For millennia, Navajo society was self-sufficient. After 1863, beginning with Kit Carson's murderous rampage among the Navajo and the subsequent removal to the Bosque Redondo reservation, Navajo nationhood changed. Navajo society began a slow transformation away from the distinct Dine way of life. In the twentieth century Navajo nationalism was born. Henry Chee Dodge, Deshna Clah Cheschillige, Thomas Dodge, Henry Taliman, Jacob C. Morgan, Annie Wauneka, Ned Hatathali, and many other leaders worked to protect the well-being of the Navajo people. During this process, Navajo government and, more specifically, the Navajo Nation became an institution and agency many ancestors never envisioned or contemplated. It became a Westernized political organization, a three-branch governmental system that includes 110 chapter houses designed to be community links to the centralized political structure. Today, many socioeconomic problems exist, and, despite the existence of a Western-style system of political representation designed to address them, the Navajo people--from grassroots activists to writers--are not only disenchanted with the centralized government system but calling for and theorizing sovereignty from intellectual positions grounded in a distinctively Navajo epistemology. This article envisions how the nation can restore true Navajo nationhood. (Contains 33 notes.)