Timeline | Navajo Language Program (NLP)

“There was limited [academic] knowledge about the Navajo people until the investigations of Washington Matthews, in the 1880s. Later the Franciscan Fathers at the St. Michaels Mission published a wide-ranging study of Indian culture in 1910 in their Ethnologic Dictionary. It was not until the 1920s that university anthropologists, with their rigorous scientific methods, began to intensively investigate the culture of native people.” (Lyon 1989)

History of the NLP

1900

1900-1920’s

Edgar Lee Hewett, an ethnologist with the School of American Archeology at the Archeological Institute of America in Santa Fe, met and hired John P. Harrington in 1909. Harrington, a linguist, was doing research on and working with Native American languages in the Southwest during this time. From September 1911…Read More

1923

Around 1923, Gladys Reichard, a renowned anthropologist, began working on Navajo and doing fieldwork on the Navajo country. She inherited much of Pliny Earle Goddard’s preliminary text and work on Navajo (Lyon 1989). She would later teach at the Hogan School, a school that trained Navajo interpreters.

1928

Edgar Lee Hewett established the department of Anthropology at UNM in 1928. While at UNM, Hewett founded the Museum of Anthropology of the University of New Mexico, which would later become the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology.

1930

1930s

“In the 1930’s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs [BIA] under the leadership of Willard Beatty, decided to try teaching Navajo children bilingually. Beatty asked for help from the Smithsonian Institution, which [connected him with the] linguist John P. Harrington… Harrington started to work with Robert W. Young, a young graduate…Read More

1935

In 1935, Robert W. Young began to study Navajo as a graduate student at UNM. There, he met “a protégé of Gladys Reichard,” Adolph Dodge Bitanny (also called ’Adee Dodge), a grandson of Henry Chee Dodge; Bitanny assisted Young in making sense of the Navajo verb (Dinwoodie and Morgan 2003).…Read More

1937

In 1937, Robert W. Young & William Morgan, Sr., serendipitously met while working at the Southwest Range and Sheep Breeding Laboratory, near Ft. Wingate; this happenstance was initiated by none other than John P. Harrington, who Young was associated with at the time. Young was only 25, while Morgan was…Read More

“In the autumn of 1937, Young… developed the official government orthography [for Navajo] together with his Navajo co-worker William P. Morgan, and Harrington, with the help of the anthropologist and novelist Oliver LaFarge. This orthography was used in reading and teaching materials in the spring of 1940, and a number…Read More

1940

1940’s

During the 1940’s, Ann Nolan Clark, who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), published a couple of children’s books in Navajo that were translated by Robert W. Young and J.P. Harrington. This was just one of several projects that Young and Harrington collaborated on. For example, Harrington’s writings…Read More

During the 1940’s & WWII, “Few Navajos… spoke or understood English, with the result that supervisors and others who came in contact with them began to demand a dictionary in the hope of learning enough Navajo to meet basic communication needs. To meet this demand, the data that had been…Read More

1950

1950’s

“The Vocabulary of Colloquial Navajo, published in 1950 as a supplement to The Navajo Language, did include a wealth of sentence examples for each verb entry, and it was the intention of the authors that the two lexical works might sometime be combined and expanded—an intention that did not become…Read More

1968

1960’s

In 1968-69, the Linguistics Department at UNM was “unofficially” established as an amorphous, interdisciplinary program sponsored by various departments and associates. As one account recalls, “[A UNM administrative report] led directly to the hiring in 1968 of [Dr.] Bernard Spolsky, a young applied linguist who was already establishing a strong…Read More

1969

“Another vital feature of the Department of [Linguistics’ early history (i.e. when it was still a program)] is the variety of major projects sponsored. Chief among these projects was the Navajo Reading Study project, which [Dr. Bernard] Spolsky directed from 1969 to 1977 with over a million dollars of support…Read More

1970

1970’s

“The [Linguistics] Program also sponsored the development of a series of Navajo language courses, which were formally established in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages in 1970. Closely associated with the teaching of Navajo was the beginning of [Dr. Bernard] Spolsky’s Navajo Reading Study project… which [was also part…Read More

Throughout the 1970’s, due to Dr. Bernard Spolsky’s support for Navajo language research, Dr. Robert W. Young and Dr. William Morgan, Sr., were hired as visiting lecturers / researchers (UNM Departmental MS). This happened in various stages: 1971-72: Dr. Robert W. Young was appointed as a visiting lecturer of Navajo…Read More

1973

The Linguistics Department was officially formalized as an interdisciplinary department in 1973; this was due partially to the work of John Oller Jr. “John Oller Jr., an enthusiastic and aggressive young applied linguist at UCLA, was hired (with an appointment in Educational Foundations) to serve as director of the [Linguistics]…Read More

1977

The Navajo Reading Study officially came to an end in 1977. However, “another offshoot of the NRS was the Navajo-English Dictionary Project directed by Robert Young and supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1974 to 1977. This last project culminated in the massive and universally lauded Young…Read More

1978

The “Self-Study Report of the Department of Linguistics” from May 1978 stated that the department’s “highest priority [had] been for a Navajo linguist to shore up the Navajo language program… and to respond to the generalized demand for general linguistics and educational linguistics expertise on this major regional language.” However,…Read More

1979

The Department of Modern and Classical Languages, for various reasons, planned to drop Navajo altogether in 1979. Luckily, many renowned scholars of the day wrote letters successfully petitioning them to continue the Navajo classes. Voeglin wrote directly to UNM’s president, saying. “I urge you to reinstate the Navajo Language position…Read More

1980

1980’s

The first edition of the monumental The Navajo Language: A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary by Dr. Robert W. Young and Dr. William Morgan, Sr., was published by UNM Press in 1980. As Garland Bills noted, this publication was largely possible due to additional funding that came to the NLP as…Read More

In 1980, Roseann Willink joined UNM as a visiting instructor of Navajo. She continued to teach classes as part of the Navajo Language Program until her retirement in Spring 2009. From 1980 to 1988, Robert W. Young was an Emeritus Professor at UNM who continued to work as an Adjunct…Read More

1987

The second edition of The Navajo Language: A Grammar and Colloquial Dictionary by Young and Morgan was published by UNM Press in 1987.

1988

In 1988, the Department of Linguistics finally became a bona fide, independent department through the efforts of Professor Alan Hudson and other supporters. The Navajo Language Program and Sign Language Interpreter programs were officially integrated into the department during this time as well. “…discussions had been going on for a…Read More

1992

1990’s

Young and Morgan, still part of UNM, published the Analytical Lexicon of Navajo in 1992. They were aided by Sally Midgette, who received her doctoral degree from UNM in Anthropology. Midgette’s dissertation, The Navajo Progressive in Discourse: A Study in Temporal Semantics, was published as a book in 1995.

1996

Dr. Robert W. Young and Dr. William Morgan, Sr. were honored in a public ceremony by the Navajo Nation Council in Window Rock, AZ, on July 17, 1996. During the ceremony, they were robed with traditional Pendleton Chieftain’s robes and presented jeweled plaques. The Council recognized Young and Morgan “for…Read More

1998

In 1998, The Robert W. Young Scholarship Fund for Native American Linguistics was established. It had major contributions from Judy and Garland Bills (with matching contributions from BFGoodrich) and from Joan Bybee, a distinguished Linguistics professor at UNM.

2003

2000’s

Through Roseann Willink’s efforts and support, the Navajo Language Program established an undergraduate minor in Navajo Language studies in 2003, with hopes of eventually expanding to include a major.

2005

In Fall 2005, the NLP celebrated its 35th anniversary. Dr. Robert W. Young was honored during the celebrations for his many contributions to the Linguistics Department and to the NLP.

2006

In 2006, Dr. Robert W. Young was honored with the Linguistic Society of America’s Kenneth L. Hale Award for his work documenting the Navajo language. He was the 2nd recipient of the award after its creation in 2002.

“Recognizing the need to strengthen the Navajo Language Program and Navajo linguistics, in 2006, [Linguistics] Department Chair Sherman Wilcox began the process of proposing expansion of [the] program with a UNM Legislative Priority. The proposal requested funds from the New Mexico legislature to expand the program by adding a tenure-track…Read More

2008

In the summer of 2008, the NLP hosted the Navajo Language Academy’s annual Summer Institute and conducted workshops on Navajo linguistics and language documentation. Dr. Melissa Axelrod, Dr. Melvatha Chee, and various UNM students helped organize the main events.

2009

In Spring 2009, Roseann Willink retired from the Navajo Language Program with honors; she had taught at UNM for more than 30 years.

2010

2010’s

In 2010, the NLP trialed hosting an online class for Navajo 101. This class proved extremely popular, especially with students who were not at the main UNM campus. It eventually became one of the essential classes in the program and demonstrated the high demand for 100 level Navajo classes.

2011

The NLP cohosted the 18th Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium at UNM on May 20-22, 2011.

2019

After several years of changes in staff and faculty, the NLP decided to form a permanent director/associate professor position in 2019. The position was given to Dr. Melvatha Chee, who started after a brief tenure at University of Alberta.

2020

2020’s

In April 2020, the Navajo Language Program celebrated its 50th anniversary. Special recognition and celebration took place during the 14th High Desert Linguistics Society Conference on November 20, 2020.

2022

In the Fall of 2022, the NLP, the Department of Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies (LLSS), and the Department of Native American Studies (NAS) collaborated to start the Diné Language Teacher Institute (DLTI). The DLTI offers undergraduate and graduate students who speak Navajo the opportunity to enroll in a unique…Read More

The NLP also began the Indigenous Child Language Research Center (ICLRC) in 2022. This program is centered on conducting research around children’s acquisition of Navajo and supporting the Navajo community in teaching their language to the next generation.

2024

During May 17-18, 2024, the Indigenous Child Language Research Center (ICLRC) hosted the inaugural Child Language Acquisition Symposium for Indigenous Communities (CLASIC). CLASIC is a symposium concerned with Indigenous child language acquisition in the United States and Canada.