Role of School in the Community Development of Kin Dah Lichii, Arizona

I wanted to understand how the school impacted the physical development of Kin Dah Lichii, as well as, other impacts that were seen after the school came. I argue, under the belief, that the school was an asset for Kin Dah Lichii’s historic and present-day community development. The Asset-Based Community Development, Indigenous planning, and Landscape perspectives are used to analyze the role of a school in the community development of Navajo Nation and Kin Dah Lichii. The data collection entailed two phases: (1) archival research and (2) community interviews. The insight gained from the archival research is that schools did play significant roles in community development of the Navajo Nation. It provides a meta-narrative to help substantiate claims of the school’s role in Kin Dah Lichii’s community development. The community interviews provided a rich historic 20th century narrative of Kin Dah Lichii and demonstrated that the school contributed to community development. Historically, schools were an agent of economic, environment, political, and social change. For the large part, however, that change was brought from the outside, which ultimately severed Navajo ties to land, culture, language, community, and family. In considering a seven generations’ approach to education, all generations at Kin Dah Lichii must be invested in the welfare of the community, they must initiate a mutually-beneficial school-community relationship.Indian Land Tenure FoundationMaster in Community and Regional PlanningMastersUniversity of New Mexico. School of Architecture and PlanningJojola, TheodoreHarjo, LauraLee, Tiffan