Who Are Navajo Indians?
The Navajo Indians are a Southwestern Native American tribe with a 27,000 square mile (69,930 square kilometer) mostly autonomous reservation called Dine Bikeyah or Navajoland that includes sections of New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. The Navajo refer to themselves as the Dine or “the people” and are the second largest Indian tribe in the United States with a population that exceeds 250,000 members. Navajo was the name given to the tribe by 17th century Spanish explorers who were among the first Europeans to encounter it. Navajo Indians are believed to have separated from a single tribe that crossed over the Bering land bridge several thousand years ago into Canada’s Northwest Territories before eventually migrating to and settling in the Southwestern United States by around 1000 AD.
