Evangeline Parsons Yazzie ( 1952 – May 22, 2022) was a

Navajo The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...

educator and author of the first textbook adopted by the U.S. public education system to teach the

Navajo language Navajo or Navaho (; Navajo: or ) is a Southern Athabaskan language of the Na-Dené family, through which it is related to languages spoken across the western areas of North America. Navajo is spoken primarily in the Southwestern United States ...

Life

Yazzie received a Master of Arts degree in Bilingual Multicultural Education and a Doctorate in Education from

Northern Arizona University Northern Arizona University (NAU) is a public research university based in Flagstaff, Arizona. It was founded in 1899 as the final public university established in the Arizona Territory, 13 years before Arizona was admitted as the 48th state. ...

(NAU) where she taught

courses for 24 years until 2014. In 2007, Yazzie co-authored a textbook for teaching the Navajo language titled ''Diné Bizaad Bínáhooʼaah: Rediscovering the Navajo Language'' along with Margaret Speas, a professor of linguistics at the

University of Massachusetts The University of Massachusetts is the five-campus public university system and the only public research system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The university system includes five campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and a medica ...

. In 2008,

New Mexico ) , population_demonym = New Mexican ( es, Neomexicano, Neomejicano, Nuevo Mexicano) , seat = Santa Fe , LargestCity = Albuquerque , LargestMetro = Tiguex , OfficialLang = None , Languages = English, Spanish ( New Mexican), Navajo, Ker ...

adopted the textbook making itself the first U.S. state to officially use any text for teaching the Navajo language in its public school system. Following her retirement in 2014, Yazzie authored several novels about a fictional family's experience of the

Long Walk of the Navajo The Long Walk of the Navajo, also called the Long Walk to Bosque Redondo ( nv, Hwéeldi), was the 1864 deportation and attempted ethnic cleansing of the Navajo people by the United States federal government. Navajos were forced to walk from t ...

. Yazzie died on May 22, 2022, at age 69.

References

Native American women writers 21st-century Native American women Native American women academics Navajo writers Northern Arizona University alumni 20th-century American educators 20th-century American women educators 21st-century American educators 21st-century American women educators 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American women writers American textbook writers Women textbook writers Native American academics Northern Arizona University faculty 1950s births 2022 deaths 21st-century Native American writers {{NorthAm-native-bio-stub