The Entire History of the Navajo — The Largest Reservation in America

There is a piece of the United States larger than ten American states, about the size of Ireland, and the reason the Navajo hold it is not generosity. It is what was left over after everyone else had chosen. This is the entire history of the Navajo — the Diné — from a migration out of the Canadian subarctic more than a thousand years ago to the largest reservation in America today. It covers the arrival in Dinétah, the sheep and silver and weaving traditions built out of Spanish and Pueblo contact, the captive raiding that defined the New Mexico borderland for two centuries, Kit Carson's scorched earth campaign through Canyon de Chelly, and Hwéeldi — the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo, where thousands died. It also covers what came after the Treaty of 1868, which made the Navajo one of the only nations the United States removed and then allowed to go home: how three million acres became seventeen million, how the discovery of oil created the Navajo Nation government, the livestock reduction that Navajo families still call the Second Long Walk, the Navajo Code Talkers whose language had been beaten out of children in boarding schools, thirty million tons of uranium, the Church Rock spill that released more radioactivity than Three Mile Island, the Bennett Freeze, and the 2023 Supreme Court ruling on Navajo water rights. Every figure in this video is sourced. Where the history is contested or the numbers are estimates, it says so. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Largest Reservation in America 1:50 Where the Diné Actually Came From 6:35 Raiders, Captives and the New Mexico Borderland 9:45 Kit Carson and the Peach Orchards of Canyon de Chelly 13:40 Hwéeldi — Four Years at Bosque Redondo 18:15 Three Million Acres Becomes Seventeen Million 22:35 The Second Long Walk — Livestock Reduction 26:45 The Language They Tried to Destroy 30:35 Thirty Million Tons of Uranium 33:00 Church Rock, 1979 34:35 The Land Dispute and the Bennett Freeze 38:25 Water, COVID and the Supreme Court 41:25 Where the Navajo Nation Stands Now #Navajo #NavajoNation #NativeAmericanHistory #AmericanHistory #NativeAmerican #Documentary #History #Dine #TheLongWalk #Apache