This walk-through now lives in the hub. Everything here — the lessons, the record, the actions — is gathered in one place: The Reform Hub →
LEARNING MISSION
The Government Reform Hub
Everything on this topic
Read the record: Why do the branches fight? · Candidates side by side: Government and the branches — candidates side by side · Learn the system: History of Navajo Government · This page: The guided mission
Why this guide matters
The November 3 referendum asks the Nation to change how it governs itself. A vote cast with understanding — either way — is the whole point of this platform.
How we’ll know it’s working
Honest, countable signs only: questions submitted · instruments gathering answers · pages read and rated useful · and more people who can explain how these decisions actually get made. Counts publish, dated, on Community Findings.
≈ 5 min read · or listen, or skim the bold lines
D · Draft — not verified Not line-checked against the Navajo Nation Code. How we verify →
Data & your voice
Surveys, by subject · the results so far · Where’s the data? — every mission runs on what the community measures.
On November 3, the people decide the biggest structural question in a generation. This Learning Mission exists so that decision is an informed one: the history that made reform necessary, what today’s Title 2 system actually is, what the draft constitution specifically proposes — from the document itself — and what the candidates say. Learning here; the deciding happens in the Decision Mission.
Step 1 — Why reform keeps coming up
The history in two lessons
Learning — the road to 2026
1. A Short History of Navajo Government — the 1934 IRA rejection, the 1989 three-branch restructuring meant to be temporary until the people chose a government, and the 2009 changes.
2. Title 2 & Title 26 — the law the Nation actually runs on today, and how to read the resolutions that amend it.
Step 2 — What the draft specifically proposes
From the document, not the rumors
Learning — sourced to the draft’s own text
Constitution 101 now carries a sourced provisions section: the people named sovereign; initiative, referendum, and recall; the 7% initiative threshold; fiscal discipline written into the structure (revenues must exceed appropriations, no long-term debt for operations, trust-fund principal spendable only by the people’s vote); the oath to the constitution and the Treaty of 1868 with no religious, residency, or language test for office — and a link to the official working draft itself, because drafts evolve and summaries (ours included) can go stale. Read the document.
Step 3 — The problems it aims at
The Government & the Branches issue page lays out what’s broken in candidates’ own framing: structural gridlock between branches, lines of authority never clearly drawn, and no branch whose actual job is guarding the money — the complaint the draft’s fiscal house answers. Whether it would answer it is yours to weigh.
Step 4 — Consult the record
What the candidates say
Community — the Consult stage
Candidates engaged the reform directly and disagree in interesting ways — some attended the public hearings and submitted comments, at least one opposed the fourth-branch idea on the record, others focus on Title 2 amendments instead of a constitution. The comparison page’s Governance Knowledge topic puts them side by side with private judging tools.
Step 5 — Test yourself, then carry it to the ballot
Deal a board of Jeopardy — the new Inside the Draft Constitution and Reform & the Referendum categories quiz exactly this material, and every answer links its lesson. Then the Government Reform Mission takes you the rest of the way: official sources, evaluation lenses, and referendum voting information for November 3, 2026.
Contribute
Questions the lessons didn’t answer are exactly what we want: send them in, or put them to the candidates from their own profiles. Your private progress lives on My Civic Journey.
Goes with: Government 101 · Government Reform — the Decision Mission · How oversight works
Related
All guides · Accountability · Civic Academy · My Civic Journey
Why this law exists
In 1987 a middleman bought a ranch for $26.25 million and sold it to the Navajo Nation five minutes later for $33.4 million. Two years of crisis followed. On July 20, 1989, Arnold Begay and Jimmy Dixon were killed outside the finance building in Window Rock.
Five months later the Council wrote 2 N.N.C. §§ 223–225: advertise the contract, take bids, cap change orders at twenty percent, file it, and let the people see it. In the same resolution they ordered that the law be codified immediately.
The law behind this guide
A · read in the Navajo Nation Code Annotated unless marked otherwise
- CD-68-89 — the 1989 Title 2 Amendments, written five months after two Diné men were killed.
- 2 N.N.C. § 102 — the Council is the governing body.
- § 221(A) — the codification duty, unperformed since 2009.
What we found
Government reform produced the fewest concrete proposals of Cal Nez’s seven areas — the one area entirely about law.
How we’ll know it worked
When a candidate can cite the section they propose to amend.