Kimberly Yazzie
KIMBERLY YAZZIE WAS BORN on the Navajo Nation, which stretches for 27,000 square miles across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Yazzie’s family lived on land disputed by the Navajo and Hopi tribes, a conflict instigated by federal policies from the 1800s. Yazzie’s grandparents moved in the late 1980s. Yazzie’s immediate family followed in the late 1990s. Their new home was in the New Lands, a newly-created satellite of trust land, about 350,000 acres on the reservation’s southern border in northeastern Arizona near Sanders. They occupied a house on a one-acre plot, in a cluster of other homes built by the Office of Navajo-Hopi Indian Relocation (ONHIR), a federal agency. “Giving up all of their open land space, it traumatized everybody,” Yazzie said. “They still shed tears for where they used to live.” Yazzie finished school at Sanders, AZ went to college and returned to her community as an agriculture teacher. While serving as an educator she was recruited by Bill Inman and the Labatt Food Service team to build the beef programs capacity in the community and market the product line. She continues to live and work in her community of Sanders, AZ.
