $ 5,941. About 55.7% of families and 68.7% of the population were below the poverty line , including 72.5% of those under age 18 and 70.9% of those age 65 or over. In 2010, Cibecue had the 18th-lowest median household income of all places in the United States with a population over 1,000. Cibecue Airport is a public use general aviation airport located four nautical miles (7 km ) southeast of
2278-489: The Navajo Agency of the Bureau of Indian Affairs , developed and published a practical orthography in 1937. It helped spread education among Navajo speakers. In 1943 the men collaborated on The Navajo Language , a dictionary organized by the roots of the language. In World War II , the United States military used speakers of Navajo as code talkers —to transmit top-secret military messages over telephone and radio in
2345-409: The Navajo language to relay secret messages. At the end of the war the code remained unbroken. The code used Navajo words for each letter of the English alphabet. Messages could be encoded and decoded by using a simple substitution cipher where the ciphertext was the Navajo word. Type two code was informal and directly translated from English into Navajo. If there was no word in Navajo to describe
2412-596: The Navajo language, and no English, while five English language teachers instruct in the English language. Kindergarten and first grade are taught completely in the Navajo language, while English is incorporated into the program during third grade, when it is used for about 10% of instruction. According to the Navajo Nation Education Policies, the Navajo Tribal Council requests that schools teach both English and Navajo so that
2479-467: The Navajo word for "corn" is naadą́ą́ʼ , derived from two Proto-Athabaskan roots meaning "enemy" and "food", suggesting that the Navajo originally considered corn to be "food of the enemy" when they first arrived among the Pueblo people. During World Wars I and II, the U.S. government employed speakers of the Navajo language as Navajo code talkers . These Navajo soldiers and sailors used a code based on
2546-967: The North American Pacific coast. Most languages in the Athabaskan family have tones . However, this feature evolved independently in all subgroups; Proto-Athabaskan had no tones. In each case, tone evolved from glottalic consonants at the ends of morphemes; however, the progression of these consonants into tones has not been consistent, with some related morphemes being pronounced with high tones in some Athabaskan languages and low tones in others. It has been posited that Navajo and Chipewyan , which have no common ancestor more recent than Proto-Athabaskan and possess many pairs of corresponding but opposite tones, evolved from different dialects of Proto-Athabaskan that pronounced these glottalic consonants differently. Proto-Athabaskan diverged fully into separate languages c. 500 BC . Navajo
2613-600: The Western Apache practice of "speaking with names" expresses functional range and versatility. Basso claims that "a description of a place may be understood to accomplish all of the following actions: Basso also claims the practice of "speaking with names" can occur only between those with shared "knowledge of the same traditional narratives." He notes that though many elders in Western Apache communities, such as Cibecue, share this knowledge, younger generations of Western Apache "are ignorant of both placenames and traditional narratives in increasing numbers," which makes engaging in
2680-420: The age of 18 living with them, 41.8% were married couples living together, 34.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 17.0% were non-families. 13.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 2.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 4.11 and the average family size was 4.45. In the CDP, the population was spread out, with 45.2% under
2747-461: The age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 25.9% from 25 to 44, 13.7% from 45 to 64, and 4.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 21 years. For every 100 females, there were 96.6 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.1 males. The median income for a household in the CDP was $ 12,286, and the median income for a family was $ 13,750. Males had a median income of $ 52,639 versus $ 21,591 for females. The per capita income for
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2814-479: The alveolar and velar places of articulation, there are three possibilities: aspirated, ejective, and unaspirated. The voiceless unaspirated alveolars are characteristically realized as taps in intervocalic environments other than stem-initial position. The bilabial stops are more restricted. Ejective bilabial stops do not occur, and aspirated bilabial stops are rarely attested, surfacing primarily, if not exclusively, in borrowed words. The closure for three alveolar stops
2881-510: The assistance of Sally Midgette (Navajo). This work is organized by root , the basis of Athabaskan languages. A 1991 survey of 682 preschoolers on the Navajo Reservation Head Start program found that 54 percent were monolingual English speakers, 28 percent were bilingual in English and Navajo, and 18 percent spoke only Navajo. This study noted that while the preschool staff knew both languages, they spoke English to
2948-496: The chance to establish their own bilingual education programs. However, qualified teachers who were fluent in Native languages were scarce, and these programs were largely unsuccessful. However, data collected in 1980 showed that 85 percent of Navajo first-graders were bilingual, compared to 62 percent of Navajo of all ages—early evidence of a resurgence of use of their traditional language among younger people. In 1984, to counteract
3015-469: The children most of the time. In addition, most of the children's parents spoke to the children in English more often than in Navajo. The study concluded that the preschoolers were in "almost total immersion in English". An American Community Survey taken in 2011 found that 169,369 Americans spoke Navajo at home—0.3 percent of Americans whose primary home language was not English. Of primary Navajo speakers, 78.8 percent reported they spoke English "very well",
3082-558: The children would remain bilingual, though their influence over the school systems was very low. A small number of preschool programs provided the Navajo immersion curriculum, which taught children basic Navajo vocabulary and grammar under the assumption that they have no prior knowledge in the Navajo language. Navajo has a fairly large consonant inventory. Its stop consonants exist in three laryngeal forms: aspirated , unaspirated, and ejective —for example, /tʃʰ/ , /tʃ/ , and /tʃʼ/ . Ejective consonants are those that are pronounced with
3149-512: The corn agriculturalists of the Pueblo area was reflected in their language by tracing the changing meanings of words from Proto-Athabaskan to Navajo. For example, the word * dè: , which in Proto-Athabaskan meant "horn" and "dipper made from animal horn", in Navajo became a-deeʼ, which meant "gourd" or "dipper made from gourd". Likewise, the Proto-Athabaskan word * ł-yəx̣s "snow lies on the ground" in Navajo became yas "snow". Similarly,
3216-422: The language fluently. The geographic locations of events are crucial components to any Western Apache story or narrative. All Western Apache narratives are spatially anchored to points upon the land, with precise depictions of specific locations, which is characteristic of many Native American languages. Basso called the practice of focusing on places in the language "speaking with names." According to Basso,
3283-416: The language to their offspring and that concerted efforts at revitalization could easily protect the language. Navajo had a high population for a language in this category. About half of all Navajo people live on Navajo Nation land, an area spanning parts of Arizona , New Mexico , and Utah ; others are dispersed throughout the United States. Under tribal law, fluency in Navajo is mandatory for candidates to
3350-485: The language's historical decline, the Navajo Nation Council decreed that the Navajo language would be available and comprehensive for students of all grade levels in schools of the Navajo Nation . This effort was aided by the fact that, largely due to the work of Young and Morgan, Navajo is one of the best-documented Native American languages. In 1980 they published a monumental expansion of their work on
3417-657: The language, organized by word (first initial of vowel or consonant) in the pattern of English dictionaries, as requested by Navajo students. The Navajo Language: A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary also included a 400-page grammar, making it invaluable for both native speakers and students of the language. Particularly in its organization of verbs, it was oriented to Navajo speakers. They expanded this work again in 1987, with several significant additions, and this edition continues to be used as an important text. The Native American language education movement has been met with adversity, such as by English-only campaigns in some areas in
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#17327810270393484-469: The late 1990s. However, Navajo-immersion programs have cropped up across the Navajo Nation. Statistical evidence shows that Navajo-immersion students generally do better on standardized tests than their counterparts educated only in English. Some educators have remarked that students who know their native languages feel a sense of pride and identity validation. Since 1989, Diné College , a Navajo tribal community college , has offered an associate degree in
3551-552: The late 19th century, it founded boarding schools, often operated by religious missionary groups. In efforts to acculturate the children, school authorities insisted that they learn to speak English and practice Christianity. Students routinely had their mouths washed out with lye soap as a punishment if they did speak Navajo. Consequently, when these students grew up and had children of their own, they often did not teach them Navajo, in order to prevent them from being punished. Robert W. Young and William Morgan , who both worked for
3618-530: The low tone typically regarded as the default. However, some linguists have suggested that Navajo does not possess true tones, but only a pitch accent system similar to that of Japanese . In general, Navajo speech also has a slower speech tempo than English does. Navajo is difficult to classify in terms of broad morphological typology : it relies heavily on affixes —mainly prefixes—like agglutinative languages, but these affixes are joined in unpredictable, overlapping ways that make them difficult to segment,
3685-655: The number of monolingual Navajo speakers have been in the decline, and most younger Navajo people are bilingual. Near the 1990s, many Navajo children have little to no knowledge in Navajo language, only knowing English. In 1968, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Bilingual Education Act , which provided funds for educating young students who are not native English speakers. The Act had mainly been intended for Spanish-speaking children—particularly Mexican Americans —but it applied to all recognized linguistic minorities. Many Native American tribes seized
3752-663: The office of the President of the Navajo Nation . Both original and translated media have been produced in Navajo. The first works tended to be religious texts translated by missionaries, including the Bible. From 1943 to about 1957, the Navajo Agency of the BIA published Ádahooníłígíí ("Events" ), the first newspaper in Navajo and the only one to be written entirely in Navajo. It was edited by Robert W. Young and William Morgan, Sr. (Navajo). They had collaborated on The Navajo Language ,
3819-439: The phrases nato sentii and nato sen’a both of which may be translated broadly as "hand (me) the tobacco." The difference in meaning between the two verb forms is signaled by their stems: In short, the referent of the noun nato ("tobacco") is made more precise according to the stem with which it is coupled." The use of classificatory verbs is similar to that of nouns: the speaker must select an expression that corresponds to
3886-672: The practice of "speaking with names" incredibly difficult. Western Apache is an endangered language, and there are efforts to increase the number of speakers. One method of teaching Western Apache is the Total Physical Response (TPR) Method, which focuses, especially in early instruction, on commands. That method is best for teaching the straightforward aspects of grammar, such as yes-and-no questions, and can be enhanced with further grammatical exercises. Many Western Apache place names that are currently in use are believed to be creations of Apache ancestors. Keith Basso ,
3953-567: The same as the line of text that the symbols elicit. Because of this, the linguistic referent of a non-compound symbol is always the same as the meaning of the element that forms it and can be learned in a single operation. Western Apache uses a modified version of the Latin alphabet: Western Apache uses a classificatory verb system comparable to both the Jicarilla and Mescalero Apaches. Basso gives this example: "the stems –tii and –'a are used in
4020-575: The same stem, as do the progressive and future modes; these modes are distinguished with prefixes. However, pairs of modes other than these may also share the same stem, as illustrated in the following example, where the verb "to play" is conjugated into each of the five mode paradigms: The basic set of subject prefixes for the imperfective mode, as well as the actual conjugation of the verb into these person and number categories, are as follows. The remaining piece of these conjugated verbs—the prefix na- —is called an "outer" or "disjunct" prefix. It
4087-1291: The situation in the world he wishes to refer to. The speaker must place specific objects into categories and use the appropriate verb form in accordance with the particular category. Basso gives these examples of classifications for the Western Apache verb system: There are two features on this dimension: "animal" and "non-animal." There are two features on this dimension. There are three features on this dimension: "solid" (c1), "plastic" (c2), and "liquid" (c3). The second feature refers to moist, plastic substances such as mud, wet clay, etc., and might also have been defined as "neither solid nor liquid." There are three features on this dimension: "one" (d1), "two" (d2), and "more than two" (d3). There are two features on this dimension: "rigid" (e1), and "non-rigid" (e2). The Apache consider an object to be rigid ( nkliz ) if, when held at its edge or end, it does not bend. There are two features on this dimension: There are two features on this dimension: "portable" (g1) and "non-portable" (g2). Navajo language Navajo or Navaho ( / ˈ n æ v ə h oʊ , ˈ n ɑː v ə -/ NAV -ə-hoh, NAH -və- ; Navajo: Diné bizaad [tìnépìz̥ɑ̀ːt] or Naabeehó bizaad [nɑ̀ːpèːhópìz̥ɑ̀ːt] )
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#17327810270394154-451: The subject of Navajo. This program includes language, literature, culture, medical terminology, and teaching courses and produces the highest number of Navajo teachers of any institution in the United States. About 600 students attend per semester. One major university that teaches classes in the Navajo language is Arizona State University . In 1992, Young and Morgan published another major work on Navajo: Analytical Lexicon of Navajo , with
4221-559: The verb with the circum clitic doo= ... =da (e.g. mósí doo nitsaa da 'the cat is not big'). Dooda , as a single word, corresponds to English no . Nouns are not required to form a complete Navajo sentence. Besides the extensive information that can be communicated with a verb, Navajo speakers may alternate between the third and fourth person to distinguish between two already specified actors, similarly to how speakers of languages with grammatical gender may repeatedly use pronouns. Most nouns are not inflected for number, and plurality
4288-448: Was 223.1 inhabitants per square mile (86.1/km). There were 344 housing units at an average density of 57.7 per square mile (22.3/km). The racial makeup of the CDP was 96.0% Native American , 2.6% White , 0.1% Black or African American , 0.2% Asian , 0.2% from other races , and 0.9% from two or more races. 2.0% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 323 households, out of which 54.8% had children under
4355-463: Was broadcast to tribal areas. Navajo was no exception, although its large speaker pool—larger than that of any other Native language in the United States—gave it more staying power than most. Adding to the language's decline, federal acts passed in the 1950s to increase educational opportunities for Navajo children had resulted in pervasive use of English in their schools. In more recent years,
4422-568: Was exacerbated by the Rodeo–Chediski Fire , Arizona's second-largest wildfire in recorded history . Education is the sector that employs the most people in the community. According to the United States Census Bureau , the CDP has a total area of 6.0 square miles (16 km), all land. As of the census of 2000, there were 1,331 people, 323 households, and 268 families residing in the CDP. The population density
4489-799: Was funded in the 1950s, where the number of students quickly doubled in the next decade. The Navajo Nation operates Tséhootsooí Diné Bi'ólta', a Navajo language immersion school for grades K-8 in Fort Defiance, Arizona . Located on the Arizona-New Mexico border in the southeastern quarter of the Navajo Reservation , the school strives to revitalize Navajo among children of the Window Rock Unified School District . Tséhootsooí Diné Bi'ólta' has thirteen Navajo language teachers who instruct only in
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