Evangeline Parsons Yazzie

Evangeline Parsons Yazzie (c. 1952 – May 22, 2022) was a Navajo educator and author of the first textbook adopted by the U.S. public education system to teach the Navajo language.

Life
Yazzie received a Master of Arts degree in Bilingual Multicultural Education and a Doctorate in Education from Northern Arizona University (NAU) where she taught Navajo language courses for 24 years until 2014. In 2007, Yazzie co-authored a textbook for teaching the Navajo language titled Diné Bizaad Bínáhooʼaah: Rediscovering the Navajo Language along with Margaret Speas, a professor of linguistics at the University of Massachusetts. In 2008, New Mexico adopted the textbook making itself the first U.S. state to officially use any text for teaching the Navajo language in its public school system.

Following her retirement in 2014, Yazzie authored several novels about a fictional family's experience of the Long Walk of the Navajo. Yazzie died on May 22, 2022, at age 69.