Holbrook Indian School
PHOTO: ANITA OJEDA
A Seventh-day Adventist Boarding Academy Serving Native American Youth Since 1946
Students Retrace Navajo Long Walk as Part of U.S. History Class
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By Anita Ojeda
ather than sit in a stuffy classroom and experience history as recorded by historians, I decided to teach my students how to be historians. For the first few weeks of fourth quarter, students researched and planned a trip that would retrace the Navajo Long Walk.
For many years, the Navajo have remained silent about the Long Walk. For some, the topic remains taboo. Others see it as an important part of the history of the Diné, or the Navajo people. “By hearing the stories of the past and realizing what our ancestors suffered, young people today will understand that
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they have a long history of strength and survival against all odds,” Martin Whitehair, one of the parents, told me. In 1862 and 1863, General James H. Carlton ordered the Navajo people to surrender to Colonel Kit Carson. When no one showed up, Carson and his soldiers proceeded
to burn homes and crops and slaughter livestock belonging to the Navajo. By using this “scorched earth” technique, Carson and Carlton hoped to force the Navajo to come to the forts so that the army could force the Navajo to walk to a prison camp at Fort Sumner in the Bosque Redondo area of New Mexico.