It's known as Dine Bikeyah in the Navajo language, Land of the People, a vast desert wilderness of awe-inspiring sandstone cliffs, endless sunsets and breathtaking canyons carved from ancient winds and waters.

It is a land that is instantly recognizable from the many Western movies filmed in and around the majestic Monument Valley, a land of gnarled junipers and golden cottonwoods, of buttes and mesas that change color with each passing moment of the day's journey.

It is a land of incredible beauty, intense contrasts and devasting isolation.

The Navajo are historically a nomadic people who do not traditionally live in towns or cities, although the extended family unit may live together in close proximity.  A stereotypical misconception often seen in the media paints the Navajo as a poverty-stricken people living in filthy hovels of drunken squalor.  In fact, they are incredibly resourceful, able to hold onto their cultural tradtitions while living in a modern world of mass media and the internet.  They live close to the land, raising sheep which provide wool for their world-renowned woven rugs and blankets and mutton as their staple meat.

Navajo teens are especially vulnerable, caught between the two worlds of ancient customs and the ever-encroaching Anglo culture they are exposed to through films, music and cyberspace.  They speak fluent Navajo at home but learn in English at school.  They dress in Anglo clothes, listen to Anglo music and watch Anglo television.  Many attend colleges off the reservation, choosing to stay after graduation.  With about 60 percent of the Navajo people under 25 years of age, this exodus threatens to destroy the hope of preserving the native culture that makes them a unique people.

"This is a land of contrasts," wrote Rebecca Reppert, an English teacher who spent 13 years on the reservation.  "There is poverty and wealth, barren ground and mineral riches, wilderness tamed by power lines and roads, ancient and 21st century amenities.  It is truly living in two worlds."