Physiography of the Navajo Nation

This page was written by Erin Klauk as part of the DLESE Community Services Project: Integrating Research in Education.

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Dook'o'oosliid (San Francisco Peaks), a stratovolcano sacred to the Dine and other Southwest Native peoples, viewed from the lava fields at Wupatki National Monument, Arizona. Image courtesy of Steven Semken. Details

Physiography was originally a description of the physical nature of objects, especially of natural features, and later became synonymous with physical geography ([Bates and Jackson, 1984] ).

The Navajo, unlike most Native American tribes, continue to live on their ancestral homeland. The Navajo Indian Reservation is 130,000 square miles, and covers parts of southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, and southwestern Colorado. This 15 million acres of desert land ranges from about 5,000 feet to 11,000 feet in altitude (LUHNA, 2002 (more info) ).

The Navajo homeland was traditionally located between the four sacred mountains of the Navajo, which include Blanca Peak (Sis Naajini) to the east, Mount Taylor (Tsoodzil) to the south, San Francisco Peak (Dook' o' oosliid) to the west, and Mount Hesperus (Dibé