New Books in the American West · New Books Network

Dorothy Denetclaw and Matt Fitzsimons, "The Sons of Gunshooter: A Navajo Resistance Story" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

February 26, 2026·30 min·1 clip

Matt Fitzsimons says the Hubbles are usually portrayed as “benevolent kings of commerce,” but his research pointed elsewhere.

1. New Books in the American West discusses Dorothy Denetclaw and Matt Fitzsimons’s The Sons of Gun Shooter: A Navajo Resistance Story, published by the University of Arizona Press in March 2026. 2. Mary Reynolds hosts the conversation as publicity manager for the University of Arizona Press, and she frames the book as part history and part true crime. 3. The episode asks what the book is for: to re-examine the killing of a famous Indian trader and the trial that followed within the larger history of colonization and resistance. 4. Dorothy Denetclaw says her father told family stories repeatedly in childhood, and she later worked with Cindy Yerth at the Navajo Times and Kathleen Manalisco at Leading the Way magazine to record them. 5. Matt Fitzsimons says he found Dorothy after researching Hubble Trading Post, a site established in the 1870s and now operated by the National Park Service in Ganado, Arizona. 6. Matt contrasts common descriptions of the Hubbles as generous traders with his own research, which linked the family to the Long Walk and to major violence against Navajos. 7. Dorothy describes the family story as one of “love” rather than shame, and she connects it to teachings about spiritual relationships passed through generations. 8. She names her clans, says her family lives in Indian Wells, Arizona, and traces family lines through figures such as Chief Manuleto and Ganado Mucho. 9. Matt says the book’s broader aim is to show Navajo families maintaining cultural and ceremonial life during captivity and exile. 10. He says Navajo oral history and archival evidence agree that people relied on traditional ceremonies and medicine rather than the conversion-and-dependence story repeated by outsiders. 11. Dorothy says songs, ceremonies, and stories sustained Navajo people during the Long Walk and internment at Fort Sumner. 12. She ties present-day cultural survival to language loss, boarding-school abuse, and the urgency of teaching Navajo language again. 13. Dorothy calls for a Navajo-only school on the Nation where children could learn through Navajo language, Navajo songs, and Navajo teachers. 14. Matt says the legal reconstruction was difficult because records were lost, destroyed, or incomplete, including the absence of a trial transcript. 15. He says letters, private communications, and scattered archives revealed motivations that people did not expect would become public. 16. Matt says oral history and archival material matched on specific details, including Dorothy’s account that a horse was missing a horseshoe and a letter from Lorenzo Hubble confirming it. 17. Dorothy says the Hubble family was often set up as allies in older histories, but the book instead shows more complicated relationships between traders, Navajo families, and law enforcement. 18. Matt says the story of George Nell’s sentence shows the capriciousness of the justice system, the power of the Hubble family, and later a form of justice inside prison. 19. The interview style is conversational and question-driven, with Mary Reynolds prompting long, detailed answers from Dorothy and Matt. 20. Listeners interested in Navajo history, oral tradition, and archival detective work will get the most from this episode; listeners wanting a brief author chat without legal or historical detail may skip it.

As heard by us

A measured book conversation about Navajo resistance, memory, and language preservation.

Dorothy Denetclaw and Matt Fitzsimons frame The Sons of Gun Shooter as both a Navajo resistance story and a study of memory, archives, and the damage left by forced assimilation.

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For listeners who want a Navajo history conversation rooted in family memory and archival work.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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