Navajo Nation

The Navajo Nation (Navajo: Naabeehó Bináhásdzo), also known as Navajoland, is an Indian reservation of Navajo people in the United States. It occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southeastern Utah. The seat of government is located in Window Rock, Arizona.

At roughly 17,544,500 acres (71,000 km²; 27,413 sq mi), the Navajo Nation is the largest Indian reservation in the United States, exceeding the size of ten U.S. states. It is one of the few reservations whose lands overlap the nation's traditional homelands.

In 2010, the reservation was home to 173,667 out of 332,129 Navajo tribal members; the remaining 158,462 tribal members lived outside the reservation, in urban areas (26%), border towns (10%), and elsewhere in the U.S. (17%). In 2020, the number of tribal members increased to 399,494, surpassing the Cherokee Nation as the largest tribal group by enrollment.

The U.S. gained ownership of what is today Navajoland in 1848 following the Mexican–American War. The reservation was first established in 1868 within New Mexico Territory, initially spanning roughly 3,300,000 acres (13,000 km²); it subsequently straddled what became the Arizona–New Mexico border in 1912, when the states were admitted to the union. Unlike many reservations in the U.S., it has since expanded several times since its formation, reaching its current boundaries in 1934.