This qualitative study seeks to determine the critical elements and activities that comprise the cultural history of Dine College as the first tribally controlled college in the United States. An oral history methodology utilizing a narrative Dine "story-telling" inquiry approach allowed this study to blend stories, songs, prayers, and ceremonies from the Dine creation stories to challenge a host of social, educational, and cultural issues which the Dine people confronted in establishing the first post-secondary educational institution on tribal land, owned and operated by tribal people. Goals of this institution were to prepare students for further academic studies, employment, and culturally astuteness. Cultural history reflects the traditional stories, songs, prayers, and ceremonies of a people, and is used here to reconstruct the events of the past to gain a fair, accurate, and objective understanding of Dine College's unique philosophy of Sa'ah Naaghai Bik'eh Hozhoon and its related components: Nitsahakees-Thinking, Nahata-Planning, Iina-Living and Siih Hasin-Achievement. Through oral history narratives of four key Navajo individuals who were directly and indirectly involved in the College's founding, five key themes are revealed: land, leadership, mission, philosophy, and curriculum. They converge together to weave the cultural history of Dine College.

This dissertation includes a contextual analysis of two female Diné poets who use storytelling and writing and includes a chapter on the pedagogical implications of Native American student storytelling and writing. I first examine poetry written by two Diné women, Luci Tapahonso and Laura Tohe to understand the ways these poets, particularly the poetry, reclaim and revive Diné literacies and rhetorics. My analyses are informed by the historical and cultural contexts that shaped Diné philosophy, particularly, the philosophy that informs and is shaped by the practice of Diné literacies and rhetorics. I draw from mythical, historical, and contemporary Diné, Native American, and other minoritized scholars for lenses of analysis to show how these poets define and reclaim the female Diné voice and identity. Colonial and neocolonial changes in Diné lifeways and traditions and the encounters between Diné and other groups and the imposition of the English language (written literacy) are pertinent to these contextual analyses and pedagogical implications.

This research reviews Diné governance with an eye towards forecasting reform. What do traditional Diné institutions of governance offer to our understanding of the contemporary challenges faced by the Navajo Nation today and tomorrow? The research is part history, and part political science while pioneering applications of cutting edge research methods. Primary and secondary research will detail where Navajo Nation has been. Diné history is explored via creation stories, the Naachid systems, and the various contemporary councils. Unclear aspects of Diné history are illuminated by relying on oral accounts. Analysis pinpoints what is missing in governance today while questioning whether looking to the past alone will help make governance work better tomorrow. Sometimes adopting traditional Diné governance institutions is not feasible, not wanted, or not possible. New methodological territory offers insight when the past and the future do not work well together. The concept building method is utilized as a way of mitigating the loss that occurs when English words fail to capture the essence of Navajo language. Concepts organic to Navajo culture such as Naachid, Naat'aanii, War Naat'aanii, Peace Naat'aanii, etc, are turned to for assistance in dealing with contemporary issues. Navajo concepts are represented in three-level-view depictions. Three-level-view expressions require that concepts be observed on three-levels. Level one is the name. Under the name level are the set of necessary and sufficient conditions which must be present or you do not have an actual concept. Under each of the conditions are the data/observations which must be present in order to verify that the condition is present. Concept building displays where Navajo Nation has been in order to better understand where Navajo Nation needs to go. The visual presentation of traditional concepts of Diné governance makes them more understandable. Interestingly, when the concept building method is applied to post 1922 Diné governance, the true motives of the United States become obvious. A clearer path is presented toward incorporating chapter house government into national government. Developing contemporary concepts of Navajo governance based on traditional teachings equips us to deal with contemporary issues.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1975. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliographical footnotes.

The Navajo Nation comprises 110 local communities spread over 16 million acres and linked under a highly centralized system of tribal government. Since the creation of the Navajo chapter system, which facilitates local governance for the Navajo Nation, there have been growing tensions between some of these local communities and the central government in Window Rock. In the 1990s and early 2000s, several of these communities moved to claim greater decision-making authority as an assertion of local empowerment. This dissertation examines three such communities and their empowerment strategies: a grassroots secession movement at Tohajiilee, Shonto's use of the Navajo Nation's Local Governance Act (LGA), and the establishment of the Kayenta Township. This comparative study examines these strategies and considers their significance for the future of Navajo leadership and self-government.

abstract: In 2005 the Navajo Nation Tribal Council passed the Navajo Sovereignty in Education Act (NSEA). The NSEA has been herald as a decisive new direction in Diné education with implications for Diné language and cultural revitalization. However, research has assumed the NSEA will lead to decolonizing efforts such as language revitalization and has yet to critically analyze how the NSEA is decolonizing or maintains settler colonial educational structures. In order to critically investigate the NSEA this thesis develops a framework of educational elimination through a literature review on the history of United States settler colonial elimination of Indigeneity through schooling and a framework of decolonizing education through a review of literature on promising practices in Indigenous education and culturally responsive schooling. The NSEA is analyzed through the decolonizing education framework and educational elimination framework. I argue the NSEA provides potential leverage for both decolonizing educational practices and the continuation of educational elimination. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Social Justice and Human Rights 2015

abstract: Ultimately, the examples and foundation provided at home will impact the child as a student and lifelong learner. In Navajo society, there are some families who continue to instill the importance of heritage language and culture. And then there are those who choose not to, or who are not capable of doing so due to the lack of knowledge to share such teachings. Diné language and culture are vital elements of who we are as Diné. They are what identify us as a people. Our language and culture separate us from the western society. As parents and educators, our attitudes affect our homes, schools, and children. Our way of thinking may inhibit or perpetuate cultural teachings. However, no one knows how parents' attitudes affect cultural integration at an immersion school. This quantitative study examined parents' attitudes toward cultural integration in a Navajo language immersion school (Ts4hootsoo7 Diné Bi')lta' with the Window Rock Unified School District #8 in Fort Defiance, Arizona). Surveys were used to examine parents' attitudes about language and cultural integration. The survey asked about Navajo language and culture, about the extent to which it was practiced at home, and their opinions about how Navajo language and culture was being taught at school. The data were reported in basic descriptive statistics for the total group of respondents and then disaggregated by age, place of birth (on the reservation or off), gender, marital status, and highest grade completed in school. The data has shown that overall parents are supportive of Navajo language and culture. Their attitudes may vary based on age, place of birth, gender, marital status, and education. In spite of this, Navajo language and culture are in the home. However, the degree to which it is spoken or practiced is not measured. Parents are supportive of the school teaching Navajo language and culture. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Educational Administration and Supervision 2012

Aldo Crommelynck (1931-2008) a animé l'atelier Crommelynck à Paris de 1956 à 1986, en compagnie de son frère Piero, puis a travaillé seul entre Paris et New York en partenariat avec Pace Editions, jusqu'en 1998. Sa collaboration avec les peintres modernes, dont Picasso à Mougins, a inauguré une carrière internationale auprès d'une quarantaine d'artistes contemporains. Sa maîtrise de l'eau-forte s'est intégrée au milieu artistique international, entre Paris, Londres et New York, dans un contexte profitable au marché de l'art. Son nom est associé à un mouvement de retour à la taille­douce qui coïncide avec le goût des artistes issus du Pop pour le travail de la main et pour la figuration du quotidien. D'autres, issus du minimalisme et du néo-expressionnisme, verront en lui le dépositaire d'un certain métier de la gravure identifié à Paris. Cette thèse entend déterminer ce que fut le «style Crommelynck», dans toutes ses dimensions. / Aldo Crommelynck (1931-2008) run the Crommelynck studio, in Paris from 1956 to 1986, with his brother Piero, and then worked alone between Paris and New York in partnership with Pace Editions until 1998. His collaboration with modem painters, including Picasso in Mougins, preceded his international career with forty or so contemporary artists. His mastery of etching well integrated into the artistic world of Paris, London and New York, in a context profitable to the art market. His name is associated with the revival of printmaking in the United States that coincided with the taste of the artists coming from Pop Art for handmade creation and for the representation of daily life. Others, who came afterwards, impregnated with Minimalism or Neo-expressionism, saw him as the repository of a certain etching craft identified with Paris. This thesis intends to determine what was the « Crommerlynck style » in all its dimensions.

Food deserts are low-income areas lacking access to nutritious and affordable food. Such limited access has various implications for public health, particularly diet-related diseases such as diabetes. Among American Indian communities, diabetes is particularly rampant at nearly twice the rate of white populations in the U.S. On the Navajo Nation, diabetes incidence has been estimated to be as high as 1 in 3. According to the USDA, the majority of the Navajo Nation is considered a food desert. This paper utilizes food sovereignty as a lens for decolonization to identify the underlying causes of hunger and nutrition-related diseases within Diné communities. This paper will explore the histories of the change in the Diné diet and how colonial processes and the loss of traditional food systems affects current food and health patterns on the Navajo Nation. By expanding the scope of public health issues such as obesity and diabetes in Native American communities from food access and nutrition to power relations embedded in colonial structures that have resulted in the loss of indigenous sovereignty and power, I hope to pinpoint entry points for future indigenous researchers to develop and enact policies that will expand access to healthy and culturally significant foods on the Navajo Nation and contribute to efforts to restore food sovereignty of the Navajo Nation by rebuilding local food economies.

Legislation has been proposed in Kentucky that would authorize city legislative bodies to levy a tax on restaurant meals of no more than 3%, regardless of the size of the city. The bill has garnered attention from Kentucky Travel Industry Association, the Kentucky Restaurant Association, and local tourism and restaurant organizations and associations that oppose the tax. The Kentucky League of Cities, an organization that represents the interests of city governments, supports the tax. The purpose of this research was to examine how a change in the tax rate on restaurant meals would affect restaurant demand. Effects of changes in restaurant demand were tested using the following independent variables: type of restaurant, menu offering, frequency, expense, and location. Self-administered online surveys were distributed to adult residents in Kentucky, which yielded a sample size of 1,263 individuals. Paired sample t test was applied to make comparison between scenario 1 (current) and scenario 2 (3%) and scenario 1 (current) and scenario 3 (JND). Findings showed that demand patterns in each class of city would be affected by increases in taxes and prices.