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83-592: Kayenta ( Navajo : Tó Dínéeshzheeʼ meaning "Fingers of Water" because of how water runs down the rocks when it rains) is a U.S. town which is part of the Navajo Nation and is in Navajo County , Arizona , United States. Established November 13, 1986, the Kayenta Township is unique in being the only "township" existing under the laws of the Navajo Nation. The population was 5,189 at

166-449: 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

249-503: 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

332-460: A meetinghouse for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , and a Kingdom Hall for Jehovah's Witnesses . Also there is a Bible church located on the hill of Kayenta. Navajo language The language has struggled to keep 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

415-541: 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

498-449: 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

581-498: 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

664-458: A 46,545-square-foot (4,324.2 m ) school facility for 186 students and a 10,072-square-foot (935.7 m ) dormitory for 33 students. The scheduled groundbreaking was February 11, 2013. The previous buildings scheduled for demolition had a total of 78,626 square feet (7,304.6 m ) of space. The school provides transportation for students between Baby Rocks and Mexican Water , and asks families living outside of that area and/or distant from

747-680: A Department of Interior report blamed all levels of leadership for substandard test scores. In 2001 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) wrote "The academic achievement of many BIA students as measured by their performance on standardized tests and other measures is far below the performance of students in public schools. BIA students also score considerably below national averages on college admissions tests." Bill Clinton , George W. Bush , and Barack Obama made attempts to improve BIE schools. In 2015 Maggie Severns of Politico wrote that BIE students "have some of

830-766: A President, Board Clerk, and three Members operating within the laws of the State Legislature, rules and regulations of the Start Board of Education and sets policies for management of the school district. James Nez is the President of the governing board for the Kayenta Unified School District. Kayenta Community School, a K-8 school operated by the Bureau of Indian Education , This facility, also known as Kayenta Boarding School,

913-498: 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

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996-484: 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

1079-456: 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

1162-531: 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

1245-593: A more concerted program of assimilation of Native American children. These were established at both the elementary and high school levels. As Indian reservations cannot levy taxes, local school taxes cannot be used to fund Native American schools. Alden Woods of the Arizona Republic described the BIE as having the characteristics of both a state education agency and a school district, with its supervision and funding of tribally controlled/grant schools making it

1328-477: A part of the New Deal project. In 2014 about 30 students boarded but most did not. Only one dormitory was open, as another was deemed unsafe. In 2013 5% of the students were classified as having mathematics skills on par with their grade levels even though the school had already shifted most of its instruction to mathematics and reading at the expense of science and social studies. In 2015 Politico stated that

1411-561: A position that Robert LaFlore, the principal, called "not quite normal". Some of the teachers left to work at the Kayenta Unified School District . The school is a K-8 school in Red Valley, Arizona . In addition to Red Valley, it has students from Cove , Mitten Rock , and Oak Springs . It was created in or after 1932, with the building completed in 1935. Circa 1950 it gained boarding facilities and

1494-413: 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

1577-557: 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

1660-864: Is a boarding school serving both day and dormitory students. Kayenta has a large recreation center dedicated to serving the local community. Just outside the Recreation Center is a skating park, as well as an outdoor park with several playgrounds for children. On the east side of the community is a paved landing strip that can handle small single engine and twin engine aircraft used for air tours and air ambulance services. Many religious organizations are represented in Kayenta. There are churches for Baptists , Presbyterian Church , Lamb of God Pentecostal Church, Potter's House Christian Church, Kayenta Church of Christ, The Living Word Assembly of God Church Assemblies of God , Catholic Church (Our Lady of Guadalupe),

1743-526: 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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1826-588: Is an elementary school in Cove, Arizona . In addition to Cove, the school has students from Mitten Rock , Oak Springs , and Red Valley . The school is in proximity to multiple uranium mines. The current building opened in 1959. In 2022 the school had 50 students. Crystal Boarding School is a K-6 boarding school in Crystal, New Mexico . It opened in 1935 as part of an effort to replace off-reservation Indian boarding schools with on-reservation boarding schools, as

1909-406: 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

1992-568: Is in the Main Interior Building in Washington, DC . The federal government funds schools for Native Americans under the treaties it established for reservations and trust lands. In the early years, the government authorized religious missions to establish schools and churches on reservations. At the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Congress authorized the government to establish numerous Indian boarding schools for

2075-399: Is mandatory: Béégashii cow sitį́. 3 . SUBJ -lie( 1 ). PERF Béégashii sitį́. cow 3.SUBJ-lie( 1 ).PERF 'The (one) cow lies.' Béégashii cow shitéézh. 3 . SUBJ -lie( 2 ). PERF Bureau of Indian Education The Bureau of Indian Education ( BIE ), headquartered in the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C. , and formerly known as

2158-534: 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

2241-533: 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

2324-405: 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

2407-553: Is regarded as a political sub-division of the Navajo Nation. It is managed by a five-member elected town board, which hires the township manager. Kayenta is the name for the Chapter, as well as the township. Kayenta Chapter (a political division within the Navajo Nation that is analogous to a county within a state) encompasses land in both Utah and Arizona. Thus, the Navajo Nation's census figures for Kayenta Chapter are significantly different from those of Kayenta proper. According to

2490-554: 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

2573-401: 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

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2656-465: The 2010 census . Kayenta is located 25 miles (40 km) south of Monument Valley and contains a number of hotels and motels which serve visitors to Monument Valley. Like other places on the Navajo Nation , it is illegal to serve alcohol. Arizona does not observe Daylight Time ; however, the Navajo Nation does. Kayenta Township is the only municipal-style government on the Navajo Nation. It

2739-886: The Office of Indian Education Programs ( OIEP ), is a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior under the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs. It is responsible for the line direction and management of all BIE education functions, including the formation of policies and procedures, the supervision of all program activities, and the approval of the expenditure of funds appropriated for BIE education functions. The BIE school system has 184 elementary and secondary schools and dormitories located on 63 reservations in 23 states, including seven off-reservation boarding schools , and 122 schools directly controlled by tribes and tribal school boards under contracts or grants with

2822-660: 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

2905-633: The United States Census Bureau , the CDP has a total area of 13.2 square miles (34 km), all land. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Kayenta has a semi-arid climate , abbreviated "BSk" on climate maps. As of the census of 2010, there were 5,189 people. The population density was 393.1 inhabitants per square mile (151.8/km) with a total of 1,375 housing units. The racial makeup of

2988-732: The 1970s, school boards have been elected on reservations to oversee BIE schools, as in the Southwest United States . In 2015 the BIE spent about $ 15,000 per student in the schools it operated, 56% above the per-student average cost for a public school student in the United States. The BIE schools were ranked as among the most costly to operate in the United States. The predecessor agency OEIP had say only in operations related to instruction, while other BIA agencies had controlled other aspects, such as hiring and other employee issues, and construction and renovation of schools, and related infrastructure such as roads. Severns wrote that

3071-595: The ABC Preschool (formerly Kayenta Primary School). Recent decisions to rename some schools have been made to honor specific individuals from the community. While the school board has cited community support for these changes, some public discussion and debate continue. The Kayenta Unified School District #27 is governed by a five-member board of trustees elected by popular vote with the sole interest of ensuring our students receive educational opportunities they are entitled to and deserve. The Governing Board consists of

3154-647: The BIE does not have a consistent testing system for all schools, nor does it provide the public academic outcomes information that traditional public schools are required to publish under state laws. BIE network schools are often located in rural, isolated areas where alternative options for schooling are not feasible. As of 2020 there were 180 schools in the BIE network. In 1987 the BIA supported 58 tribal schools and directly operated 17 boarding schools, 17 day schools, and 14 dormitories housing students enrolled in public schools operated by local school districts. In 2003,

3237-410: The BIE had 4,500 employees. In November 2015 the BIE had 140 empty teaching slots. The agency had difficulty with teacher retention, especially as many schools are located in isolated areas. BIA/BIE schools have been criticized for decades for poor academic performance, and for the failure to establish metrics that allow performance to be measured. In 1969 the graduation rate was about 59%. Circa 1970

3320-579: The BIE is "an overlooked and often criticized agency". Circa 1990 the Hopi tribe began the process of taking BIA schools in their territory into tribal control. They managed this under authorization provided by legislation in 1975, which allowed tribes to contract with the BIA/BIE to manage and operate their own schools. Prior to August 29, 2006, it was known as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Office of Indian Education Programs (OIEP). The headquarters

3403-467: The BIE. The bureau also funds 66 residential programs for students at 52 boarding schools and at 14 dormitories housing those attending nearby tribal or public schools. It is one of two U.S. federal government school systems, along with the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA). In the area of post-secondary education, the BIE provides support to 24 tribal colleges and universities across

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3486-451: The CDP was 92.3% Native American , 4.6% White , 0.2% Black or African American , 0.2% Asian , <0.1% Pacific Islander , 0.3% from other races , and 2.5% from two or more races. 2.0% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. In the CDP, the population was spread out, with 38.9% under the age of 18, 11.4% from 18 to 24, 11.9% from 25 to 34, 33.2% from 35 to 64, and 4.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age

3569-511: The Native American students in the United States. Members of some tribes have moved to cities, and many states have increased coverage of reservation and tribal lands through their public school districts. As of 2020 about 90% of Native American students attended public schools operated by local school districts, rather than federally funded or operated schools. As of 2021 the BIE schools are located in many isolated areas with some of

3652-489: 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

3735-724: 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 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

3818-409: 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

3901-596: 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

3984-467: 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

4067-967: 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

4150-485: The U.S. serving over 25,000 students. It directly operates two institutions of higher learning: Haskell Indian Nations University (HINU) in Lawrence , Kansas , and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute (SIPI) near Albuquerque , New Mexico . Additionally, the BIE operates higher education scholarship programs for American Indians and Alaska Natives . Alden Woods of The Arizona Republic wrote in 2020 that

4233-510: 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

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4316-496: 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

4399-469: 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",

4482-558: 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

4565-512: 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,

4648-399: The former and its direct operation of BIE schools making it the latter. By the beginning of the 21st century, education expenses of the BIE represented 35% of the BIA budget. But studies since the 1969 Kennedy Report have shown that the schools have been underfunded. Despite the education responsibility, much of the BIA staff are specialists in land management rather than education. Since

4731-522: The graduation rate was 53%. In the 2017-2018 school year, the graduation rate was 64%, but in 2018-2019 the graduation rate had declined to 59%. In 2015 the average United States graduation rate was 81%. The graduation rate for Native American and Alaska Native students enrolled at school district-operated public schools was 67%. From circa 2017 to 2020, the BIE did not follow the terms of the Every Student Succeeds Act . As of 2020

4814-490: The highway to have their children stay at the dormitory. Kayenta Community School is a K-8 school . The facility, also known as Kayenta Boarding School, is a boarding school serving both day and dormitory students. It opened in 1935 as the Kayenta Indian School. In 1985 the school had 520 students and 19 employees. The school at the time had 11 staff positions in which the school could not hire anyone,

4897-416: 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

4980-485: 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

5063-657: 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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5146-469: 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

5229-552: 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

5312-530: 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,

5395-484: The lowest incomes in the United States. Maggie Severns of Politico wrote in 2015 that "Students often come from difficult backgrounds". In 1978, 47,000 Native American K-12 students (17% of the total number of Native American K-12 students in the United States) attended schools directly operated by the BIA, and 2,500 (1%) attended tribal schools and/or other schools that contracted with the BIA. Circa 2015

5478-425: The lowest test scores and graduation rates in the country". In the 2018-2019 school year, the percentage of BIE students passing their schools' standardized examinations was about 10% for mathematics and 15% for the English language. In 2011 BIE students scored better on examinations than students at Detroit Public Schools , but every other large urban school district outperformed students of BIE schools. In 2015

5561-655: 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

5644-614: 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 ,

5727-618: The overall dropout rate of BIA schools was 100% higher than the U.S. dropout average. Citing this statistic, that year President of the United States Richard Nixon criticized BIA schools. The 1969 report by the Select Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate in 1969 (known as the Kennedy Report, as it was headed by Robert F. Kennedy prior to his assassination) also criticized BIA schools. In 1988

5810-494: The premier rodeos to attend in the Southwest. Kayenta is served by the Kayenta Unified School District . The Kayenta Unified School District operates several schools serving the communities of Kayenta, Chilchinbeto, and Dennehotso. These include Debbie Braff Elementary School (formerly Kayenta Intermediate School and Kayenta Elementary School), Baker Middle School (formerly Kayenta Middle School), Monument Valley High School, and

5893-575: 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

5976-573: The school provides room and board to children with no other reliable source of food and lodging. On March 16, 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Arizona , the State of Arizona closed district-operated public schools. BIE schools were not required to close at that time, though several did. After employees met that day, COVID spread through the school's community. Once COVID infections were diagnosed,

6059-570: The school temporarily closed. It holds an equine (horse) festival every year. It is a K-8 school in Teec Nos Pos. It has a dormitory facility. It opened in 1933 as the Teec Nos Pos Boarding School. A building for the Teec Nos Pos Boarding School was dedicated in 1962. In 1962 the school had 353 students. In 1963 there were plans to build 17 additional classrooms as well as a cafeteria, two dormitories, and

6142-512: The school's campus was in a poor condition. It had no school counselor. Dennehotso Boarding School in Dennehotso, Arizona serves grades K–8. It opened as a one room school in 1935. Circa 1947 the school was expanded. In 1951, the school had five teachers. Eddie Thompson served as principal until 1973. Kenneth L. Owens, who previously taught at Dennehotso Boarding, became principal in 1974. The two current buildings are OFMC projects:

6225-516: The state with the largest amount of BIA-OIEP network schools was Arizona, and the state with the next highest amount was New Mexico. As of 2020 the BIE operates about 33% of the schools in its system. A listing of schools directly operated by the Bureau of Indian Education: It is a K-8 school in Cottonwood , Apache County, Arizona , with a Chinle address. It was dedicated in 1968. It

6308-451: 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

6391-586: The various sources of authority made school accountability difficult. A 2015 editorial of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune noted that schools in the BIE network were underfunded while schools in the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), the federal military dependent school network, were well funded. As of 2020 the BIE-funded/grant/direct schools in total had 46,000 students, meaning they educated about 8% of

6474-559: 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

6557-760: Was 22 years. For every 100 females, there were 90.7 males. The Kayenta Fourth of July Rodeo is an annual multi-day event taking place from July 1–4. Various events take place daily, while the "Best of the Best" and a fireworks show take place on the fourth. The Kayenta Fourth of July Rodeo has been recognized six times as the Rodeo of the Year and twice as the Outstanding Rodeo by the All Indian Rodeo Cowboys Association, making it one of

6640-463: 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,

6723-799: 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

6806-471: Was known as Red Rock Boarding School, but it later reverted into being a day school. In 1974 its enrollment was 83. At the time it was the only BIA school in which all of its employees were Navajo people. In that year the school was hiring ethnic Navajo, bilingual in English and Navajo, who were finishing their university educations. Additionally, by that year it had a forked stick hogan in which it held some classes taught by Navajo senior citizens. The hogan

6889-465: Was the impetus of Navajo senior citizens who paid the money to have it built and who built it. In 2022 the school had 114 students. It is a K-8 boarding school in Kykotsmovi, Arizona . In 2020 its enrollment was over 100. Alden Woods of The Arizona Republic stated "One former student described it as a refuge from a rural community struggling through generations of trauma", stating that

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