All Navajo Nation offices were closed yesterday, May 31, 2024, in observance of Navajo Nation Memorial Day, which falls on today, June 1, 2024.
On June 1, 1868, a delegation of Navajo leaders signed with X’s a “treaty and agreement” with the United States that ended the exile of the Navajo from their ancestral homeland and their incarceration at Fort Sumner.
Four years earlier, the Army rounded up the Navajo and forced them to walk to Fort Sumner, approximately 350 miles, in a campaign to assimilate the Navajo and relocate them to a reservation.
With the Treaty of 1868, the Navajo became the only Native nation to use an agreement with the federal government to return home.
The Treaty of 1868 resonates as a document with historical, legal, and cultural meaning.
Even though the Treaty anticipated the eventual assimilation of the Navajo, it also created the physical space and opportunity for the Navajo to define and exercise sovereignty and self-government.
The Treaty of 1868 Peace Commission/Tappan Copy is on display today at the Navajo Nation Museum.
“Let us engage in the value of the oral history and share with our loved ones, our history, stories of who our grandparents are, where we come from, our clan lineage and history of our families,” said President Nygren. “This brings us back to beginnings, it is these stories that make up our identity. Let us move forward, empower each other, and raise each other up. Let us practice K’e in everything we do.”
###
