It will take a lot of money and a lot of adjustment, but the Navajo Nation might be changing its name…to Dine Nation.

The change is an idea spawned by the man who heads the Nation’s Health, Education and Human Services Committee, Jonathan Hale. Lake Powell Communications spoke to Mr. Hale and he explained the reasons for his effort. He believes it would be a natural thing to do because so many refer to the Nation as Dine already.

“One time I went to a ceremony and this lady said to me, ‘How come the Navajo Nation government isn’t paying attention to its own name; Navajo? We’re not Navajo,’” quoted Hale.

She reminded him that “Navajo” was a word given to them by the Spaniards, and it means “thief.”

“We are called ‘Dine,’” she went on to tell Mr. Hale. And he listened.

“They say we are losing our language; we are losing our culture, and we don’t even change the essence of who we really are,” he said. “This is what prompted the legislation.”

It is legislation that has already received rave reviews from the Nation’s Budget and Finance Committee, and might soon reach the entire Navajo Nation Council.

Hale told us he’s been thinking about the need for a change for a while, but when the elderly woman approached him, he said it was time to act.

But he realizes all the changes that will have to be made if the change becomes law.

“Well, we go through that every four years, if you really think about it, with every change of the Navajo Nation government,” said Hale. “But the fact is, we’re not recognizing who we are. We’re making excuses by saying it’s a financial burden.

Let’s just vote on it and keep moving along.”

Mr. hale points out that Dine College was once called Navajo Community College. He says there a number of other entities within the Nation that use the term, “Dine.”

“When are we really going to embrace who we are and move forward?” he rhetorically asked. “We are Dine. We need to follow our traditions, our ways, and we need to respect that. We need to reinvigorate ourselves and our people, or else it’s going to vanish.”

He sees it as a starting mechanism in order to wake the people up.

What about Jonathan Hale, personally? Would he miss the Navajo name, something that’s been part of his entire life?

“Not necessarily. Because my elder people; my parents, my uncles and my grandma; they would say ‘Dine,’” he said. “The elderly people; they say ‘Dine.’ So if anything, I don’t think I would miss it.”

“Navajo,” as we mentioned, comes from the Spaniards and means “thief.” But “Dine” comes from the Dine language, and means “the people.”

“So why do we call ourselves thieves?” he asked. “But we can change it and embrace it, and say this is who we are; Dine.”

Mr. Hale hears Dine pronounced a couple of different ways. He hears it in the northern areas of the reservation as “D’nay,” with a clipped second syllable. More toward Window Rock the pronunciation seems to be closer to “D’ Neh,’ again with a clipped ending.

He chuckled and said, “I actually heard someone say their child goes to Dine College, pronounced ‘dyne,’ like a diner. That’s not it.”

While the change may happen with the current Navajo Nation Council, which began meeting Monday, Hale says, if not, he’d like to see it happen by the next fiscal year, later in 2017.