Code Talker begins with the novel’s six-year-old Navajo narrator crouching behind his family home, or hogan, on the reservation, which he calls Dinetah. His name is Kii Yázhí, and he is anxious about the possibility of being sent away from his family. Shortly thereafter, the youth is ushered into a wagon where his uncle awaits, but not before saying goodbye to his great-grandfather, his mother, and his father. Each family member urges Kii Yázhí to be strong, and each appears emotional about the send-off. His mother wears her finest traditional clothing and jewelry for the occasion. On the ride to the mission school in Gallup, New Mexico, Kii Yázhí’s uncle, the only family member to have attended a mission school, talks about why it’s beneficial for Navajo children to attend the boarding school. He says that understanding white, or bilagaanaa, culture is a way of protecting the Navajo people: “That is why you must go to school: not for yourself, but for your family, for our people, for our sacred land” (10).

Yázhí’s uncle reminds him about the sad history between the Navajo people and the US government in episodes like the Trail of Tears and the enslavement and subjugation of Indigenous Americans by both Mexican and Anglo-American forces.