Navajo Nation Becomes Largest Tribe in U.S. After Enrollment Surge (original) (raw)

U.S.|Navajo Nation Becomes Largest Tribe in U.S. After Pandemic Enrollment Surge

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/21/us/navajo-cherokee-population.html

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A rush to secure federal benefits during the coronavirus pandemic accelerated enrollment in the Navajo Nation, pushing its population past the Cherokee Nation’s to nearly 400,000.

Riding in Kayenta, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation reservation, which covers about 27,000 square miles of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.Credit...Sharon Chischilly for The New York Times

May 21, 2021

ALBUQUERQUE — The Navajo Nation already had its own police academy, universities, bar association and court system, plus a new Washington office near the embassies of other sovereign nations. And during the coronavirus pandemic the Diné, as many prefer to call themselves, gained an important distinction: the most populous tribal nation in the United States.

A rush to secure federal hardship benefits increased the Navajo Nation’s official enrollment to 399,494 from 306,268 last year, according to the Navajo Office of Vital Records and Identification. That jump was enough for the Diné to eclipse the Cherokee Nation, which has an enrollment of about 392,000.

The tribe’s growth, which came while it was enduring some of the nation’s most harrowing virus outbreaks, could affect the disbursement of future federal aid as well as political representation in the Southwest. The Navajo Nation reservation, which is larger than West Virginia, spreads over about 27,000 square miles of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

“This is the brighter side to a really bad time in the pandemic when we watched so many people go,” said Traci Morris, executive director of Arizona State University’s American Indian Policy Institute.

Dr. Morris, a member of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma, said that while several tribes saw their enrollment increase during the pandemic, the 30 percent spike in the Navajo Nation was particularly notable. The Cherokee Nation, which normally sees about 1,200 applications for enrollment each month, has seen an increase to about 1,400 a month since the middle of last year, said a spokeswoman for the tribe.

Official tribal enrollment can often be lower than a tribe’s actual population because of factors including migration from reservations to urban areas and the different policies that the 574 federally recognized tribes in the United States have for determining membership. Some tribes, like the Diné, have relatively more stringent requirements than others that have loosened such rules.

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