Navajo Indian culture is intrinsically connected to the earth. It is the backbone of their spirituality and the heart of their understanding of the universe. Traditionally, they live quiet, private lives centered on extended families. They are fully devoted to a spiritual bond to Mother Earth. A matrilineal people, Navajo land passes from mothers to daughters. Unlike the neighboring Hopi Indians, a pueblo culture living in village clusters atop mesas, the Navajo believe that they were placed on Earth to use ritual and prayer to protect the land positioned between four sacred mountains in an area of the Southwestern United States.

From 1987 to 1993, Karen Marshall photographed and collected testimony from a group of Navajo Indians in northern Arizona who were being forced from ancestral lands by Public Law 93-531, legislation passed by congress in 1974. A century ago, the federal government arbitrarily designated that the Hopi and the Navajo Indians share the land jointly. The 1974 law established new boundaries separating the land. It led to the eviction of approximately 100 Hopi. For the Navajo, the impact has been far more dramatic: more than 11,000 Navajo were ordered to leave their homeland, resulting in drastic disruptions in their ability to practice traditional beliefs and maintain ancient ways of life.

A government commission implements relocation by moving the Navajo to tract homes in border towns or to one-acre reservation plots. Often, housing is substandard. Social services intended to help the tribe through this extraordinary transition are woefully inefficient and, sometimes, nonexistent. Hundred of relocates, caught in the tangle of a mismanaged process, have become destitute. Many families await permanent housing two decades after their initial eviction notice. To implement relocation, an enforced building freeze bans any repairs or new construction in the disputed area. Adding to an already difficult situation, a required livestock reduction of 90 percent perpetuated a hostile environment and literally starved elders off their land. Essentially, the reservation boundary dispute has become a struggle for the most basic of human rights — work, home and sustenance.

In 1988, 1500 Navajo facing eviction refused to relocate, filing a lawsuit against the United States government based on the First Amendment claiming that relocation violated their rights to spiritual practice. After more then a decade in the courts, restrictive land leases were eventually issued to elders who refused to leave.

In this project aimed at documenting and preserving Navajo thoughts about their oneness with the land, Karen Marshall combines photography with translated testimony she gathered from women and their families in the oral language of Dine. These circular stories narrate a dilemma of a tragic cultural transition. Marshall documents Navajo who resisted relocation from their sacred land and traditional lifestyle, as well as those who accepted relocation and consented to assimilation.

By witnessing these people during a crucial moment in their history, the documentation raises questions of universal concern, especially the plight of a non-dominant culture as it dealt with the intrusion of the late 20th century.