Navajo Code Talkers Day split continues for second year
Special to the Times | Donovan Quintero
Michael Smith (left) speaks with a family member of the late Navajo Code Talker John Kinsel Sr. at a display honoring Kinsel’s life and service during Navajo Code Talkers Day in Window Rock on Aug. 14, 2025.
WINDOW ROCK
Descendants of the Navajo Code Talkers and the Navajo Nation government will hold separate Navajo Code Talkers Day observances Aug. 14 for the second consecutive year.
The descendants will gather at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock. The Navajo Nation Veterans Administration will hold a veterans stand-down from 9 a.m. to noon and a gourd dance from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Window Rock Fairgrounds.
Christine Benally, the daughter of the late Navajo Code Talker Harry Benally, said the gatherings differ in focus as well as location.
Benally tied the split to a longer dispute among Diné families over how the roughly 400 Marines who used their language as an unbroken code in the Pacific are remembered.
“Somewhere along the way it became a Navajo Nation-sponsored event, and then they kind of just took the agenda and started putting in all these political figures in the agenda, and a lot of descendants didn’t like that,” Benally said.
To read the full article, please see the Aug. 6, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow