The Cultural Preservation of the Navajo Nation. A multicultural and assimilation policy analysis on the Navajo Nation and cultural preservation

Sammanfattning: In this thesis the cultural preservation of the Navajo Nation is analyzed through a multicultural and assimilation framework. The Navajo Nation is a case study in this research. A policy analysis is used in this thesis and analyses policies in three proxy categories of culture: education, land ownership, and self-governance. The main policies analyzed in this thesis are the current (federal) policies regarding education, land ownership, and self-governance. Current means the policies that are in place and in effect today. This thesis also analyses past policies in order to create a foundation. It further analyzes these policies to examine the outcomes and implications of the policies on the cultural preservation of the Navajo Nation. Gerd Baumann’s theories on culture, Kymlicka’s liberal multiculturalism, Margalit and Halbertal’s communitarian multiculturalism, and assimilation are used as the theoretical framework of this thesis. The findings cannot be generalized. Some policies have the outcome that was intended whereas other policies have the opposite outcomes of what was intended in the policy. Thus, multicultural policies do not necessarily have a multicultural outcome, sometimes the outcomes of the policy can have an opposite outcome of what the nature of the policy is.