Diné College, known as Navajo Community College before 1997, is the first and largest tribal college in the country
Radio announcer Raymond Nakai hosted a popular radio show in the 1950s. “Navajos need their own college,” he once said.
Then a few years later he was elected chairman of the Navajo Nation and worked to make it so. He met with business leaders and Bureau of Indian Affairs officials in Window Rock, Arizona, and shared his goal of starting a college on the Navajo Nation.
The chairman was laughed at. One BIA official said: “You think you Navajos could run a college?” Nakai replied, “I’m not asking for permission. I’m telling you what we’re going to do,” and he walked out of the room.
Diné College, known as Navajo Community College before 1997, stands as the first and largest tribal college in the country with 6,532 alumni to date.
The college was launched a century after the Navajo Treaty of 1868, a treaty between the Navajo and the United States after thousands of tribal citizens were removed from their homelands and marched by the military some 400 miles to Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
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