Navajo Nation Becomes Largest Tribe in U.S. After Pandemic Enrollment Surge

Albuquerque, N. The Navajo tribe already has its own police academy, universities, bar associations, and a court system, as well as a new office in Washington near the embassies of other sovereign nations. And during the coronavirus pandemic, the Denné family, as many prefer to call themselves, won an important advantage: the most populated tribal country in America.

The rush to secure federal hardship benefits increased Navajo Nation's official registration to 399,494 from 306,268 last year, according to Navajo's Office of Biometric Records and Identification. That jump was enough for his religion to outpace the Cherokee people, which has about 392,000 registrations.

The tribe's growth, which came as it has endured some of the country's most dangerous outbreaks of the virus, could affect future federal aid disbursements as well as political representation in the southwest. Navajo Nation Reserve, larger than West Virginia, stretches nearly 27,000 square miles from Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

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"This is the bright side from a really bad time in the pandemic when we saw a lot of people leaving," said Tracy Morris, executive director of the American Indian Policy Institute at Arizona State University.

Morris, a member of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, said that while many tribes saw an increase in their enrollment during the pandemic, the 30% increase in the Navajo Nation was particularly noticeable. A tribe spokeswoman said the Cherokee tribe, which typically receives around 1,200 registration applications every month, has seen an increase to about 1,400 per month since the middle of last year.

The official registration of tribes is often lower than the tribe's actual population due to factors including migration from reserves to urban areas and the various policies that the 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States pursue to determine membership. Some tribes, like Dene, have relatively stricter requirements than others who have relaxed such rules.

Over the past year, thousands of Denehs have rushed to update their registration information or to register officially for the first time to receive payments distributed by the tribe directly from their portion of the Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act for the Coronavirus. These payments of $ 1,350 per adult have helped many people grapple with a prolonged period of economic instability, while Navajo leaders have implemented some of the nation's most virulent mitigation tactics, including curfews and checkpoints.

The Navajo Nation has also outperformed much of the rest of the country in vaccinating its residents; Nearly 90% of those eligible in the reserve got at least one chance.

Meanwhile, at least 1,297 Navajo Nation citizens have died from the virus. The population was particularly vulnerable due to the high prevalence of diseases such as diabetes, lack of running water for handwashing, and families with multiple generations living under one roof.

Although Navajo enrollment increased during the health crisis, some experts believe that official statistics underestimate the current population of Dina. The Census Bureau has not announced what size it considers the Navajo Nation based on data collected during the 2020 census.

Wendy Gray, associate professor of Native American studies at the University of New Mexico, notes that most of the Denné's family live outside the reserve, far from offices that keep up with registration numbers, and that the Navajo Nation maintains stricter nationality requirements than many other tribes. . .

The Navajo Nation requires members to be at least a quarter of his religion, unlike tribes like the Cherokee who waive the requirement for a certain amount of blood in favor of residing citizenship largely on Cherokee ancestry.

“I live in Albuquerque,” ​​said Greyeyes, who is from Kayenta, Arizona, in Navajo Nation. reservation.

Greyeyes, who has helped people who have wanted to join the tribe in recent months, emphasized that the process could be a bureaucratic complex, which could prevent some people from becoming citizens.

"It's not an easy process," Gray said. "How do you prove the origin of your blood? You have to get the papers for your parents, and the papers for everyone."

As the tribe grew, so did its political power. Denné politicians recently made headway in local elections in places like South Utah, and voter turnout in the Democratic-leaning Navajo Nation is credited with helping President Joe Biden win Arizona in 2020.

The population growth of the Navajo nation is also a sign that efforts to promote self-determination among tribal states are gaining momentum, building on the change that began more than five decades ago under the Nixon administration. Previously, in the 1950s and 1960s, the federal government adopted a policy of dismantling tribal sovereignty and encouraged thousands of Native Americans to leave reservations for American cities.

Eric Henson, a Chickasaw Nation and a researcher on the Harvard on American Indian Economic Development Project, said the growing enrollment in Navajo Nation was in stark contrast to federal policies during the twentieth century that were "literally an attempt to get rid of everyone." tribes ".

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