Space and Society: How the 1934 Livestock Reduction Program Brought Colonization to the Navajo Nation

Introduction

The study of Native American history, particularly in the case of the Navajo Nation, brings to light the chilling evidence of American colonialism under one of its more insidious guises.  According to National Geographic, colonization occurs when one power asserts control over a dependent area or people, as the U.S. government exemplifies throughout Navajo history. Whereas violence is the most identifiable colonization tactic historically used by the U.S. and white Americans against native populations, it was the weaponization of political reform enacted against the Navajo tribe that constituted the most devastating propellents of colonialism on their reservation by the United States federal government since their settlement. The most effective bract of New Deal-era federal agroeconomic reform efforts, known today as “the Navajo Dew Deal,” in the colonization of Navajo space was a sect of legislative agricultural reform known as the 1934 Livestock Reduction program. Understanding how this federal reform program ushered colonialism into the reservation requires, first and foremost, a thorough theoretical and conceptual understanding of space. French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre asserts in his 1974 book “The Production of Space” that social space is a social product, as “every society… produces a space, its own space.” Though the effects of the 1934 Livestock Reduction program were economically devastating, the analysis of Navajo culture and their response to this program showcases how, in contrast to Lefebvre’s theory that a society will dictate the space it inhabits, tribesmen allow the space they inhabited to dictate cultural, economic, and religious practices within Navajo society. Further analysis into these avenues reveals how the 1934 Livestock Reduction program effectively colonized the space inhabited by the Navajo, and how their relationship to their space allowed colonization to permeate the reservation. Lefebvre categorizes “space” into three components: lived space is physical and tangible space that is known to exist, such as a park or other examples of public space; perceived space is ideological space that is believed to exist, such as religious or spiritual space; and conceived space is space that is mathematically or scientifically theorized to exist, such as political and social space. This multifaceted understanding of both Lefebvre’s spacial theories and the relationship held between Navajo society and their lived, perceived, and conceived space allows for an understanding of how said relationship allowed colonialism, ushered into the reservation by the 1934 Livestock Reduction program, to permeate not only Navajo space but their society.

The Livestock Reduction Program of 1934

The American invasion of Navajo territory in 1856 brought about a period of displacement in Navajo history that ended, for lack of a better word, with the tribe’s return to Fort Sumner following the Treaty Between the United States of America and the Navajo Tribe of Indians, otherwise known as the Indian Treaty of 1868. This treaty forced tribesmen to settle on a 5,460-square-mile desert reservation on the border of New Mexico and Arizona and “relinquish all right to occupy any territory outside their reservation” in exchange for peace. Subsequent decades were spent by the tribe utilizing what little land allocations were available to them to continue the livestock pastoralism lifestyle that had historically upheld their economy and was integral to Navajo culture. A report by the Superintendent of Indian Schools at Gallup  “described the Navajo as wealthy and ‘self-supporting ever since 1876’… but warned that ranges were ‘overstocked and overcropped, and that something must be done to improve the lands or the flocks must be greatly diminished.’” In response to this ecological issue, against the backdrop of an economically failing America, the U.S. government imposed onto the Navajo Nation the 1934 Livestock Reduction Program. 

With the U.S. deep in the throes of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, the establishment of public programs and financial reform under the New Deal sought to bring economic relief to struggling Americans. The Indian Reorganization Act, a New Deal endeavor, was thus enacted in 1934 as an effort to “conserve and develop Indian lands and resources; to extend to Indians the right to form business and other organizations; to establish a credit system for Indians; to grant certain rights of home rule to Indians; to provide for vocational education for Indians; and for other purposes.” Under Section 6 of this congressional act, specifically, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior was given directions “to make rules and regulations for the operation and management of Indian forestry units on the principle of sustained-yield management, to restrict the number of livestock grazed on Indian range units to the estimated carrying capacity of such ranges, and to promulgate such other rules and regulations as may be necessary to protect the range from deterioration, to prevent soil erosion, to assure full utilization of the range, and like purposes.”  The numerous restrictions on livestock sizes within the reservation therein justified by this act, all of which comprised the 1934 Livestock Reduction program, brought desperate poverty to and permanently altered the agroeconomic society within the Navajo reservation. Whereas poorer herdsmen were disproportionally affected by livestock reduction during the program’s first few years in effect, the 1936 “leveling” effort associated with the program, which divided the reservation into eighteen Land Management Units (LMU) and established carrying capacities for each district, primarily targeted wealthier herdsmen by establishing a system of herding permits ensuring that, even if the upper class “traditionally occupied the best grazing areas, [they] could not build their herds back to former levels,” effectively compromising their longstanding ability to commercialize large herds as a means of economic stability. These restrictions on land usage led to widespread poverty and economic strife within the confines of the Navajo reservation- the same land upon which the tribe had previously maintained successful pastoralism for the maintenance of their economy since the early 1900s and as a reliable means of individual sustenance for centuries. 

Though the 1934 Livestock Reduction program demonstrates through both its literal contents and its devastating economic consequences how the program effectively colonized the space inhabited by the Navajo, further analysis of their culture and their response to this program reveals, in contrast to Lefebvre’s theory that a society will dictate the space it inhabits, that tribesmen allowed the space they inhabited to dictate cultural, economic, and religious practices within their society:

There can be no realistic separation of [Navajo] societal organization from 

erosion, poverty or population increase. The intricate web of relationships that bind person to person… manifests itself in the pattern of livestock ownership and range use.

In seeking a nuanced understanding of how the tribe’s societal reaction to the colonization of their space points towards this assertion, one must first understand the extent to which Navajo culture is intricately connected to nature, whether through religion, gender, or traditional practices. Through all of these examples, it is made clear that Navajo society, prior to and even amidst livestock reduction, did not dictate but rather was dictated by the space they inhabited. 

Historiography of Navajo Space 

The historiography of the Navajo Nation and their relationship to the Navajo reservation amidst the Livestock Reduction program was notably affected as a result of the era of Red Power in the 1960s and 1970s. Accompanying and extending from Red Power activism in support of uplifting Navajo voices, “the number of Native newspapers and periodicals skyrocketed and served as an important catalyst for the cultural, political, and religious resurgence of the people across Indian Country.” Seonghoon Kim’s 2015 article for the American Indian Quarterly analyzes how the Red Power movement allowed the public during the 1960s and 1970s, through publications that “helped disseminate the idea of Red Power, fostering American Indian unity through specific coverage and reports on a variety of pan-Indigenous protests,” to fully understand the history of the US-Indigenous colonial relationship. Kim argues through their article that the upsurge in documentation of the Native American experience through Red Power newspapers such as Warpath and Americans Before Columbus, or ABC, “serves as a crucial vehicle for the poetic expression of pan-Indigenous resistance… achieving sovereignty, resisting stereotypes, and protecting the environment,” and that contemporary Native American journalism now creates “a place for the voices of everyday Native people to resist colonialism.” 

The historical discussion surrounding the Navajo Reservation amidst the 1934 Livestock Reduction program has undergone extensive remodeling since the effects of Red Power movements had time to settle in society- the period beforehand having produced works such as Eric Henderson’s 1989 article Navajo Livestock Wealth and the Effects of the Stock Reduction Program of the 1930s. Henderson, utilizing minimal references to works by Navajo academics, uses data tables and censuses to demonstrate the effects of the 1934 Livestock Reduction program on both the lower and upper classes within the Navajo reservation. His research presents the idea that the program consisted of two phases, the first phase having seemingly little effect on the upper class while devastating lower-class families and the second phase leveling the lower and upper classes by guaranteeing that “no family could subsist from stock husbandry alone.” In his conclusion, Henderson claims that “government officials were aware of wealth differences among the Navajo, but the nature and extent of their understanding are not entirely clear.” This assumption that the federal government was in any way oblivious to the financial devastation brought upon the Navajo reservation by the Livestock Reduction program is misleading, as the dissatisfaction of the Navajo people at their treatment by the federal government is well documented through the likes of official complaints, resistance to colonialism, and personal accounts.

The effects of the Red Power movements following their success are reflected in contemporary historical works about Navajo history during the early 20th century, as exemplified in works such as Jerrold E. Levy’s In the Beginning: The Navajo Genesis, published in 1998, and Jessica L. Bertolozzi’s 2012 research paper entitled “Environmental Programs and Material Culture: The 1934 Livestock Reduction Program and Weaving Among the Navajo.” Levy’s monograph attributes changes in Navajo society and religion throughout history to external factors affecting the tribe such as migration and colonialism, maintaining the sentiment that “Navajo religion is as sophisticated as the ‘great’ religions of the Western world.” Similarly, Bertolozzi describes in her paper how “government programs and interventions, such as the Livestock Reduction Program of 1934, which attempted to manage the changing ecological environment, interacted with the material culture of weaving.” In addition to this tonal shift observed in more recent Native American history authored by non-Natives, the voices of Native American historians and, subsequently, their analyses of the history of their own spaces began to pop up in academia following the Red Power movements. Navajo historian Jennifer Nez Denetdale, for example, offered in her 2016 article the following perspective regarding the lasting effects of federally delegated space on the Navajo people:

Invisible boundaries… demarcate space as either ‘tribal’ or ‘urban and non-Indian’ and… supposedly limit ‘Indians’ to designated tribal spaces. When ‘Indians’ leave these spaces, they are cast as out of place, ‘modern,’ ‘progressive,’ ‘urban,’ and even ‘non-traditional…’ Even though Gallup, like other border towns, is established on aboriginal Diné lands, the town’s space is rendered as foreign territory and Diné are cast as the invaders and aliens who threaten white civilization.

Whether through the well-rounded historical analyses of Navajo space made possible by the intimate understanding of their culture or the uplifting and prioritization of Navajo voices and perspectives of their own history, these examples show how historians have come to recognize the importance of respect in academia and legitimize the study of lived, perceived, and conceived Navajo space since the Red Power movements. This historiographic chronology in regards to the Navajo Nation thus clears the way for a nuanced and inclusive analysis of the colonization brought to the reservation by the 1934 Livestock Reduction program, and how their unique relationship with their space allowed for the colonization of their society. 

Tradition and Spiritual Space in Navajo Culture

Navajo religion and ritual have extensive ties to nature, as detailed by Louise Lamphere in her 1969 article for the Southwestern Journal of Anthropology titled “Symbolic Elements of Navajo Ritual.” Lamphere’s analysis of Navajo spirituality in relation to nature showcases the ways in which spiritual space dictated how tribesmen navigated life, whether through offerings, healing illness, or the role of women in society. Through all of these ritual procedures, “natural products (plant, animal, and mineral substances) are transformed into objects associated with supernaturals. These are applied to or taken into the body.” This suggests that, rather than allowing bodily processes to classify the world around them, the Navajo spiritual space and concepts concerning the natural and supernatural world dictated the tribe’s interpretation of bodily processes. 

The reverence with which Navajo culture views women in society stems from the most important deity in Navajo religion. Tribal devotion to Changing Woman, the deity who “created the Diné and their livestock and gave them their central ceremony, Blessingway,” was reflected in their matricentered society:

Women stood at the center of almost all aspects of Diné life and thought: spiritual beliefs, kinship, residence patterns, land use traditions, and economy… Living in a society that measured wealth and prestige in livestock, those women who owned especially large flocks thereby amplified their autonomy and authority within their rural communities.

Through her 2007 article for Western Historical Quarterly, Marsha Weisiger argues that efforts to persuade the tribe to accept the Indian Reorganization Act “‘failed largely because women of the tribe were not won over" in support of the act, as the voices of women in Navajo society were heavily revered in synchrony with the overarching spiritual authority of Changing Woman. In allowing for the most important deity in the Navajo spiritual space to dictate the role of women in land use and the economy, the tribe allowed further the space they inhabited to dictate their society. Furthermore, the effectiveness of women’s resistance to the Indian Reorganization Act in association with the 1934 Livestock Reduction program highlights how the tribe utilized this relationship with space to navigate the effects of government-ordained inequality through land use restrictions in the Navajo reservation. 

The spiritual space of the Navajo heavily influenced architecture and social division on the reservation, as is represented through the sacred implications of the traditional Navajo dwelling space called a hogan. The hogan was traditionally constructed in accordance with “its relationship to the rising sun and to the sacred mountains” within the reservation, as “Diné tradition views the universe as a giant hogan, and the universe is created in microcosm in every hogan that is built.” The structure of the spiritual space is thus present in the structure of the hogan.

The door to a hogan is always oriented towards the east, and the movement within a hogan is prescribed in a clockwise direction, following the sun’s path in the sky. Smoke from the centrally located fire or stove is directed out of the hogan through a hole in the roof, as are songs and prayers.

The structure of the family unit, upon which hinged the social organization of the tribe as a whole, also reflected the nature-based spirituality that dictated the architecture of tribal dwelling spaces. The three main social groupings within Navajo society- the individual family unit, the family group, and the land-use community- each had “its own emphasis in the environment in which it [was] found.” Members of individual family units resided in a single hogan to fulfill daily needs, while coalitions of families related through blood or marriage lived in localities under one leadership to attend to “crises of a greater intensity than those facing the family.” Land-use communities comprised of many family groups living in a contiguous area chosen on the basis of both ancestral settlement and current use of the land, and tended to issues affecting the broader scope of Navajo society as a whole such as “range use and water, the development of farmland and the presentation of a united front toward those who attempt to encroach upon community rights.” This organization of social structure around the targeted fulfillments of needs within their respective spheres of physical space was outwardly represented in the architecture of the individual hogan, which in turn was founded upon the deeply nature-centered Navajo religious beliefs on the reservation. 

Public Space, Politics, and People on the Navajo Reservation after 1934

Despite the agreement reached in the Indian Treaty of 1868 that “the Federal government… provide adequate schools for the youngsters of the tribe,” only an estimated 9,000 of the roughly 24,000 Navajo children living on the reservation were reported to have received some amount of education by 1948. This issue was brought about in part by the remote location of schools for children, with the inaccessibility of the buildings themselves contributing largely to the difficult task of getting children into schools in the first place. In May of 1949, in an effort to rectify this disparity, Senator Arthur V. Watkins of Utah secured funding from Congress to remodel the wartime Bushnell General Hospital and finance it as a boarding school for Navajo children. Dr. George A. Boyce of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, having been selected as general superintendent of the new school, was seemingly proud of his position as leader of a school geared to provide education and accommodation for poverty-stricken children; this attitude is in stark contrast, however, to the issue of staffing he then faced. At the time the article was published in September of 1949, Boyce had yet to hire “the 70 teachers who will start with the first group of 600 children,” most likely due to the unappealing salary of $2,500 a year. 

Two key factors are important to note in this case: the remote location of schools as a contributor to their inaccesibility, and the failure to provide adequate wages to potential teachers as an indicator of the bias held by white Americans that Navajo education was not a worthwhile investment. The former highlights how physical distance from education affected literacy levels within the reservation. Because the rampant illiteracy present in Navajo society at the time was deemed by white Americans as a contributing factor to their desperate economic position amidst the 1934 Livestock Reduction program, resulting in decreased interest in providing funding for Navajo education, the latter demonstrates how relationships held by the tribe- in this case, with their white counterparts- affected their way of life within the reservation. The absence of children within schoolhouses, however, did not in truth signify an absence of intelligence among the tribe- rather, their utilization of empty schoolhouses for political pursuits points to Navajo ingenuity both in this resourceful action and in the political pursuits themselves. The ERA-built rock schoolhouse at Window Rock, Arizona, for example, hosted the inauguration of the first tribal constitution in Navajo history in 1938- where, using a color-based voting system to accommodate for widespread illiteracy in English, the Tribal Council was able to produce what journalist Charles Morrow Wilson called “one of the most enlightened state documents in American history.” Similar evidence of Navajo ingenuity is shown in their ability to successfully irrigate and profit from lands that were drier than much of the Saharah in mean rainfall. Even despite this “abrupt change from a pastoral life to intensive farming, first Navajo harvests show an average value of more than $50 an acre, greater than the white man’s average on the same type of land.” Both of these examples reveal that Navajo wisdom was not inferior in truth and was, rather, immeasurable by most Western standards of intelligence such as literacy in English and arithmetic, and thus was inaccurately deemed as inferior to the intelligence of white Americans due to the inability of Western society to accept any iteration of intelligence different than their own. These examples also demonstrate, in both their use of an underutilized schoolhouse to create the first tribal constitution within the reservation and their ability to source means of financial prosperity in an economically struggling society by successfully irrigating desolate lands, how the 1934 Livestock Reduction program altered the ways in which the Navajo people utilized and interacted with public space on the reservation. 

As touched upon above, both with white Americans and amongst themselves, relationships in Navajo society were dictated by their environment and affected by the 1934 Livestock Reduction program. Economic consequences brought about by different phases of the program fostered disparity between the poorer and wealthier herdsmen within the tribe- similarly, the failure (or refusal, depending on the referenced source) of Navajo tribesmen to assimilate into the colonial society of New Deal-era America applied further pressure to the already-strenuous relations held between the tribesmen and white Americans. These relationship dynamics each impacted the ways in which the tribe interacted with the space they inhabited on the Navajo reservation. Whereas poorer herdsmen suffered immediately under the early stages of the Livestock Reduction program, wealthy Navajo herders experienced the brunt of economic loss only after the 1936 “leveling” program associated with the permit system was implemented. In response to this sudden disadvantage, wealthy owners sought “redress through the bureaucracy and the Tribal Council,” and through these political means were able to enact a plan that allowed wealthy owners “to obtain the underused portions of the permits of their neighbors.” Several “grassroots” resistance efforts came about as a result of these unfair plans- the greatest opposition stemming from districts within the reservation most affected by livestock reduction- which oftentimes led to arrests and periodically resulted in violent confrontations. The social upheaval brought about by these programs was not, however, limited to the scope of resistance efforts, but was in fact felt throughout Navajo society:

The program eventually wrought a fundamental transformation not only in land-use on the reservation, but, more significantly, in the basic structure of Navajo society and economy. Perhaps its most significant effect was the destruction of the Navajo social order, which was grounded in the livestock economy that existed prior to the 1930s and in which the Navajo ‘elite,’ based on livestock holdings, had evolved. The reduction program of the New Deal eradicated foundations for that elite.

The social upheaval brought about by the 1934 Livestock reduction program within the reservation, therefore, highlights another avenue through which inhabited space dictated Navajo society.

Another relationship affected by the program was that between the Navajo Nation and their white counterparts. Even before the program was enacted, tribesmen were subjected to racism and colonialism at the hands of their white neighbors- this disconnect was only amplified in the wake of livestock reduction. The tribe’s “transition from sustainable living based on livestock raising to a wage economy” after 1934, coupled with the fact that “the Navajo resource base could only ever support 35,000 persons at a minimum subsistence living, where the population at the time was estimated at 61,000” meant that more and more tribesmen were spilling out from the reservation into predominately white border towns in search of wage labor. It was in these border towns, within which tribesmen were subjected by colonialist programs to work amongst their white neighbors, “where they experienced racism, discrimination, and gender disparities” that only added to pre-existing tension between the tribe and white Americans. This dismissal of the Navajo people was not only displayed by their white neighbors, but by their white representatives, as well. A 1938 article for Newsweek, for example, highlights the indifference with which complaints from the reservation were met by John Collier, the deeply unpopular Commissioner of Indian Affairs who oversaw the implementation of livestock reduction within the reservation. Following the enactment of the 1934 Livestock Reduction program, the reservation was visited by “agronomists from Vermont, great engineers from Georgia, soil-erosion experts from Harvard, sociologists from Columbia, and other social workers… none of whom could tell gamma grass from loco weed nor a sheep from a goat.” The Navajo people took offense to this invasion of their lands by foreigners who knew nothing about their land or their culture, and they subsequently called for the ouster of Collier. In response to these complaints by his constituents, Collier was quoted as follows:

‘For some time the Indian Rights Association has been unable to find anything good being done for the Navajos. This latest outburst is just carping criticism. We don’t fear it. The association hasn’t got any influence anyway.’

Furthermore, after stating that “‘the American Indian must be returned to his savage dignity as a people,’” Collier was reported to have sent the Superintendent of the Navajo reservation “twelve fencing jackets and three cases of bolo knives or machetes.” The Navajo, of course, had no use in their culture for these gifts outside of utilizing machetes as meat cleavers- a fact that one might presume the former secretary of the Indian Rights Association would have known. The complete dismissal of the tribe’s complaints by their white representatives such as Collier and foreign experts who had already left a bitter taste in the mouths of the Navajo by “monitoring their activities without attempting to truly understand them or their culture,” along with the discrimination faced by tribesmen from their white counterparts in border towns, exemplify how the 1934 Livestock Reduction program brought policies and situational factors to the reservation that fostered further degradation of the Navajo people’s tumultuous relationship with the federal government and the colonialist society of white America.

Colonization of Native Space Through Livestock Reduction

The physical colonization of public space within the reservation, a right given to the U.S. government by the Indian Treaty of 1868, constitutes one example of how the 1934 Livestock Reduction program effectively colonized Navajo space. According to the treaty, tribesmen were not allowed to oppose in any way “the construction of railroads, wagon roads, mail stations, or other works of utility or necessity which may be ordered or permitted by the laws of the United States,” nor could they object to the construction of U.S. military posts on the reservation or retaliate against white settlers. The establishment of national parks on the reservation, a colonial effort protected by this treaty, “not only limited Navajo access to important resources (such as offering places and plant gathering areas), but also affected other natural and cultural resources within the canyons.” Mining endeavors, such as coal mining on Black Mesa and its use of the water, “[altered] the entire landscape and often [destroyed] offering sites, plant-gathering areas, and other sacred places.”  These examples demonstrate how the government-regulated use of public space by the Navajo physically colonized their land, which in turn altered their society and way of life. The Tribal Council of the Navajo Nation was subsequently utilized to regain some authority over their lands in the face of this physical colonization within the reservation. In pursuit of these efforts, the Tribal Council “[claimed] the right to form tribal corporations for buying and selling any needed merchandise, operating mills or stores, mines or factories and caring for orphans, minors and aged within the nation,” while also proclaiming their intention to “check pillaging of Navajo funds by political desperados… who have repeatedly seized Navajo trust money for building roads, bridges and meeting deficits of no benefit to the Navajos.” Analysis of the broad political system within the reservation, of which the Tribal Council was an integral component, reveals further how the political space within the reservation was affected by livestock reduction. Aided by the resistance efforts of Navajo women, The Indian Reorganization Act was rejected by the council in 1935 due to their association of the act with the destructive 1934 Livestock Reduction Program, and “Navajos were subjected to government rule based on Western democratic principles” under subsequent political policy. These patriarchal principles, which placed men in positions of political leadership in contrast to traditional Navajo hierarchy within their matriarchal society, further “undermined Navajo women’s traditional rights including land-use rights [and] property and livestock rights.” In such a matricentered society as that of the Navajo, the act of indoctrinating tribesmen with Western patriarchal views can be reasonably argued to be an act of colonialism in itself. Ironically, the U.S. government, operating within a vehemently patriarchal society, overlooked the possibility of women holding significant societal influence, and thus was undermined in its colonial efforts by its own colonial predispositions.

Economic colonization goes hand-in-hand with political colonization in the case of the Navajo reservation during the 1930s. Before the Treaty of 1868, the Navajo tribe was self-sufficient largely through pastoralism. As they had relied on sheepherding for sustenance for decades, herding sheep as a means of financial and economic gain post-treaty “formed the basis for a transition to a capitalistic society, with new goals for individuals and for family groups, a new set of social stratification and prestige hierarchy, [and] an altered set of values.” Livestock reduction, however, shook the tribe’s economy to its core and effectively transformed the tribal socioeconomy from one of pastoralism to one of wage labor and farming. Prior to the 1934 Livestock Reduction program, the price of wool had experienced a steady decline in the U.S. following a surplus of supply, rendering the main source of income for many lower-class herders on the reservation suddenly unrealistic. This grim reality would only deepen during the early years of livestock reduction, which rendered the herd sizes of poor herders on the reservation smaller than needed for even personal sustenance, let alone for economic endeavors. The use of the Navajo political system by wealthy herders after the 1936 implementation of the permit system that targeted upper-class herders, through which the wealthy gained the legal right to purchase the unutilized portions of their lower-class neighbors’ herding permits, shows how wealthy herders were able to themselves participate in Western capitalistic economic practices. The use of this strategy, reliant on the weaponization of political influence by the upper class, furthermore exposes the adoption of colonialist political and economic ideology by the Navajo themselves in response to the repercussions of livestock reduction. 

The heavy influence of nature-based spirituality in every facet of the Navajo way of life, particularly in relation to architecture, fostered yet another avenue through which the 1934 Livestock Reduction program brought colonization to Navajo lands. Through their spiritual practices, members of the tribe “created cultural meaning and constructed a sense of identity in their surroundings, receiving guidance and strength through ritual practice inextricably linked to these landscapes.” While the Navajo people had little to no executive power over colonial jurisdiction imposed by the U.S. government on the borders of their reservation and the legality of their land’s usage, the importance of the environment and spiritual space to the Navajo Nation is made apparent through the tribe’s adherence to cultural precedent through their use of the space they inhabited in dictating their society amidst the 1934 Livestock Reduction program. Understanding the program’s impact on spiritual Navajo practices derived from nature, such as “the spiritual and religious culture that was intertwined with the weaving culture,” is just as crucial when analyzing how the 1934 Livestock Reduction program brought colonialism to Navajo spaces. Navajo spirituality applied their creation story and religion to the art of weaving, for example, through the inclusion of prayers in the weaving process and their equation of the loom to the human body, both of which “can experience pain if either is stationary for a long amount of time.” Weaving also constituted a source of income for women- one that was disparaged by the decrease of available time to weave following the necessity of “off-reservation wage work for the Navajo people, as an alternative to the economic resource of their livestock.” Whereas the art of weaving represents the tendency of Navajo tribesmen to allow their environment to dictate their spirituality, the decrease in active weaving practice among tribesmen as a result of mass reliance on wage work to supplement income lost to the 1934 Livestock Reduction program represents how Navajo spirituality was further dictated by colonization and governmental limitations on the use of their space. 

The appropriation of Navajo architecture, also heavily spiritual in both design and utilization, in the construction of Window Rock in the circumstances surrounding the 1934 Livestock Reduction program. In an effort to extend federal oversight of the implementation of livestock reduction into the reservation itself, John Collier oversaw the construction of this agency town in Arizona comprised of fifty buildings in which to host multiple federal agencies. This project commenced in hopes that using materials traditionally used by native craftsmen such as sticks and adobe blocks to build an agency town architecturally inspired by native architecture would give the Navajo tribe “‘buildings which they can understand and build,’” while simultaneously “‘bringing the finer things of white life to the Indians.” The intentions in the construction of Window Rock were thus explicitly colonial- less explicit in colonial intent, on the other hand, was the appropriation of Navajo culture brought to the surface in the events surrounding the agency town’s construction. Any efforts made by the proprietors of this federal undertaking to win additional influence over the tribe were thwarted by the use of Pueblo architectural design advertised as traditionally Navajo in forty-nine of the fifty buildings of Window Rock. The phenomena of “imperialist nostalgia,” or the oftentimes racist romanticization of Native American cultures and communities by white romantics and antimodern idealists, furthered this appropriation both inherently and by codnoning the use of mistakenly Pueblo architecture in “Indianizing” the agency town. The Navajo in turn viewed Window Rock not as a symbol of intersectionality between their tribe and the federal government but “as a symbol to Indians of lost political autonomy,” constituting yet another example of the 1934 Livestock Reduction program effectively colonizing Navajo space.

Conclusion

The understanding of colonization as acts of control taken by those in power over a dependent area or people lends itself, in the case of the Navajo Nation amidst the New Deal, to the understanding of Navajo space as the compass of Navajo society. Society within the reservation is intricately intertwined with and inexplicably reliant upon every component of Navajo space; be it physical, spiritual, or political. Each of these iterations of space corresponds with Lefebvre’s categorization of space into lived, perceived, and conceived space- all of which were altered after the 1934 Livestock Reduction program ushered colonialism onto the reservation. Each example of this phenomenon outlined in this essay also subsequently demonstrates how individual tribesmen were forced to adapt to their newly colonized space in order to survive and were thus colonized themselves, as well. In this way, livestock reduction amidst the New Deal colonized not only Navajo space but Navajo society itself.

Lefebvre theorized that a society produces the space it occupies; in the case of the Navajo Nation, however, the space occupied shaped the society. The Navajo tribe’s relationship with space cleared the path for colonization to permeate Navajo society as well as their space. Because Navajo society was a product of the space they inhabited, the colonization of that space brought forth by the 1934 Livestock Reduction program resulted in the colonization of the Navajo people- the very same space that the Navajo people, upon their retrospectively ironic agreement to the Indian Treaty of 1868, pledged with unknowing signatures to “relinquish all right to occupy.”

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