Drawing on two and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork singing and playing with three Diné country-western bands, I explore how one Native band lives and responds to border town racism and settler nativism in towns bordering the Navajo Nation, the largest Indian reservation in the United States. I illustrate how country music, a genre that has been embraced by Diné people since the late 1930s, serves as a flashpoint for racialized forms of difference and belonging within the liminal space of the Navajo reservation “border town.” I argue that country music performance serves as a condensed site for the enactment and negotiation of border town tensions, microaggressions, and more blatant forms of racism, providing key insights into the ways in which Indigenous country music unsettles Colorado’s own settler-colonial and settler nativist histories in the border town Southwest.

This chapter focuses on how governance changes and allowance for greater local autonomy might create space for economic development. The Navajo Nation has 110 chapters, each with a separate governance role and each with unique challenges. Just as American politicians routinely advocate for local control under the banner of federalism, so too many Diné feel that the tribe would be better with some form of Navajo federalism. Chapter 8 looks at whether rebalancing the division of authority between the centralized bureaucracy in Window Rock and local chapter houses could help cut through the red tape that currently undermines efforts to build community at the local level.

Connecting what happens on Indian reservations with challenges facing the United States, Chapter 1 highlights the significance of what happens in Indian country to those living in neighboring and even distant communities. Chapter 1 also presents in brief the major themes of the book—the heavy federal role in reservation development and resource exploitation, the importance of improving tribal self-governance, and the ways in which land use decisions shape reservation life—and emphasizes the centrality of both history and institutional development in understanding Indian nations today.

Though it is the size of West Virginia, the Navajo Nation is relatively unknown to non-Indians except the few who live there. Chapter 2 presents a portrait of the reservation, covering everything from the ubiquitous poverty and unemployment to the structure of Navajo extended families. The chapter also launches the reader into a brief history of the tribe, moving from the Navajo creation story to the Navajo long walk and internment to the establishment of the reservation with the signing of the 1868 Treaty with the United States.

The modern Navajo Nation government was founded in large part so that oil leases on the reservation could be approved. But as Chapter 3 shows, the Navajo Nation government did not act as mere rubber stamp for non-Indian interests. Though it did permit oil leasing, the tribe went on to reject the signature piece of New Deal policy directed at Indians, the Indian Reorganization Act. After presenting this foundational period of the Navajo Nation government, the chapter then presents one of the most tragic events in the collective memory of the Navajo people, federally-imposed livestock reduction, which continues to shape tribal land use patterns as well as federal-tribal relations.

Arguably the most controversial chapter of the book, Chapter 6 focuses on corruption by tribal officials. Tribal sovereignty advocates and non-Indian scholars are often reluctant to talk about tribal governance failures, but this chapter highlights the significance of corruption and the need for improvement within the tribal government. It uses the stories of Tribal Chairman Peter MacDonald’s corruption in the 1980s as well as the more recent controversies involving the Tribal Council’s use of discretionary funds for personal benefit to show how corruption impacts tribal economic development and tribal land policies.

Chapter 4 focuses on the problematic nature of Navajo uranium and coal development following the end of World War II. By not revealing the dangers involved and holding back information on the value of the resources, the U.S. government facilitated particularly destructive forms of development while failing to ensure the tribe received fair compensation. The current reliance of the Navajo Nation on extractive industries for jobs and government revenue can be traced, in part, to the inequities in bargaining position and legal authority over the land that surround the mining agreements approved by the tribe in the early part of the self-determination period.

Navajo economic development and governance will always be hard. Located within the United States, the Navajo Nation has to deal with both external and internal challenges. The conclusion, however, offers measured optimism. Whenever the tribal has faced challenges, such as corruption or the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been leaders who have stood up for the people. The chapter ends by arguing that there is space for the Navajo Nation to push its independence and that non-Indians should be allow the tribe to set its own path.

It is imperative that the Navajo Nation engage in meaningful land reform. This chapter highlights the challenges Dinē families face when seeking permission to use tribal trust land. Beginning with an exploration of the motivation behind the Navajo Nation’s recent effort to reform the process for obtaining a homesite lease, the chapter describes how it can be hard to find useable land even on the largest reservation. As the chapter notes, there are many reasons, including the need to find an alternative tax base now that extractive industries such as coal are leaving the reservation, that the central government should be interested in land reform. But hitting the right spot, the amount of paperwork and required fees, when it comes to formalizing use rights is hard. The Navajo Nation faces real difficulties resolving the how much control and what sort of control the central government should exercise over Dinē life, especially as it relates to the home.