American Indian Culture and Research Journal

In recent years, much attention has been given to the proliferation and emergence of street gangs among ethnic groups in locations formerly gang-free. Navajo tribal members and officials have expressed strong concerns over both the presence of male youth gangs and what has been perceived as growing levels of violence. Such concern is reasonable in a society in which accidents, suicide, homicide, and alcoholism are among the top ten causes of death for males. Thus, “injury mortality” is “the single most important health problem of the Navajo.” In 1997, the Navajo Nation estimated that approximately sixty youth gangs existed in Navajo country. Through the Peacemaker Division of the judicial branch of the Navajo Nation, the tribe secured federal funding to study gangs. The tribe has since been actively pursuing means to ameliorate the conditions that lead to gang formation. Gang values encourage risky behavior. Many of these behaviors are taken to extremes, such as heavy drinking and drug use. Mortality from injuries and alcohol “occur most frequently in young adult males.” Thus, an examination of the history of gang formation, and the extreme forms of risky behavior associated with gang activity holds importance for both law enforcement and public health policy. Although newspaper accounts of Navajo gangs often stress the gulf between gang behavior and that of youths in earlier times, the origins of Navajo gangs in the early 1970s has some connection to Navajo adolescent male peer groups in the nineteenth century. More importantly, however, recent gang formation has been stimulated by off-reservation models and changing social and demographic factors within Navajo country. It appears that gangs have formed around core members who were socially marginal members of their communities. Membership in a gang, although limited to a small minority of Navajo youths, represents one significant contemporary path followed in the transition from childhood to adulthood.