How Migration, Cultural Clashes and Place Combine to Create Group Identities: How the Diné Became the Navajo

The Diné (meaning “the people”) as the Navajo traditionally refer to themselves, arrived in the America’s along with other Na Dene (Athabascan) speaking peoples from Beringia sometime between 10,000 and 8000 BCE. The Navajo, and their cousins the Apache, represent the southern extremity of Na Dene speakers in the Americas and both tribes are currently found in the American southwest in the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. The Diné did not migrate to the American southwest as a single identifiable group, but rather migrated to the region as small bands of hunter-gatherers that spoke a similar language. It was not until their arrival in the American southwest among the specific place characteristics of their adopted homeland, the absorption of Puebloan agriculture, the assimilation of Spanish material culture, and the eventual domination by the Americans, that the Diné became the Navajo.