The Dark Wind (1982)

Also referred to colloquially as "the rez," the Navajo Reservation covers 27,425 square miles of territory and includes portions of northeastern Arizona, southeastern Utah, and northwestern New Mexico. It is the largest land area governed by a Native American sovereign nation in the U.S.. Similar to other areas "reserved" for indigenous Americans, the Navajo Reservation is comprised of a complex interweaving of ongoing negotiations between what it means to embody traditional and contemporary iterations of Native America, especially when Native and non-Native value systems collide in often violent, and sometimes complementary, fashion on, at the borders of, and near the reservation.

Also known as “Naatsis’áán” in Diné. A dome-shaped mountain (elevation 10,388 ft) that straddles the Utah-Arizona border, with its highest peak on the Utah side. It is the easiest landmark to spot in western Navajo country and is considered sacred by local indigenous groups including the Navajo, the Paiute, and the Hopi. In the Navajo tradition, the mountain represents the head of the female corn pollen spirit, Earth Woman. The mountain also features prominently in the Navajo Coyoteway story.

While Navajo Mountain is not one of the four sacred mountains of the Navajo origin story, it is believed to be a mountain that emerged after the creation of the earth due to its own powers, which include curing sickness and bringing rain. Because of the mountain's location on a border and near the Rainbow Bridge, another important feature in the Navajo origin story, the mountain served as a peaceful meeting ground between the Navajo and Paiute. While many areas surrounding Navajo Mountain are available for hiking and camping as part of the Navajo Nation Tribal Park, because of the sacredness of the mountain, climbing and summiting the peak are forbidden.

Also known as the Navajo Nation Police, this entity is a law enforcement agency on the Navajo Nation Reservation. The Navajo Tribal Police were originally established in 1872, four years after the Navajo were released from incarceration in Fort Sumner in southeast New Mexico after their forced "Long Walk" from Canyon de Chelly in northeast Arizona in 1864. Manuelito, the great Navajo warchief, known for his resistance to Mexican and U.S. invasions of Navajo territory, was appointed the first "chief" of the Navajo police. Before this time, civil law enforcement had been handled by the Federal Government’s Branch of Law and Order. Despite its initial success, the Navajo Tribal Police was dissolved in 1975. The Navajo Nation Police was reinstated in 1989 upon request from the Navajo Tribal Council.

The first Indian police forces were established in the mid-1800s, with the creation of the Federal reservation system. Initially, these forces were given some measure of autonomy, but self-policing was almost entirely eliminated in the late 1800s and early 1900s, during the Assimilation and Allotment Era. The New Deal's Reorganization Era of the 1930s and 1940s gave back some agency and self-defining rights to Indian Nations, but the Tribal Elimination policies of the Second World War and post-war era brought about devastating effects to systems of tribal government and policing. Following the 1960s civil rights movement, issues of minority recognition and rights gathered momentum and public support, and with the Self-Determination Era of the 1970s Native peoples in the U.S. were able to regain substantial autonomy from federal governance.

Today Native American tribes across the U.S. have their own police forces that function, on reservation lands, much like local or state police units outside the reservation. Tribal police officers have law enforcement authority only inside the reservation, but work closely with state and federal police agencies.

Also known as Diné Bizaad, part of the the Apachean subgroup of the Athabaskan branch of the Na-Dené language family. Diné means “the people” or “children of the holy people,” and so the language is that of the people. The language is unique in its nasalization of some vowels, its use of glottal stops and releases, and its reliance on tone to signify meaning.

The Navajo, also known by their preferred name, the Diné, are the largest federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States. Their reservation is spread out throughout the Four Corners region of the American Southwest, and includes portions of the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

The Navajo base their way of life on a belief that the physical and spiritual world blend together and everything on earth is alive, related, and in equilibrium, also known as ho′zho′. In this light, the Navajo observe two primary ceremonials, among many others. The first is the Blessing Way, which keeps them on the path of wisdom and happiness. The second is the Enemy Way, which is meant to discourage evil spirits, eliminate ghosts, and cleanse an individual of elements or affects that have placed her or him out of balance.

One way to refer to the various indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially those who reside on and off reservations in the U.S.. Pueblos indigenas, Aborigen, Amerindian, and Aboriginal peoples are also terms found in usage to refer to those groups indigenous to the Americas. Native Americans largely prefer to be referred to by their specific tribal name, however.

Hillerman's fiction deals exclusively with Native American cultures located in the Southwest region of the U.S., especially the Navajo, but also the Hopi, Zuni, and other Pueblo groups. In most cases, Hillerman uses the word Indian when referring to members of these various cultures, only rarely writing "Native American." Believing, or hoping, that they had stumbled upon eastern shores of the subcontinent of India, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European explorers called the local peoples they encountered "indios" (in Spanish) or Indians; the misnomer stuck, and is a vernacular connundrum that persists in the Americas through to the present.

Also called a medicine bundle, a medicine pouch is a traditional Native American container for various items that have totemic, spiritual, or supernatural power. The Navajo word for medicine pouch is jish, which is not only a container for ceremonial goods but also describes the ceremonial goods themselves. Medicine pouches often contain pollen, which is used in rituals and chants.

In several Pueblo traditions, the Mudhead Clown is a masked figure who works as disciplinarian, joker, and village cryer. The early Hopi variation of this figure is called Tachukti, meaning “Ball-On-Head”; however, around 1860 the Zuni variation, known as Koyemsi or Koyemshi, rose to prominence in cultural studies of the western Pueblos. The anglicized term "Mudhead Clown" derives from the appearance of the Koyemsi mask, which is covered with loosely-formed mud balls that form vaguely human-like features. Mudhead Clowns can be garbed in a black dress with a red or brown-clay painted body.

According to the Zuni origin legends, the father or head Koyemsi incestuously produced nine children with his sister. In his remorse for this heinous act the father beat himself and rolled in the mud until his head was covered in bulbous welts coated in mud. Upon their birth, the children of this union resembled their father, appearing with faces and bodies disorted by various mud-covered protuberances. The incestuous nature of their conception bars the Koyemsi from becoming kachinas themselves. Instead, they act in secondary roles, such as spokespersons for the other kachinas. While neither a priest nor ceremonial dancer, the Mudhead Clown is a part of many social gatherings, performing as curers, directors, warriors, messengers, sages, and tricksters.

Moenkopi, in northeastern Arizona, is a Hopi cultural stronghold embedded within the Navajo Reservation. Moenkopi has been an agricultural center for the Hopi people since the thirteenth century, a "suburb" pueblo to the village of Oraibi on Third Mesa on the Hopi Reservation, one of the oldest continuously inhabited pueblos on the continent. Because of Moenkopi's relative isolation from the rest of Hopi lands, it has been subjected to intensive outside influence, and, as a result, has split into two factions: Lower Moenkopi, the more traditional community interested in mainting traditional social and cultural practices, and Upper Moenkopi, the "younger" community interested in pursuing modern pursuits.

Also known as Da’ah’eh Halani in Navajo, Many Farms is a small, primarily Navajo community about 15 miles north of Chinle, with a trading post, chapter house, and historic agricultural foundation. Although the community pre-existed the confluence of US Highway 191 and Navajo Route 59, it was only after 1937 and the damming of Sheep Dip Creek to create Many Farms Lake that the community began to develop in terms of emerging infrastructure.