The Navajo Nation is a Native American reservation covering 27,413 square miles of land in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. It was established on 1 June 1868 after the "Long Walk", and the Navajo and their Hopi rivals were forced onto the same reservation by the US Army; the Navajo reservation is the largest of any Indian reservation, being larger than the state of West Virginia. The Navajo were starved of their livestock and water by the US government and forced to live in a dry climate in the American Southwest. The formerly "worthless" desert lands were found to be rich in gas and coal, and non-native companies moved into the region to exploit these natural resources at the Navajoo people's expense. The US government built dams to use the water for electricity, and the Navajo land became arid and infertile due to a lack of water.
The Navajo people were left to live in Third World conditions, lacking even the most basic infrastructure for energy sources (even the power lines were inaccessible). Abandoned coal and uranium mines built to supply the nuclear program led to health problems on the reservation, and residents close to the abandoned mines suffered from cancer as a result. Residents and their livestock depended on communal wells, some of which became too contaminated to use. The Navajo suicide rate is 30% higher than the national average due to alcoholism, depression, and unfair worlds; 56% of Navajo live below the poverty line. 57% are unemployed in towns and 50% in rural areas; 20% of homes lack plumbing, only 53% have telephones or electricity, and 90% of the roads are unpaved. Individual income is a meager $4,100 per year. In 2015, 42% of Navajo lived in poverty, twice the rate of the US' poorest state, Mississippi. Native Americans have one of the highest rates of fetal alcohol syndrome recorded, with a rate of 31 babies per 10,000 births. Mortality among teenagers is 5.6% higher than the national population, and alcohol causes 69% of all suicides. Native American youth are 30% more likely than whites to be referred to juvenile court than have charges dropped, and they are more likely to be killed by police than any other racial group. Native Americans are incarcerated at four times the rate of white men, and women are six times more likely than white women to be arrested. 88% of violent crimes carried out against Native American women is carried out by non-Native perpetrators. In 2016, the reservation had a population of 356,890 people (1/8 of all Native Americans); a Navajo person must have at least one Navajo grandparent to be considered a member of the tribe.
The Navajo economy was historically focused on sheep and cattle, as the land was too desolate for crops. Since the US government slaughtered the Navajo livestock, the main industry in the Navajo lands was coal and uranium mining, which was not subjected to federal safety regulations (the EPA and OSHA are not applicable in native lands), and which was owned by outside companies. Today, arts and crafts (including blankets) are a major source of the Navajo economy. Until recently, the Navajo rejected casinos, becoming one of the last reservations to take part in the industry after allowing them in 2006. Up to 75% of casino jobs on reservation casinos go to outsiders, and, due to the advent of casinos, there are more deaths, more violence, and more crimes by outsiders, as the casinos bring more outsiders to the reservations. The Navajo Generating Station, one of the largest employers on the Navajo reservations (which also brought back engineers, accountants, and scientists, and provided 25% of the reservation's income), shut down in September. Fracking replaced the healthy system of mining. The Hopi and Navajo feud led to the freezing of exploration of other resources on the Black Mesa, and, in a failed attempt to force settlement, the Bureau of Indian Affairs froze the building of new structures or repairing infrastructure such as housing, roads, and electricity on the reservation.
Many Navajo live in "hogans", homes facing the east, where the door is to greet the sun. Men sit in the south, while the women sit in the north; west is for the guests. If someone dies in a hogan, the Navajo seal it instead of entering it so that the chindi (ghost) will not leave.
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