Navajo Attitudes Toward Development and Change: A Unified Ethnographic and Survey Approach to an Understanding of Their Future

Abstract

We use a systematically integrated combination of ethnoscience ethnography and survey research to provide a description of what Navajos have been taking into account when deciding how to cope with accelerating energy extraction and other industrial development. Beginning with a decision model of the adaptation process, we validate that model with a reservationwide survey. Perceptions of the most likely outcomes from development are relatively uniform across different socioeconomic groups. Three factors appear to be important in accounting for variation in attitudes toward development: degree of integration into the external economy, degree of marginality to the Navajo kinship system, and degree of marginality to the subsistence livestock economy.