Reviving Navajo identity, one sheep at a time

Irene Bennalley steps out into the fierce afternoon sunlight wearing jeans and a maroon sweater, her long gray hair knotted in a braid.

Brandishing a long white stick as her crook, she picks her way across her parched desert farm toward the sheep pen. Answering their bleats with firm instructions in Navajo, she shepherds them out onto the dry, dusty range.

She doesn’t know exactly how many Navajo-Churro sheep she has, but she ballparks it at around 100 head. It’s bad luck to keep exact counts of your livestock, her father taught her. Don’t boast about your animals, he would say, or they’ll start dropping.

Out here, ranchers like Ms. Bennalley can’t afford to lose animals. The winters are cold and hard, and the summers are hot and relentless. Water is scarce and feed is expensive. It’s the main reason she has come to love the breed, known colloquially as churros, that she’d grown up only hearing about in stories…

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