Dinétah, our ancestral homeland, has the literal translation: Among the People.
HISTORICAL AND LEGAL RECORD
The Diné Nihi Kéyah (Our Land) Project is a privately funded community-based educational effort of Indian Country Grassroots Support which is led by retired Navajo Nation Chief Justice Herb Yazzie (2005-2015) and an active board of retired Navajo Nation justices, judges, and land use planners and advocates. We are further assisted by legal scholars and law interns who help in frequently updating and revising content.
Launched on August 9, 2021, this project provides a comprehensive geospatial and jurisdictional mapping of legal, historical, and customary frameworks governing Navajo Nation trust lands. Our objective is to facilitate community-led administrative clarity, enabling a unified and integrated land-use vision. This consolidated framework serves as the essential finding of fact required to pursue the waiver or modernization of legacy federal land-use regulations (under 25 C.F.R.). Furthermore, this vision provides the foundational original scholarship for future tribal land-use codes that integrate Diné Customary Law with modern administrative standards.
Beyond research, the project generates innovative legal solutions to resolve long-term legacy issues—such as probate hurdles and land-use permit barriers—that have historically fragmented Diné families and disrupted ancestral land tenure. In essence, the project provides communities with a toolkit designed to return land-use oversight to local authorities and reunify the family structure through informed land stewardship.
The contents of this site are maintained as a historical narrative, a legal research archive, and a repository of proprietary policy scholarship. This project documents the evolution of laws in all their forms and their impact on rural infrastructure, land tenure, and public health data. All materials are preserved for educational and research purposes in accordance with federal guidelines for historical and treaty-based observances.
— March 18, 2026
Law & Public Policy Interns and Externs
Since summer 2020, the Diné Nihi Keyah Project has had the research support of interns, externs, and project leaders from the Diné College Land Grant Office; Elizabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University; the Land Use Law Center at Pace University; Yale University; American University Washington School of Law; University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law; and the Capstone Project of the M. Sc SEDV program, University of Calgary, Haskayne School of Business. Our interns and externs have jump started and continue to work on Diné Nihi Kéyah Project sustainable development law seminar subjects, resource development, and other public policy and extern law school projects. It is an honor to host you all.
Our law interns, externs, and youth project leaders research and map federal and tribal law information and services that are cross-jurisdictional and difficult to find.
Here are some of the mini bios of our law interns, externs and youth project leaders.