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"Ethnologist tells us that the distant ancestors of the Navajos came into the Southwest 1,000 or more years ago."
-Authors notes

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The Native American Navajo tribe is one of the largest tribes of American Indians. They lived in the Southwest in areas that are today Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. The name "Navajo" comes from the Spanish who called them the Apaches of Navajo. They called themselves "Dine" or "the People".

Source: https://www.ducksters.com/history/native_american_navajo.php

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According to the book the Navajo's wear
"We were made to take off all our fine clothing and our jewelry. We never saw those clothes or jewels again. Years later I learned that our squash-blossom necklaces and turquoise bracelets, earrings and hair ornaments and silver belts,"
-Code Talker

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"The place where they arrived is an area bounded by four sacred mountains, now known as the Four Corners area, where the present-day states of New Mexico, Arizona,  Colorado, and Utah come together."
authors notes

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"The arrival of the Spanish appears to have deeply upset the balance upset the balance within and between the native nations of the Southwest. The Spanish also introduced widespread slavery. Throughout the Mexican southwest that later became New Mexico,  countless thousands of American Indians were captured and forced to work in the mines or as personal slaves. Virtually every Spanish household had its complement of Indian slaves. Navajo resistance to the slave trade was described as raiding by the Spanish. "
Authors notes

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When the United States gained control of the Southwest, the Navajos thought at first they had been liberated. Unfortunately,  the Americans listened not to the Indians,  but to the New Mexicans, who wished to continue the slave trade and convinced the United States to engage in warfare against the Navajos. -Authors note

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The United states ruined the Navajos homes, orchards, fields and forced them to exile, to the Long Walk
This is also what “Kii Yázhí Uncle talked about in chapter 1;
" They burned our crops, killed our livestock, and cut down our peach trees. They drove our people into exile. They sent us on the Long Walk.”

-Code Talker, Authors Notes

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During the Long Walk More than 10,000 people trudged 400 miles across mountains, deserts to a desolate Army post. Many Navajos died and they still talk about to this day
"The Navajo Long Walk, which ended that campaign, was as awful an experience for the Navajos as the Trail of Tears was for the Cherokees. It was a forced march of almost the entire Navajo nation. More than 10,000 people trudged 400 miles across mountains and deserts to a desolate Army post. So many died along the way that modern Navajos still speak of it as if it were just yesterday."

-Code Talker, Authors Notes

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The Long Walk in the 1860's was the start of a dark period in Navajo history. Americans moved into their homeland and thousands of Navajo were captured and killed before the remaining tribe members were forced to walk from Window Rock, Arizona to New Mexico, a distance of over 300 miles. Approximately 200 Navajo died on this forced march.

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In the 1860s the Navajos returned home from their long walk, even though people thought they were doomed to be extinct.
"By the late 1860s, some thought that the Navajos were not only a defeated people, but a people on their way to extinction. Yet the Navajos never gave up. After years of bitter exile, they were allowed to return to their homeland only after pledging never again to take arms against the United States. Their warrior tradition was supposed to be ended forever."

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"The recovery of the Najavo nation that took place over the next century and a half is so incredible that one might conclude that not only are the Navajos one of the most remarkable native nations that has ever existed but also that they have truly been blessed and protected by their Holy People."
-Author's notes

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In the Late 19th Century Navajo children were forced in boarding schools to become more "bilagáanaa", because apparently their culture and language were forbidden.
"The loss of our languages was accelerated by the development in the late nineteenth century of government boarding schools. Virtually all American Indian children were forced into these schools, much like the one my protagonist in this novel attends. In those schools, everything that was Indian was forbidden. Lieutenant Richard Pratt’s Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania was the model. Pratt’s motto was to “Kill the Indian and save the man.” Indian language was a weed to be pulled up by its roots and thrown on the trash heap."
-Author's Note

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During WW II the Navajos who were in the boarding were recruited to help America in the War.
“Yet half a century later, boarding school-educated Indians, who’d been told their language and culture were of no use to the modern world, were recruited by the United States and asked to use that language they’d been ordered to forget in the defense of their country. It is one of the greatest ironies of American history.”

-Code Talker, Authors Notes

"Marine Corps leadership selected 29 Navajo men, the Navajo Code Talkers, who created a code based on the complex, unwritten Navajo language. The code primarily used word association by assigning a Navajo word to key phrases and military tactics."
-https://www.intelligence.gov/index.php/people/barrier-breakers-in-history/453-navajo-code-talkers

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Office of the Director of National Intelligence

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Every WWII combatant appreciated the need for an unbreakable code that would help them communicate while protecting their operational plans. The U.S. Marines knew where to find one: the Navajo Nation. Marine Corps leadership selected 29 Navajo men, the Navajo Code Talkers, who created a code based o…

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Many Navajos served as de-coders or code talkers in WW II
"Most people have heard of the famous Navajo (or Diné) code talkers who used their traditional language to transmit secret Allied messages in the Pacific theater of combat during World War II."
Source: https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/american-indian-code-talkers

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The Navajo language was so complex that no one could decode it! So complex that it was not only used in WW2 it was also used in the Korean and Vietnam war.
“During World War One, such languages as Cherokee and Choctaw were employed by American Indian soldiers in the trenches to radio messages the Germans couldn’t understand. In the European theater of war during World War Two, Comanche Indian soldiers used their language to send similar messages.”

-Code Talker, Authors Notes

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"Today, the Navajo Reservation comprises 26,897 square miles. It is the largest Indian reservation in the United States. There are more than 200,000 Navajos. Although it is not without its problems and challenges, the Navajo Nation has been described as one of the most economically prosperous and forward-looking of all the American Indian nations in the United States."
-Author's notes

"Navajo, also spelled Navaho, second-most populous of all Native American peoples in the United States, with some 300,000 individuals in the early 21st century, most of them living in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah."

This evidence has been added by Journie. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Navajo-people

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Alana S
Aliona P
Harper R
Journie S