Navajo; 2017 gubernatorial election; The Long Walks
LeinadB93
Monthly Donor
So to kick off the re-start, here's a unique and wonderful part of the world. I'm still in the process of retconning a lot of stuff, but I hope you enjoy this 
Presenting Navajo - Texas' Native State:
Navajo, officially the Navajo Nation and commonly known as the Navajo State, is a Texan state in the northwest of the country, bordered by the Kingdom of the Californias to the west and north across the Colorado River, the United Empire and the state of Llano to the east, and the state of New Mexico to the south. With a land area of 136,539 square kilometres and a population of 450,931, Navajo is the fifth-largest subdivision by area, but the least populous. It is the only state or district of Texas where people of indigenous descent make up a majority of the population, and the only one to not recognise English as an official language, although it is widely spoken as a second language.
Inhabited by Indigenous American peoples for millennia, the area that makes up modern-day Navajo was settled by the Ancestral Puebloans, and later the Ancestral Diné[1], for centuries before the arrival of European explorers. Known in the Ancestral Diné language as Dinétah, the region was marked by the high mesas and deep canyons that drain to the San Juan River (known to the Navajo as "Są́ bito'"). Pressures from the Spanish and other Amerindian groups would eventually force the Navajo out of the region, and by the mid-19th century there were few permanent settlements. The territory was a vague and often disputed border region between the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain, French Louisiana and British Oregon throughout the late colonial period.
Following the 1819 Bathurst–Onís Treaty[2], what is now Navajo was recognised as Spanish territory, as the border between New Spain and Britain-in-America was drawn. Although the territory soon passed to Mexican control when Spain recognised the former colony's independence, with the 1828 Poinsett–Camacho Treaty[3] subsequently confirmed the agreed border. The territory would again be disputed between Mexico, Texas, and later California during the 1830s and 40s, until the end of the Mexican War and the signing of the Treaty of Toluca[4], which set the Texan-Californian border at the Colorado River. Navajo became part of Texas' unorganised western territories until 1868, when the "First Nations Reserves" was formally established.
Beginning in 1849, there was friction between Texans and Amerindian groups beyond the Rio Grande, as settlers and the army moved into the newly acquired regions and clashed with the already established indigenous peoples. Beginning in 1860, these Amerindian peoples, including the Ancestral Diné, the Puebloan and Apache peoples, were forced to cede their lands to the Texan government and relocated into what is now Navajo. These forced relocations became known as the Long Walks, or the Texan Trail of Tears, and saw the removal of some 40,000 Amerindians from their ancestral homelands in western Texas to the area around the San Juan River. Disease, famine and warfare during the relocations result in approximately 5,000 dying before reaching their destination. In 1868, the First Nations Reserve was established, and any remaining Amerindians were forcibly relocated and effectively interned in the territory.
From 1868 to 1934, the reserve was governed as a military territory, with little to no civilian involvement. During these decades, a form of ethnogenesis began to take place amongst the Amerindian peoples, who came to regard themselves as different clans of the same people - the "Navajo". The collective trauma of the Long Walks was critical to the development of a cohesive identity amongst these disparate groups as a single people. Traditional culture and language flourished in this period, despite military oppression, with intermarriage amongst the Amerindian groups creating new clan structures and cultural blending. The territory was spared any military action during the First World War, but the rise of the homegrown self-determination movement brought reprisals from the federal government until the formal creation of the Navajo Nation as a separate, but equal, state of the republic.
During the Great Depression, the Navajo Nation was subjected to forced livestock reduction by the federal government resulting in damage to centuries-old practices, as well as the income and financial stability of many families and clans in the state. Throughout the middle of the 20th century, Navajo remained apart from the rest of Texas, subjected to different and stricter governmental restrictions compared to the other states. Residents of Navajo, who were of Amerindian descent, were restricted from the freedom of movement guaranteed under the constitution, and therefore could not leave the state to live and work elsewhere. These limitations gave rise to a sense of isolationism amongst the Navajo people, further strengthening their familial and cultural ties, and their cultural identity distinct from the rest of Texas. The rise of the Civil Rights movement across North America in the 1960s eventually led to the end of these restrictions. In the subsequent decades, the Navajo Nation has been granted additional powers from the federal government, in addition to those given to other states, further preserving their cultural independence.
In the 21st century, Navajo is home to a unique culture on the continent, where Amerindian culture, language and traditions continue to be followed and celebrated. Navajo boasts a robust democratic system, with elements of direct democracy at the local and state level. The state economy remains dominated primarily by the agriculture and cattle industries, with the services, tourism and manufacturing sectors seeing increased growth in recent decades. Culturally, the state remains very traditional, with most older residents seeing themselves as solely Navajo, while the younger generations are proud Texans, they also celebrate their cultural differences. Women continue to be politically dominant at the local level, a legacy of the matrilineal system of governance. In 2006, the Texas Congress passed an act that recognised "the Navajo as a nation within Texas", further enshrining their cultural and legal distinctness in law.
The 2017 Navajo gubernatorial election was held on October 31, 2017, to elect the Governor of Navajo, concurrently with the election of the Navajo High Council, two of Navajo's seats in the Texas Senate, the legislative elections to the Texas House of Representatives, and various local elections. Under the Navajo State Constitution, indivduals are elected to the governorship for a single seven-year term which is non-renewable, therefore incumbent Governor Russell Begaye was ineligible for re-election.
Unique amongst Texan states, Navajo is a de facto one-party state, with all political positions and elections held and contested by candidates from the Native Alliance. A broad tent movement that advocates for the rights of the Texan First Nations, the Native Alliance is in fact divided into several internal factions; the largest of which are the social democratic Broken Arrow and the liberal conservative Five Fires. Since the state's creation in 1934, the governor has always been a member of these two factions. Each faction holds primaries amongst their enrolled members in the state, with the winning candidates facing each other in the gubernatorial election.
Mary Kim Titla, a journalist, publisher and congresswoman, representing Broken Arrow, won the election with nearly 56% of the vote, defeating her opponent Jonathan Nez of Five Fires, the incumbent Speaker of the High Council. Titla was sworn in as the 12th Governor of Navajo on December 12, 2017, the second female governor in the state's history. In other elections, Five Fires remained the largest faction in the High Council, whilst losing a senator and representative to Broken Arrow.
Presenting Navajo - Texas' Native State:
Navajo, officially the Navajo Nation and commonly known as the Navajo State, is a Texan state in the northwest of the country, bordered by the Kingdom of the Californias to the west and north across the Colorado River, the United Empire and the state of Llano to the east, and the state of New Mexico to the south. With a land area of 136,539 square kilometres and a population of 450,931, Navajo is the fifth-largest subdivision by area, but the least populous. It is the only state or district of Texas where people of indigenous descent make up a majority of the population, and the only one to not recognise English as an official language, although it is widely spoken as a second language.
Inhabited by Indigenous American peoples for millennia, the area that makes up modern-day Navajo was settled by the Ancestral Puebloans, and later the Ancestral Diné[1], for centuries before the arrival of European explorers. Known in the Ancestral Diné language as Dinétah, the region was marked by the high mesas and deep canyons that drain to the San Juan River (known to the Navajo as "Są́ bito'"). Pressures from the Spanish and other Amerindian groups would eventually force the Navajo out of the region, and by the mid-19th century there were few permanent settlements. The territory was a vague and often disputed border region between the Spanish Viceroyalty of New Spain, French Louisiana and British Oregon throughout the late colonial period.
Following the 1819 Bathurst–Onís Treaty[2], what is now Navajo was recognised as Spanish territory, as the border between New Spain and Britain-in-America was drawn. Although the territory soon passed to Mexican control when Spain recognised the former colony's independence, with the 1828 Poinsett–Camacho Treaty[3] subsequently confirmed the agreed border. The territory would again be disputed between Mexico, Texas, and later California during the 1830s and 40s, until the end of the Mexican War and the signing of the Treaty of Toluca[4], which set the Texan-Californian border at the Colorado River. Navajo became part of Texas' unorganised western territories until 1868, when the "First Nations Reserves" was formally established.
Beginning in 1849, there was friction between Texans and Amerindian groups beyond the Rio Grande, as settlers and the army moved into the newly acquired regions and clashed with the already established indigenous peoples. Beginning in 1860, these Amerindian peoples, including the Ancestral Diné, the Puebloan and Apache peoples, were forced to cede their lands to the Texan government and relocated into what is now Navajo. These forced relocations became known as the Long Walks, or the Texan Trail of Tears, and saw the removal of some 40,000 Amerindians from their ancestral homelands in western Texas to the area around the San Juan River. Disease, famine and warfare during the relocations result in approximately 5,000 dying before reaching their destination. In 1868, the First Nations Reserve was established, and any remaining Amerindians were forcibly relocated and effectively interned in the territory.
From 1868 to 1934, the reserve was governed as a military territory, with little to no civilian involvement. During these decades, a form of ethnogenesis began to take place amongst the Amerindian peoples, who came to regard themselves as different clans of the same people - the "Navajo". The collective trauma of the Long Walks was critical to the development of a cohesive identity amongst these disparate groups as a single people. Traditional culture and language flourished in this period, despite military oppression, with intermarriage amongst the Amerindian groups creating new clan structures and cultural blending. The territory was spared any military action during the First World War, but the rise of the homegrown self-determination movement brought reprisals from the federal government until the formal creation of the Navajo Nation as a separate, but equal, state of the republic.
During the Great Depression, the Navajo Nation was subjected to forced livestock reduction by the federal government resulting in damage to centuries-old practices, as well as the income and financial stability of many families and clans in the state. Throughout the middle of the 20th century, Navajo remained apart from the rest of Texas, subjected to different and stricter governmental restrictions compared to the other states. Residents of Navajo, who were of Amerindian descent, were restricted from the freedom of movement guaranteed under the constitution, and therefore could not leave the state to live and work elsewhere. These limitations gave rise to a sense of isolationism amongst the Navajo people, further strengthening their familial and cultural ties, and their cultural identity distinct from the rest of Texas. The rise of the Civil Rights movement across North America in the 1960s eventually led to the end of these restrictions. In the subsequent decades, the Navajo Nation has been granted additional powers from the federal government, in addition to those given to other states, further preserving their cultural independence.
In the 21st century, Navajo is home to a unique culture on the continent, where Amerindian culture, language and traditions continue to be followed and celebrated. Navajo boasts a robust democratic system, with elements of direct democracy at the local and state level. The state economy remains dominated primarily by the agriculture and cattle industries, with the services, tourism and manufacturing sectors seeing increased growth in recent decades. Culturally, the state remains very traditional, with most older residents seeing themselves as solely Navajo, while the younger generations are proud Texans, they also celebrate their cultural differences. Women continue to be politically dominant at the local level, a legacy of the matrilineal system of governance. In 2006, the Texas Congress passed an act that recognised "the Navajo as a nation within Texas", further enshrining their cultural and legal distinctness in law.
The 2017 Navajo gubernatorial election was held on October 31, 2017, to elect the Governor of Navajo, concurrently with the election of the Navajo High Council, two of Navajo's seats in the Texas Senate, the legislative elections to the Texas House of Representatives, and various local elections. Under the Navajo State Constitution, indivduals are elected to the governorship for a single seven-year term which is non-renewable, therefore incumbent Governor Russell Begaye was ineligible for re-election.
Unique amongst Texan states, Navajo is a de facto one-party state, with all political positions and elections held and contested by candidates from the Native Alliance. A broad tent movement that advocates for the rights of the Texan First Nations, the Native Alliance is in fact divided into several internal factions; the largest of which are the social democratic Broken Arrow and the liberal conservative Five Fires. Since the state's creation in 1934, the governor has always been a member of these two factions. Each faction holds primaries amongst their enrolled members in the state, with the winning candidates facing each other in the gubernatorial election.
Mary Kim Titla, a journalist, publisher and congresswoman, representing Broken Arrow, won the election with nearly 56% of the vote, defeating her opponent Jonathan Nez of Five Fires, the incumbent Speaker of the High Council. Titla was sworn in as the 12th Governor of Navajo on December 12, 2017, the second female governor in the state's history. In other elections, Five Fires remained the largest faction in the High Council, whilst losing a senator and representative to Broken Arrow.
[1] – This is the name given to the Navajo people who inhabited the area in ancient times and who predate the modern establishment of Navajo in 1868. It distinguishes the ancestral people form the modern creolised Navajo population, who are descended from a blending of all the Texan First Nations.
[2] - TTLs version of the Adams–Onís Treaty. Negotiated by Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst, the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, and the Spanish diplomatic envoy Luis de Onís y González-Vara.
[3] - TTLs version of the Treaty of Limits. Named after diplomats Joel Roberts Poinsett, for the British Empire, and Sebastián Camacho, for the First Mexican Empire.
[4] - TTLs version of the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo. The Treaty of Toluca ended the Mexican War and recognised the independence of Texas and California as protectorates of the British Empire.
[5] - Tó Dínéeshzheeʼ, the state capital, is OTL Kayenta, Arizona.
[6] - Tóta', the state's largest city, is OTL Farmington, New Mexico.
[2] - TTLs version of the Adams–Onís Treaty. Negotiated by Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst, the British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, and the Spanish diplomatic envoy Luis de Onís y González-Vara.
[3] - TTLs version of the Treaty of Limits. Named after diplomats Joel Roberts Poinsett, for the British Empire, and Sebastián Camacho, for the First Mexican Empire.
[4] - TTLs version of the Treaty of Guadeloupe Hidalgo. The Treaty of Toluca ended the Mexican War and recognised the independence of Texas and California as protectorates of the British Empire.
[5] - Tó Dínéeshzheeʼ, the state capital, is OTL Kayenta, Arizona.
[6] - Tóta', the state's largest city, is OTL Farmington, New Mexico.
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