Chester Nez and the Unbreakable Code by Joseph Bruchac

The enslavement of many American Indians by the Spanish was a catastrophic event for the Navajo people. The Navajos see this region as being bounded by four sacred mountains.

They settled in the area that’s known today as the Four Corners region-where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah come together. They may have been connected to the Athabaskan people of Alaska. The Navajo people (or Dine’, which means “The People”) probably moved into the American Southwest around 1,000 years ago. He has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, as well as the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award for his contributions to children’s multicultural literature. Some of these include Breaking Silence (winner of an American Book Award), Sacajawea (a historical novel), collections of traditional Native American stories, and poetry. Bruchac has written more than 100 books for both adults and children.

Along with his younger sister, Margaret, and his two adult sons, James and Jesse, Bruchac is heavily involved in projects for preserving Abenaki language and culture, including a musical group called the Dawnland Singers. Though Bruchac also has English and Slovak ancestry, he says that his northeastern American Indian heritage has nourished him the most. in Literature and Creative Writing from Syracuse University, and a Ph.D. Joseph Bruchac was raised by his maternal grandparents in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York.

Chester Nez and the Unbreakable Code by Joseph Bruchac