A Nation Within
Navajo Land and Economic Development

Examines land-use patterns and economic development on the Navajo Nation, telling a story about resource exploitation and tribal sovereignty.

Ezra Rosser (Author)

9781108833936, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 7 October 2021

300 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.3 cm, 0.63 kg

'Ezra Rosser is a treasure. A Nation Within is a sensitive and provocative account of the Navajo Nation, as a government, and the Diné people, as a complex community of real people who have faced (and are still facing) challenges both external and internal to the Nation with incredible resilience. Rosser does not mince words. His account is not romantic. He ventures directly into the honest, on-the-ground messiness inherent when governments have to make hard choices – as the Navajo Nation has done time again, including in making the controversial environmental and economic trade-offs that Rosser so deftly describes. Rosser's account will change how we think not only about tribal land governance but also about the potential for more localized land reform and development. This is essential reading in our current political moment. There is much Americans can learn from this story of the Navajo Nation and from Rosser himself.' Jessica A. Shoemaker, Professor of Law, University of Nebraska College of Law

In A Nation Within, Ezra Rosser explores the connection between land-use patterns and development in the Navajo Nation. Roughly the size of Ireland or West Virginia, the Navajo reservation has seen successive waves of natural resource-based development over the last century: grazing and over-grazing, oil and gas, uranium, and coal; yet Navajos continue to suffer from high levels of unemployment and poverty. Rosser shows the connection between the exploitation of these resources and the growth of the tribal government before turning to contemporary land use and development challenges. He argues that, in addition to the political challenges associated with any significant change, external pressures and internal corruption have made it difficult for the tribe to implement land reforms that could help provide space for economic development that would benefit the Navajo Nation and Navajo tribal members.

Preface: 1. Introduction
2. The Navajo nation
3. A new and old deal for Navajos: Oil and sheep
4. War production and growing pains: uranium and coal
5. Alternative environmental paths
6. Golf balls and discretionary funds
7. Improving tribal governance
8. Locally grounded development
9. Reclaiming the land
10. Creating space for experimentation
11. Sovereign assertions
12. Conclusion
Acknowledgments.

Subject Areas: International environmental law [LBBP], Human rights [JPVH], Indigenous peoples [JFSL9]