The Navajo Nation operates Tséhootsooí Diné Bi’ólta’, a Navajo-language immersion school for grades K–8 in Fort Defiance, Arizona. 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 the Navajo language. 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.
The Navajo Nation operates Diné College, a two-year tribal community college, as well as seven sub-campuses throughout the nation. The Navajo Nation Council founded the college in 1968 as the first tribal college in the United States. Since then, tribal colleges have been established on numerous reservations and now total 32. Diné College has 1,830 students enrolled, of which 210 are students seeking transfer to four-year institutions in order to earn bachelor’s degrees. The college includes the Center for Diné Studies. Its goal is to apply Navajo Sa’ah Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhóón principles to advance quality student learning through Nitsáhákees (thinking), Nahat’á (planning), Iiná (living), and Siihasin (assurance) in study of the Diné language, history, and culture. Students are prepared for further studies and employment in a multi-cultural and technological world. There is another Navaho National educational institution. It is Navajo Technical University which offers various vocational, technical, and academic degrees and certificates.
Health
Extensive uranium mining took place in areas of the Navajo Nation from the 1940s, and stringent worker and environmental safety laws were not passed and enforced until the early 1960s. Studies have proven uranium mining created severe environmental consequences for miners and nearby residents. Several types of cancer occur at much higher rates than the national average in these locations. Especially high are the rates of reproductive-organ cancers in teenage Navajo girls, averaging seventeen times higher than the average of girls in the United States. In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
The Navajo are uniquely affected by a rare and life-threatening autosomal recessive multi-system disorder called Navajo Neurohepatopathology (NNH). This genetic condition is estimated to occur in one of every 1,600 live births. The most severe symptoms include neuropathy and liver dysfunction (hepatopathy), both of which may be moderate and progressive or severe and fatal, as it often is in cases that develop in infants (before six months of age) or children (1–5 years).
Diabetes mellitus is a major health problem among the Navajo, Hopi and Pima tribes, whose members are diagnosed at a rate about four times higher than the age-standardized U.S. estimate. Medical researchers believe increased consumption of carbohydrates, coupled with genetic factors, play significant roles in the emergence of this chronic disease among Native Americans.
One in every 2,500 children in the Navajo population inherits severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). This genetic disorder results in births of children with virtually no immune system. In the general population, the genetic disorder is much rarer, affecting one in 100,000 children. The disorder is sometimes known as “bubble boy disease”. This condition is a significant cause of illness and death among Navajo children. Although researchers have identified about a dozen genes that cause SCID, the Navajo/Apache population has the most severe form of the disorder.
With regard to COVID-19, the Navaho Nation surpassed New York as most affected U.S. region per capita, with 4,071 positive COVID-19 tests and 142 fatalities recorded. As of February 2022, there had been 50,428 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Navajo Nation, and 1,619 deaths associated with the virus.
