HOW WE VERIFY
What has been checked, and what hasn’t
≈ 4 min read · or listen, or skim the bold lines
This site teaches Navajo law. The published Navajo Nation Code is current only through 2009. Amendments since then are scattered across individual Council resolutions. So we tell you, on every page, how far a claim has been checked — and what would move it further.
The four levels
A · Primary source
A volunteer has read the underlying statute, resolution, or court document. Citations are quoted from it.
B · Established reporting
Facts come from named news organizations. The underlying documents have not been independently reviewed by this project.
C · Secondary explanation
Drawn from published commentary by practicing attorneys, or from official summaries. The statutory text has not been read directly.
D · Draft — not verified
Drafted with AI assistance from public sources and reviewed by volunteers. Not line-checked against the Code.
And one caution that applies even at the top level:
What a level does not mean
Level A does not mean current. The published Code stops at 2009. A statute we quoted accurately may have been amended by a resolution that was never codified. Where we have checked the Office of Legislative Services amendment index (2014–present), we say so on the page.
No level is legal advice. If a decision matters — a job, a complaint, a deadline — talk to an attorney or advocate. DNA-People’s Legal Services and the Navajo Nation Bar Association are in Resources.
Why this exists
To read the law that governs you on the Navajo Nation, you must download a code that stops at 2009, cross-reference a government amendment index that begins in 2014, fill the gap from a volunteer project run by law students off the Nation, and subscribe to a commercial database for the rest. The Judicial Branch states it cannot post most statutes, citing copyright.
We are not going to pretend that a page written from public summaries is the same as a page written from the statute. So we label it.
What we will not do
- We do not cite AI-generated research summaries. They may point a volunteer toward a document. They are never a source.
- We do not score, rank, or recommend candidates. Not by adjective, not by implication.
- We do not publish an allegation about an identifiable person without independent verification and an opportunity to respond.
- We do not quote a candidate from a machine transcript without checking it against the recording. Automated transcription reliably mangles proper nouns and legal terms.
Help us move a page up
If you have read the statute, the resolution, or the court record on any page here, tell us what it says and where you found it. Send a correction → Every page that moves from D to A is a page a Diné person can rely on.
Related: Methodology & AI disclosure · How we verify · The Covenant · Official sources
And the rest: What we don’t know → — the open questions, by name.
Where the interviews come from — and where they do not
Every candidate interview used on this site is from Politics on the Navajo Nation, hosted by Cal Nez. No other programme’s interviews are used, in any count, on any page.
This is a rule, not a preference.
- The work is not ours. This archive exists because one journalist recorded the record and shared it.
- Mixing hosts destroys comparability. Every count on this site depends on the same person asking. A different interviewer is a different instrument.
- Other broadcasters hold rights in their own work.
Material from other programmes has been offered to this project and deliberately excluded. Every file in the archive is checked automatically for a host marker before any analysis runs.